They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Tell that to the 22 countries of the Arab League who convened at the Arab Summit late last month to discuss growing concerns facing the region. With the continuing war in Yemen, many of the states that were present have recently joined the Saudi-led coalition against rebel Houthi forces in Sana’a. Many more remain nervous of a nuclear-minded Iran after the announcement of a framework agreement with the P5 +1 earlier this month. For the members of the Arab League meeting in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the future is anything but calm.
Under these shifting circumstances, the Arab Summit presented anew “the principle of a joint Arab military force.” Leading the convention, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced intentions to revise decades-old plans for a shared military force that would fight terror and other threats against the Arab world. In many ways, this announcement was a projection of Arab concerns facing the larger region as a whole. Behind the podium of el-Sisi’s remarks, however, Egypt has problems of its own. Just miles to the north of Sharm el-Sheikh, the threat of terror continues to plague the Sinai Peninsula.
Over the last several weeks, Egypt’s North Sinai governorate has encountered increased instability. On April 2, for example, militants attacked Egyptian army checkpoints near Sheikh Zuwaid on the northern coast. Thirteen soldiers and two civilians were killed after the detonation of car bombs and the exchange of gunfire. The attacks also left fifteen members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis – the self-affiliated Sinai Province of ISIL that took responsibility for the violence – dead after responses by the Egyptian military. And this most recent attack comes just one week after a deadly roadside bomb and police shooting left several dead on March 24.
These recent insurgent attacks, however, are merely symptoms of an ailment that has been infecting the Egyptian outlook for decades. After the Camp David Accords were signed in 1979, President Anwar Sadat regained the Sinai from Israel, which had been in control of the area since the 1967 Six-Day War. Following this unprecedented peace agreement, the Sinai was set up as a buffer for Egyptian and Israeli security interests. Yet since then, Egypt has largely neglected the Sinai, especially the Bedouin communities living there. Without equal economic or occupational opportunities, many of these communities turned toward illicit smuggling and trafficking in the 1990s. Over the next decade, practices became more violent with local clashes and planned hotel bombings. To control this militancy, Egypt declared a state of emergency in the region and began a program of local raids and torture. In many ways, though, this strategy fueled the fire of future unrest.
When 2011 came, local Sinai militias joined the blooming Arab Spring in calls for revolution. Bedouin forces, together with Islamic extremists, organized against the government of Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian forces still deployed throughout the peninsula. After the successful ousting of Mubarak, elections brought Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. Empowered with this election mandate, however, local members of the Brotherhood pushed for fast change and Islamic rule, spawning fierce violence before Morsi had fully settled into office. The ensuing coup replaced Morsi in 2013, bringing el-Sisi to power, along with a new wave of violence. The Arab Spring had failed to flourish and foment true democratic stability.
Under military rule in Egypt and the leadership of el-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood effectively went underground, seeking refuge in the entropic vacuum that was the Sinai. The region became an incubator for ideology, with the growth of new extremist organizations and an al-Qaeda-aligned network of terror. Ansar Bait al-Maqdis became a leading local faction, working mainly with Bedouin and foreign Arab combatants. Fighters from Gaza also fled to the Sinai, working to secure the permeability of their border.
As disorder became the new order, many terror groups consolidated, rallying in opposition to the new el-Sisi regime. Together, around 22 organizations created a combined force of about 12,000 fighters against the government. In July 2013, militants took over government offices in Arish, North Sinai’s provincial capital. At the same time, violence broke out in El Gorah, a town near the Multinational Forces and Observers’ regional base. Two summers ago, this militancy was a shocking new iteration in years of Sinai unrest. Today, however, the Sinai has become an old sore of sustained instability.
The past few months have brought new developments in the existing insurgent operations of the Sinai. First, in December, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis announced its alignment with ISIL. The organization has been active in attacking gas pipelines to Israel, bombing police forces, and killing hundreds of soldiers and civilians. After its announcement, the group gained international attention when it posted pictures and claimed the killing of American oil worker William Henderson. With this development, Egypt now faces the threat of ISIL on two fronts: its lawless western border with Libya and in the Sinai.
The second recent variation in the Sinai Insurgency is its scope. In the past few months, terror groups like the Popular Resistance Movement and Revolutionary Punishment have extended operations beyond the Suez Canal, in more populated areas of Egypt. Bombings in February shook the Nile-bound cities of Aswan and Giza, and a March 2 car bomb exploded outside a courthouse in Cairo. With this urban expansion, terror activities have sought greater attention and influence over Egypt. Often, attacks target commerce in efforts to dissuade foreign investors from doing business in state. This insurgency, though, is only half of the story.
The Egyptian answer to recent attacks has largely perpetuated the continued cycle of violence. In October, the government instituted a state of emergency for the northern Sinai. Military forces have conducted air strikes throughout the region while police raid homes to arrest suspected militants. On the legal front, at the end of last month the Egyptian Prosecutor General assembled a revised terror list featuring several Muslim Brotherhood leaders. To curb the spread of militancy, the Egyptian government has limited the travel of these individuals with passport restrictions. Perhaps most controversially, Egypt’s military has also taken an active stance near the Sinai-Gaza border, demolishing homes to create a buffer against Hamas weapons-smuggling.
For Egypt, security is the top priority. And given the threat that an unstable Sinai Peninsula poses to the region, this is understandable. Israel, for example, has been very supportive of Egypt’s monitoring of the Gaza border. The two states have worked together to secure the Sinai since 1979, and more recently, Israel permitted Egypt to step up military movement against al-Qaeda linked insurgents. Operation Sinai, the name given to Egypt’s ongoing effort in the peninsula, only began after an attack near the Israeli border in 2012.
During the past month, the United States has also increased its support of Egyptian efforts, perhaps sensing the danger of ISIL activity so close to American interests in the region. In March, el-Sisi announced how he “need[ed] the US to clearly understand that there is a strategic vacuum in this region.” It seems the Obama Administration has heeded his calls. Although funding had been cut off after 2013’s el-Sisi coup, the Administration recently agreed to gift Egypt with twelve jets, twenty Harpoon missiles, and over 100 tank replacement kits. This all comes with a reinstated annual military aid bill of $1.3 billion.
All of this support is not without reason. Over the years the Sinai has come under the influence of external Islamic extremism, representative of the transformations seen throughout the Middle East. At the same time, though, recent insurgent attacks have also largely targeted Egyptian soldiers and military sites. This is not just spontaneous terror against civilians, but a pushback against the army and the State it represents. Egypt has some responsibility for the changes taking place in the Sinai.
To secure stability, Egypt must begin to craft a more sustainable long-term policy response. Cairo’s historical overlooking of the Sinai Peninsula has given no reason for the Egyptians living there to show support for the state. With barriers against job opportunity and army enlistment, local communities are turning toward illicit activities; many of today’s militants are recruited fighters from Bedouin villages. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood are also angry with the current government. For them, el-Sisi’s un-democratic topple of Mubarak and continued suppression of the Brotherhood are threats to freedom and full religious expression. The destruction of homes, local raids, and deadly airstrikes by the Egyptian government are certainly no encouragement for moderation, either. According to local Islamist groups, at least 1,400 have been killed and 15,000 arrested since Morsi’s overthrow. While not without justification, Egyptian counterinsurgency tactics have not properly contained mounting militancy in the Sinai.
Historically, Egypt has been a leader of the Arab World. Hosting the Arab League in Sharm el-Sheikh last month, el-Sisi presented a new plan for a joint military force amidst growing regional unrest. To continue to lead effectively against common threats, however, Egypt must look inward at its own unaddressed instability in the North Sinai. Instead of ignoring local Bedouin communities, el-Sisi should work to create change and opportunity on the ground. The Egyptian government must do all it can to ease incitement and separate itself from truly terror-driven threats in the region. Then, and then only, will Egypt be a leader both at home and abroad.