Egypt’s war on terror intensifies after Sinai attacks

Egyptian mourners carry the coffin of Ahmed Kamal, one of two policemen who was killed in a bomb attack, during his funeral on November 6 in Menufiya province, north of Cairo. Sameh Abouhasan / AFP

CAIRO // Egypt has intensified its fight against home-grown terrorism in recent weeks after Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula staged the deadliest attack on the army in decades.

Authorities have begun demolishing the homes of about 10,000 residents of Rafah to create a security zone along the border with Gaza, and a state of emergency has been declared in northern Sinai.

The government has also proposed a law to ban reporting on the armed forces without prior permission.

The October 24 attack on a border post near the town of Al Arish that killed at least 30 soldiers and wounded 28 others proved to be the last straw for the government of president Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the general-turned-politician who led the military removal of the Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

Egyptian authorities have been battling Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula for years, but the frequency and deadliness of their attacks on security forces have increased dramatically since Mr Morsi was removed from office in July 2013. Moreover, the militants have taken the fight to Cairo, the Nile Delta and the vast western desert region.

Besides the high death toll, the sophistication and efficiency with which the October 24 attack was carried out have shown the authorities that they are not up against an insurgency carried out by amateurs.

According to security experts, the attackers appeared to know exactly which one of several routes would be taken by reinforcements being sent to the border post, allowing them to ambush the incoming troops. No group has claimed the attack so far.

Mr El Sisi has accused unnamed foreign powers of being behind the attack and called on Egyptians to rally behind him in the face of the militant threat, stoking the nationalist sentiment that has gripped Egypt since Mr Morsi’s removal.

Talk show hosts and newspaper commentators loyal to the government have taken Mr El Sisi’s call to heart. Just days after the attack, media leaders publicly pledged to “cleanse” their ranks of what they called closet Islamists and infiltrators and not to publish material critical of the army, police and the judiciary.

Some commentators called on the president to strike at the militants with an iron fist, take a firmer grip on the country and ignore concerns voiced by critics of the government that authorities might trample human rights on the pretext of dealing with a serious national threat.

Adding to the fear is the possibility that the militants, led by Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, would declare allegiance to ISIL, the extremist militant group that now controls a vast swath of territory spanning the Iraq-Syria border.

On Friday, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis posted an audio message on its Twitter account saying it was engaged in a “war without end”.

“We will continue to fight the army until the day of judgment,” the message said.

With media access to the Sinai restricted to state newspapers and television, which routinely take official statements at face value, it is difficult to gauge how much progress has been made against the militants since the October 24 attack.

However, state and private television channels have been broadcasting images of elite troops boarding helicopters on their way to Sinai, columns of armoured cars heading to the area, and of slain militants. Newspapers carry daily reports of the killing of militants by troops and comments by the interior minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, listing achievements in the fight against the militants.

What is missing from the flood of coverage is an assessment of the security forces’ preparedness to fight the militants and what could have been done to prevent a string of deadly attacks on security outposts in Sinai since last year.

The security forces’s tactics and methods of deployment have presumably been discussed in great detail by Mr El Sisi and the army top brass in a series of heavily publicised meetings over the past two weeks, but it may be some time before results begin to show.

In the meantime, the militants appear not to have been intimidated.

On Wednesday, four people, including two policemen, were killed in a bomb blast on a train in the Nile Delta. Earlier the same day, three people were wounded in a blast aboard a commuter train in the Cairo suburb of El Marg.