Since 2011, the Sinai Peninsula has emerged as an increasingly lawless and dangerous corner of Egypt. An insurgency has grown in ferocity since the overthrow on Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and has further intensified after the coup that overthrew President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. However, as a former military General, Sisi has shown a remarkable lack of progress in quelling the unrest, or understanding its causes.
Sinai has always carried historical baggage when it comes to military misadventures, none more so than the tripartite invasion of 1956 or the humiliating Egyptian defeat and loss of the entire peninsula to Israel in 1967. The territory was once the battleground for sovereignty or international influence. Now it is the source of a homegrown insurgency and a military incursion by the Egyptian army that has proved an abject failure.
{mosads}The regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been roundly criticized for its creeping and unapologetic drift towards a more authoritarian military state. Last month Human Rights Watch labeled Sisi’s rule as ‘highly repressive.’ It is of little surprise then that the regime’s reaction to this nascent insurgency in Sinai is to unilaterally punish entire communities. Bulldozers and dynamite have been used to raise entire neighbourhoods to the ground. The excuse was to create a ‘buffer zone’ along the border with Gaza, but it is clear that the demolitions have displaced thousands of families and are in clear breach of international law.
Amnesty International agrees with this assessment. They have called the scale of the forced evictions ‘astonishing’ and ‘shocking’ where ‘homes in Rafah [are] being bulldozed, bombed, with entire buildings reduced to piles of rubble and families forcibly evicted.’ They also report that the authorities proceeded with the evictions by ‘completely ignoring key safeguards required under international law including consultation with residents, adequate prior notice, sufficient compensation for losses and granting alternative housing to those who cannot provide for themselves.’
The situation has been exacerbated by a media blackout imposed throughout North Sinai to prevent reporting of the demolitions or any other military operations. Even when journalists avoid the curfew and reach evictees, the victims are too scared to speak, fearful of arrest.
Yet those who have watched the unraveling of democracy and the rise of impunity in Egypt in the last two years are not surprised by this latest turn. The modus operandi of the regime is to meet resistance with unequivocal and unrelenting brutality. Journalists, civil society activists and political opponents have all found themselves in the crosshairs. Meanwhile the regime continues to draft laws that attempt to give a veneer of credibility to their actions.
The crisis in Sinai reveals a further miscalculation in not only how to manage and contain the violence, but also in bringing wider security to a population that feels abandoned. The Egyptian military have broken every rule of effective counter-insurgency by alienating local people. They have now fermented a sense of injustice that will only result in further cycles of violence. Stories of the horrors witnessed in Rafah will last a generation.
It is this democratic deficit, born out of the illegitimate seizure of power by Sisi in 2013, which will give succor to extremists in Egypt. The barbarism of the Egyptian army will be seized upon by militants and used to recruit impressionable young people who have lost homes, livelihoods and families. It is no coincidence that after the 2013 coup and the return of a more oppressive mode of rule, Sinai hosts its own branch of ISIS, Weleyet Sinai. This impoverished region had suffered decades of neglect. But with no space for organized political opposition, Egyptians are being forced to the extremes of the political landscape just to be heard.
For Sisi’s Western allies, there are further questions to ask. In the last few weeks the United States has restored $1.3 billion of military aid to Egypt. This includes Abrams tanks that have been implicated in the alleged crimes in Sinai. This tacit support for the regime – in the misplaced hope that arms alone can halt insurgencies – gives jihadist recruiters a golden opportunity. Usually insurgencies are born on a platform of local grievance. Now insurgents can add the prism of international jihad to their armoury.
Crucially, if the United States and its allies abandon the ideals of the Arab Spring, they should not be surprised when extremist militancy surfaces. The young and angry have seen democracy fail and autocracy return. In communities in Sinai, which were abandoned by Cairo years ago, reactionary violence feels like the only solution to repression. If Sisi continues to exploit his own people, this dangerous idealism will multiply. Then Sisi and his allies will only have themselves to blame.
Darrag is one of the senior members of former Egyptian President Morsi’s cabinet and a founding member of the Freedom and Justice Party.