Islamic State Offshoots Spring Up in Egypt, Other Countries
By Yaroslav Trofimov
CAIRO—The video looks hard to distinguish from the ones filmed in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State gunmen arrive in a fleet of pickup trucks, set up checkpoints on a busy highway and start hauling away suspected collaborators with the “apostate” government. It ends, predictably, with forced confessions and gruesome, close-up shots of killings. But these videos, released by Islamic State’s “Province of Sinai” last month, weren’t shot anywhere near Syria or Iraq. The highway in the footage is the main road linking the Egyptian cities of el-Arish and Rafah, on the Mediterranean shore of the restive Sinai Peninsula close to the Gaza Strip.
Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has demanded that all of the world’s Muslims pledge allegiance to him—and Sinai’s main insurgent movement, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, in November became one of the main jihadist groups outside Syria and Iraq to do so. Similar Islamic State franchises have also sprung up in parts of Yemen, Algeria and Libya—where the “Province of Tripoli” Tuesday claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on one of Tripoli’s main hotels.
How they fare represents a crucial test of the extent to which Islamic State, with its singular brutality and genocidal ideology, can metastasize beyond its home turf. While all of these groups operate autonomously, they are establishing increasingly close connections with Islamic State’s leadership in Syria, diplomats and security officials say. That includes funding and expertise and travel by jihadists to Syria.
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Just as in other areas where Islamic State has found support, there is a long history of local grievances in Sinai. The vast desert area, bordering on Israel and the Gaza Strip, is culturally distinct from the rest of Egypt, with more conservative mores and historical links to Bedouin tribes of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Resentment about underdevelopment and heavy-handed security measures has helped turn the northern part of Sinai, in particular, into a fertile ground for Islamic State militants, security analysts say.
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Retired Maj. Gen. Sameh Seif Elyazal, chairman of the state-run Al Gomhouria Center for Political and Security Studies in Cairo and a former deputy head of Egypt’s military intelligence, said recent Egyptian military operations in Sinai, coupled with the establishment of a border buffer zone that seeks to stop weapons-smuggling from the Gaza Strip, have significantly improved the security situation there... Gen. Elyazal, however, also acknowledges the challenges that persist. He said some 12 million pieces of weaponry have been hidden by Islamic State militants in Sinai’s vast deserts.
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“The question is—to what extent is the Egyptian army prepared for this guerrilla war? It has been preparing for external conflict, not internal conflict,” said Khalil al-Anani, an Egyptian scholar of Islamist movements at Johns Hopkins University. “This is something new for Egypt. It’s an open-ended game that could drag the army into uncharted waters.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-states-sway-spreads-in-middle-east-north-africa-1422483739
