Egypt has seen a recent uptick in terrorist attacks over the course of the past month. Two attacks on May 7th and 11th left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead. The former attack was claimed by the Sinai Peninsula branch of the Islamic State (IS) and represented one of the deadliest against the Egyptian forces in years. An attempted suicide attack also took place on May 19th, leading to a shootout which resulted in the death of the militant.
Following the first two attacks, the Egyptian military launched counter-terror offensives on May 11th, particularly around Sheikh Zuweid and Rufah, where there are relatively higher levels of IS activity. The military announced that 10 IS militants were killed. In a subsequent operation on May 13th, another 13 “terrorists” of unspecified affiliations were reportedly killed.
The number of terrorist attacks across Egypt had somewhat subsided since 2018. However, there has been a resurgence of attacks in February of this year. The uptick in attacks followed the IS prison attacks in Syria and the killing of IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi. This form of guerrilla warfare employed by the IS in Sinai seems to replicate a general trend in IS strategy, as in Syria and Iraq, of maintaining a covert network that conducts sporadic attacks on military targets, rather than seeking to gain control of territories.
In the Egyptian case, the government has sought to not only eliminate terrorist groups military, but it has also employed a “developmental” approach by investing and residential projects in the Sinai. Although local allegiances in the Sinai to terrorist organisations such as the IS are partly explained as a reaction to the crackdown on Islamist groups following the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi in 2013, as well as normalisation with Israel, economic negligence of the region is also known to be a significant factor. The Egyptian government’s developmental strategy aims to alleviate some of those grievances in tandem with their military operations, however, the state-centric nature of this strategy, which is intimately linked to military interests, does not necessarily represent local interests.
The vast desert landscape in the Sinai, much like in Syria and Iraq, allows for the IS and other terrorist groups to operate covertly and maintain a presence away from the watchful eye of the state. Thus far, eliminating the IS’ leaders and simply employing a direct military strategy has not led to the complete disbandment of the group. Whether Egypt’s developmental strategy will produce long-term results remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to eradicate the ideological basis of the IS and alleviate the structural political problems that brought in adherents in the first place.