Mara Revkin
By Mara Revkin
During a visit to the Egyptian governorate of North Sinai on August 10, I watched as scores of pickup trucks, packed with hard-line Islamists waving the black flags associated with Al Qaeda, poured onto a major road. They were heading to the funeral of five militants who had been killed the day before in a drone strike — allegedly Israeli — as they prepared to launch a rocket into Israel from the border city of Rafah. Those in the procession waved signs calling for jihad against the Egyptian military and Israel, whose cooperation on counterterrorism operations has been condemned by Sinai-based jihadist groups. The procession passed a seemingly abandoned police station, and no security personnel were visible, although some of the Islamists carried weapons and many others were loudly calling for an armed insurgency against Egypt’s interim government.
In the turbulent weeks since Egypt’s military removed President Mohammed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government from power, this cyclical narrative of martyrdom and revenge has become a recruitment tool for hard-line Islamists. It is also contributing to the radicalisation of a new generation of extremists in the already volatile Sinai Peninsula.
Since the military assumed power July 3, armed attacks by militants with increasingly sophisticated weaponry, stolen from police stations or smuggled from Libya and Sudan, have killed at least 70 security personnel just in North Sinai. Increasingly, Sinai-based militants justify their violent tactics as legitimate retribution for state-perpetrated crimes that the official justice system cannot be trusted to prosecute.
For months leading up to the protests that ultimately brought down his government, Mursi was justifiably criticised for his exclusionary policymaking and a series of power grabs — notably his declaration last year immunising his own decisions from judicial review — that appeared to consolidate the Brotherhood’s monopolistic control over the Egyptian state and society at the expense of non-Islamists, women and religious minorities. From the Brotherhood’s perspective, the appropriate remedy would have been to hold Mursi accountable at the ballot box. Instead, the military intervened illegally and then violently to reverse the democratic process: first suspending the constitution and then conducting a scorched-earth campaign of mass arrests and disproportionate force against pro-Mursi protesters that appears aimed at eradicating the Muslim Brotherhood from political life.
Islamists initially tried to capitalise on the dubious legality of the coup by promoting the Muslim Brotherhood as the defender of democracy and the rule of law. But with the Brotherhood incapacitated by arrests, asset freezes and the possible revocation of its legal status, Islamists see little incentive to reenter a political process in which they will not be permitted to participate freely. Increasingly, they view street mobilisation — and, with it, the implicit threat of force — as the only remaining mechanism with which to promote their agenda. In this context of radicalisation, a growing number of informal Islamic courts in North Sinai — at least 14 have been established since the 2011 revolution — are promoting Shariah as an alternative to a dysfunctional state judicial system. The largest Shariah court in the North Sinai city of Arish claims to have absorbed 75 percent of the caseload once handled by the official justice system. Egyptian media reported last week that state courts in North Sinai had been forced to close and transfer all of their cases due to security concerns, another symptom of the rapid collapse of state institutions and the rule of law.
Until Egypt’s government seriously investigates the use of lethal and disproportionate force by state security personnel against Mursi supporters in Cairo, Islamists in Sinai will continue to seek retribution on their own terms. WP-BLOOMBERG
By Mara Revkin
During a visit to the Egyptian governorate of North Sinai on August 10, I watched as scores of pickup trucks, packed with hard-line Islamists waving the black flags associated with Al Qaeda, poured onto a major road. They were heading to the funeral of five militants who had been killed the day before in a drone strike — allegedly Israeli — as they prepared to launch a rocket into Israel from the border city of Rafah. Those in the procession waved signs calling for jihad against the Egyptian military and Israel, whose cooperation on counterterrorism operations has been condemned by Sinai-based jihadist groups. The procession passed a seemingly abandoned police station, and no security personnel were visible, although some of the Islamists carried weapons and many others were loudly calling for an armed insurgency against Egypt’s interim government.
In the turbulent weeks since Egypt’s military removed President Mohammed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government from power, this cyclical narrative of martyrdom and revenge has become a recruitment tool for hard-line Islamists. It is also contributing to the radicalisation of a new generation of extremists in the already volatile Sinai Peninsula.
Since the military assumed power July 3, armed attacks by militants with increasingly sophisticated weaponry, stolen from police stations or smuggled from Libya and Sudan, have killed at least 70 security personnel just in North Sinai. Increasingly, Sinai-based militants justify their violent tactics as legitimate retribution for state-perpetrated crimes that the official justice system cannot be trusted to prosecute.
For months leading up to the protests that ultimately brought down his government, Mursi was justifiably criticised for his exclusionary policymaking and a series of power grabs — notably his declaration last year immunising his own decisions from judicial review — that appeared to consolidate the Brotherhood’s monopolistic control over the Egyptian state and society at the expense of non-Islamists, women and religious minorities. From the Brotherhood’s perspective, the appropriate remedy would have been to hold Mursi accountable at the ballot box. Instead, the military intervened illegally and then violently to reverse the democratic process: first suspending the constitution and then conducting a scorched-earth campaign of mass arrests and disproportionate force against pro-Mursi protesters that appears aimed at eradicating the Muslim Brotherhood from political life.
Islamists initially tried to capitalise on the dubious legality of the coup by promoting the Muslim Brotherhood as the defender of democracy and the rule of law. But with the Brotherhood incapacitated by arrests, asset freezes and the possible revocation of its legal status, Islamists see little incentive to reenter a political process in which they will not be permitted to participate freely. Increasingly, they view street mobilisation — and, with it, the implicit threat of force — as the only remaining mechanism with which to promote their agenda. In this context of radicalisation, a growing number of informal Islamic courts in North Sinai — at least 14 have been established since the 2011 revolution — are promoting Shariah as an alternative to a dysfunctional state judicial system. The largest Shariah court in the North Sinai city of Arish claims to have absorbed 75 percent of the caseload once handled by the official justice system. Egyptian media reported last week that state courts in North Sinai had been forced to close and transfer all of their cases due to security concerns, another symptom of the rapid collapse of state institutions and the rule of law.
Until Egypt’s government seriously investigates the use of lethal and disproportionate force by state security personnel against Mursi supporters in Cairo, Islamists in Sinai will continue to seek retribution on their own terms. WP-BLOOMBERG
