Zanzibar acid attack: An exotic island with too many ghosts The Zanzibar archipelago (in fact, there are two main islands, Unguja, where the attack took place, and Pemba, as well as numerous small ones) has long been a byword for the exotic, evoking a One Thousand and One Nights atmosphere of enchantment: a world of coral reefs and palm-fringed beaches, of ancient palaces and imposing forts, of narrow streets crowded with merchants and overlooked by elaborately carved doors, from behind which veiled eyes peep. It would be a great exaggeration to say that the most you see of local women in Zanzibar is the letterbox of the niqab and the odd flash of a henna-tattooed wrist, since there is a sizeable part of the population that, though highly likely to be Muslim, is relaxed, friendly and easy-going. But it remains the case (as in many Indian Ocean islands, from Socotra to Lamu), that sexual politics is a flashpoint. The sense of the exotic that infuses Zanzibar comes from the island's long encounter with many other cultures: with Shirazi Persians, who settled there from the 10th century and intermarried; with Omani Arabs who ruled there for many years; with Portuguese sailors who fought the Omanis for dominance for over 100 years; with the Gujarati and other Indian traders who settled there (often founding trading dynasties that still hold sway throughout East Africa); and with the British and German explorers, missionaries and soldiers who passed through the port in the 19th and early 20th centuries, on to the interior. Slavery was a large part of Omani Zanzibar's commercial power, and from roughly 1700 to 1850 (long past official abolition), the sultans of Zanzibar effectively controlled the slave trade in East and Central Africa. The islands came under British control as a result of the scramble for Africa between imperial powers and the 19th-century movement to abolish slavery. But independence from Britain in 1963, as a constitutional Islamic monarchy, was quickly followed by a bloody revolution in which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed or expelled. The following year Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika, a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania. Many Zanzibaris were unhappy about the union. Ever since, the islands have always been on the edge of political turmoil, with a large and to some extent justified sense of grievance against mainland political control and economic exploitation. This is amplified by tensions between the broadly Christian, "Bantu" mainland and the predominantly Muslim, "Swahili" coast and islands (a similar pattern exists in Kenya), creating a perfect storm of ethnic, political and religious unrest. Although Swahili is spoken across Tanzania and is the national language, on the coast Swahili has an added ethnic dimension. There is a sense of Zanzibar, and Swahili culture generally, being oppressed. The consumptive display of tourism, massively expanded in the past 20 years, has become bound up with all these difficult factors. Since the 1990s, the islands have been marked by repeated clashes between the army and police and protesters. At about the same time, militant Islamism began stalking the East African seaboard, with al-Qaeda recruiting not just from Zanzibar but from a whole stretch - roughly from Tanzania's southern border, through Kenya (principally Mombasa) up to Kismayo in Somalia, where al-Qaeda begins to merge into al-Shabab and other Islamist groups. Much of this coastline has seen attacks by al-Qaeda or its affiliates in the past 15 years, notably in 2002 when surface-to-air missiles were fired at an Israeli-owned plane in Mombasa and, simultaneously, a four-by-four crashed through a barrier outside the Paradise Hotel there (also Israeli-owned) and blew up, killing 13 and injuring 80. One of the 1998 embassy bombers, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, was born and grew up in Zanzibar, going to Afghanistan for training. Uneducated and impressionable, the son of a peasant farmer, he was a typical recruit for the then-burgeoning organisation, which has long exploited East Africa's porous coastal borders. Things have tightened up a bit since 9/11 and there are a number of US anti-terrorism programmes, but it's still fairly easy to journey undetected between Mukalla on the Yemeni coast (a central al-Qaeda staging post, at least until the recent security clampdown there), Zanzibar or Mombasa, and thereafter points inland. Besides Zanzibar's association with terrorism, there have been sporadic attacks over the past 20 years on Westerners. It remains, despite appearances, a fairly unsecure place. One reason is the hotels: although only Tanzanians are supposed to own land, there has been a lot of corruption among officials involving appropriation of coastal land by hoteliers. This is bitterly resented by impoverished locals. Add to that a large number of disaffected, frustrated youths with few economic prospects (and, thus, little chance of early marriage and sexual outlet), and some possible reasons for the acid attack become clearer. I wouldn't go there as a tourist now, despite the allure of the scent of cloves and the coconut-strewn beaches. It feels uncomfortable. There are ghost crabs scuttling across the sand, yes, but also too many historical ghosts, too many forces from the past brewing up trouble. Giles Foden's books include 'Zanzibar" and 'The Last King of Scotland," both published by Faber and Faber