Global Insight: N Africa realises jihadist problem cannot be exported Novice north African governments are rediscovering a hard truth their predecessors learnt a generation ago about the nature of violent Islamists: you cannot resolve a jihadist problem by exporting it. For the better part of two years, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and even to some extent Algeria have mostly looked the other way, or tacitly encouraged the migration of young Islamic militants to fight against Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. Now, following a series of high-profile attacks by Islamists in north Africa, it appears they are hastily trying to change course and cut off the spigot of young men heading to the Levant. "People want to go and fight with the Syrians; no one is going prevent them," Libya's then-foreign minister Ashour Bin Khayal told the Financial Times a little more than a year ago. By March, Libya had abruptly changed course. Police arrested on March 21 five suspected Tunisian would-be jihadists in Benghazi as they boarded a flight for Istanbul en route to join the anti-Assad rebellion. Tunisia has mounted its own crackdown. Interior minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou told local media that "hundreds" of Salafis were arrested in April as part of an investigation into networks recruiting and training young fighters. The country's grand mufti, Othman Battikh, has launched a campaign to prevent mosques from being used to recruit young men for the Syria war, declaring the conflict unworthy of jihad. Meanwhile, Algerian security forces have intensified an ongoing crackdown against networks that recruit young men for Syria, with police arresting four with alleged ties to jihadist groups, the Echourouk newspaper reported on April 18. The rebellion against the Damascus regime remains an immensely popular cause across the Arab world, and by looking the other way as men boarded planes to Turkey and Jordan to enter the Syrian theatre, governments could lay claim to supporting the cause without taking an official position. Implicit was the understanding that young, bold men taking up arms in Aleppo or Deir Ezzour were not taking them up in Benghazi or Tunis. But calculations changed dramatically earlier this year when Islamic militants attacked a western-operated gas installation on the Algerian-Libyan border, leaving dozens dead and, separately, assassinated a leading Tunisian opposition politician. While there's no evidence of a Syrian connection to either attack, they served as a stark warning that the skills and military mindset acquired in a distant jihad can easily be brought home. This was a lesson rulers such as Muammer Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak and the Arabian peninsula's monarchs learnt after allowing militants to migrate to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. The result was a generation of hardened fighters who returned determined to bring down Arab governments. In addition to realising the very real possibility of blowback once the Syria conflict is over, they are starting to see the drive for jihad in Syria as part of their own domestic turf wars with ultra-puritanical Salafist movements. Firebrand preachers across the Arab world frame the Syrian conflict as a grand sectarian battle between a regime led by the Alawite sect (an offshoot of Shia Islam) and the Sunni faith of most Arabs. Egypt's position, for the time being, remains softer than its neighbours. "Official government policy is to encourage the Syrian opposition to be as open as possible to all different elements of Syrian society," said a ranking Egyptian official who works on Syria policy. Obviously, going to Syria to fight against the Syrian regime in the name of jihad against the infidels is not going to create such an opposition. Unlike Tunis, however, Cairo authorities have yet to rein in the country's firebrand preachers from proclaiming that young men heading to Syria will fight in God's name and be considered martyrs if they die. Though Egyptian state television recently broadcast the names and photographs of 10 Egyptians fighting against Mr Assad, authorities have yet to prevent potential recruits from heading to Syria. That may be because Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood government, unlike those in Tunisia and Libya, has yet to feel the full sting of violent jihad in its own backyard.