In attacks on Egyptian targets, Sinai Islamists emulate ISIS tactics in Syria, Iraq

In attacks on Egyptian targets, Sinai Islamists emulate ISIS tactics in Syria, Iraq

Published 2 July 2015

 

 

An ISIS-affiliated Islamist group says it is in control of several cities in northern Sinai, following heavy fighting Wednesday in which nearly seventy Egyptian soldiers and more than 100 Islamists were killed. It is not yet known how many civilians were killed in the fighting, which is continuing this morning. Analysts say that the escalation of the fighting in Sinai, and the Islamists’ changing tactics, mean that what we are witnessing is an all-out war between the Egyptian state and the militants, a war which is coming to resemble the war conducted by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The comparisons between the Sinai Islamists and ISIS should not be overdrawn, though. There are many important differences between the situation in Syria and Iraq, on the one hand, and the situation in Egypt.

An ISIS-affiliated Islamist group says it is in control of several cities in northern Sinai, following heavy fighting Wednesday in which nearly seventy Egyptian soldiers and more than 100 Islamists were killed. It is not yet known how many civilians were killed in the fighting, which is continuing this morning.
The Islamists demonstrated an impressive level of coordination, attacking several targets simultaneously – targets which allowed them to take control of a mid-size town, at least for a short while, seize soldiers who will probably be used at some point for staged, gruesome executions, and capture armored vehicles and weapons.
Wilayat Sinai (the Sinai Region in Arabic), a jihadi group which declared allegiance to ISIS last fall, attacked the town of Sheikh Zuwaid, a few miles from Egypt’s border with Gaza and Israel, on Wednesday morning. The Guardian reports that the militants overran several army checkpoints and had taken control of several buildings. By midday the group said it had surrounded Sheikh Zuwaid’s police station.
ISIS also claimed it had captured other parts of the town, releasing a statement that read: “We have total control of many sites, and have seized what was in them.”
Wednesday attack marks an escalation of ISIS’s campaign in the Sinai, and it demonstrates an improvement in its capabilities there. The group and its local affiliates had already launched several bloody attacks on the Egyptian army and security forces in the north-eastern part of the peninsula, but the Islamists typically retreated quickly after the assaults. On Wednesday, the group’s fighters tried to advance and expand the area under their control.
To what extent ISIS will be successful in holding territory is not yet clear, Zack Gold, a Sinai-focused analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the Guardian. Any control of physical space would be significant, he said. “The invading of a city, taking over buildings — that is a new development, and it’s similar to the over-running of cities that we’ve seen in Iraq and Syria.”
“It would be different to the January events when there were multiple simultaneous attacks — but then [the militants] disappeared.”
A Jihadist group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis had staged attacks against Egyptian government targets in north-eastern Sinai for years, but the scale and frequency of the violence of the attacks has increased since Mohammad Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected president of Egypt in June 2012, was removed from office by the military a year later (Morsi is now facing a death sentence for “treason”).
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis changed its Wilayat Sinai to indicate that it was representing the Sinai region in the broader Islamic State movement. The group launched a series of attacks inside Egypt in the winter of 2013-14, but most of its activity has been limited to north-eastern Sinai. On Monday, however, Islamists assassinated Egypt’s chief prosecutor in Cairo, and although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Wilayat Sinai is the main suspect.
Analysis
Analysts say that the escalation of the fighting in Sinai, and the Islamists’ changing tactics, mean that what we are witnessing is an all-out war between the Egyptian state and the militants, a war which is coming to resemble the war conducted by ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
As is the case in Syria and Iraq, the Islamists are trying to seize a town or a city and impose a strict Islamic rule there, and then expand their control to near-by villages and strategic areas. The Islamists’ are trying to take over Sheikh Zuwaid, and if they are successful, may turn their eyes east toward El Arish. They may even try to advance further east to take over the Gaza Strip (an ISIS video release in Syria earlier this week announces the group’s intention to take over Gaza from Hamas, which ISIS does not consider to be sufficiently pious).
Yesterday we wrote that:

The difficulty in countering the Islamists’ growing assertiveness in Sinai is the result of two facts.

First, the 1982 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel restricts Egypt’s military presence in Sinai. Although Israel has allowed the relaxation of these restrictions for specific Egyptian military operations, it now appears that the two countries would have to renegotiate some of these restrictions in order to allow a larger Egyptian military presence in the large, sparsely populated Sinai.

The second factor is that out of respect for Egypt’s sovereignty, Israel has so fat not brought its own military might, and its considerable experience, to the fight against the growing Islamist menace in Sinai. It may well be time for the two countries to agree not only for an increased Egyptian military presence in the Sinai, but for Israeli military operations there – or, better yet, joint Israeli-Egyptian operations (“Islamist militants kill more than 60 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai attacks,” HSNW, 1 July 2015)

Israeli analysts say that at least the second issue – direct Israeli involvement in the military action against the Islamists – will be less of a problem in the event of Wilayat Sinai fighters getting closer to Gaza. If they do, General Sisi, Egypt’s president, could invite Israel to attack the Islamists since Egypt does not consider Gaza to be an Egyptian territory, and Israeli military action there would not violate Egypt’s sovereignty.
It is also safe to assume that there is already intelligence cooperation between the Israeli and Egyptian militaries.
The comparisons between the Sinai Islamists and ISIS should not be overdrawn, though. There are important differences between the situation in Syria and Iraq, on the one hand, and the situation in Egypt:

• The Islamist forces in Sinai are much smaller than the Islamist forces in Iraq and Syria – and the ability of outside countries to send aid to the Islamists, or allow aid and foreign fighters to go through their territory, is more limited. Turkey has allowed thousands of foreign fighters to cross into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS because it saw ISIS as the most effective fighting force against the Syrian Kurds and the Assad regime, and against the Iran-supported Shi’a government in Iraq. There are no countries bordering on the Sinai which can offer similar support to the Islamists.
• The Egyptian military is a strong, cohesive, and disciplined fighting force. The Iraqi military existed on paper only, and its commanders and soldiers abandoned their weapons and fled in the face of ISIS fighters on pick-up trucks. The Syrian military has disintegrated and is no longer capable of sustained fighting.
• It is not clear whether the Bedouin inhabitants of north-east Sinai would be as sympathetic to the Islamists as some of the Sunni inhabitants of Anbar province in Iraq. At the insistence of Iran, the Shi’a-majority governments of post-Saddam Iraq have excluded Iraqi Sunnis from power and benefits, leading many of them – including former Ba’athists — to see the Islamists as the only guarantor of Sunni rights in Iraq. In Syria, a Sunni-majority country, there is much less support for the Islamists, and cooperation with them appears to be more tactical and short-term, aiming to use them as a tool to get rid of Assad and the Alawites. It remains to be seen whether the Bedouins, who have been marginalized and ignored by Cairo for decades, will collaborate with the Sinai Islamists – and to what extent.