Excerpts from The ‘great war’ of Sinai: How to lose a ‘war on terror’ – Ramzy Baroud – Middle East Eye

The Sinai Peninsula has moved from the margins of the Egyptian body politic to the uncontested centre, as Egypt’s strong man – President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi – finds himself greatly undercut by the rise of an insurgency that seems to be growing stronger with time.

Another series of deadly and coordinated attacks, on 29 January, shattered the Egyptian army’s confidence, pushing it further into a deadly course of war that can only be won by political sagacity, not bigger guns.

The latest attack was a blow to a short-lived sense of gratification felt by the regime that militancy in Sinai had been waning, thanks to a decisive military response that lasted for months. When militants carried out a multistage attack on an Egyptian military checkpoint in Sinai, on 24 October, killing 31 and wounding many, the Egyptian government and media lines were most predictable. They blamed “foreigners” for what was essentially a homegrown security and political crisis.

Instead of reexamining Egypt’s entire approach to the poor region of North Sinai, the army moved to further isolate Gaza, which has been under a very strict Israeli-Egyptian siege since 2007.

What has taken place in Sinai since last October was predictably shattering. It was seen by some as ethnic cleansing in the name of fighting terror. Thousands of families were being forced to evacuate their homes to watch them being detonated in the middle of the night, and resentment grew as a consequence.

And with resentment comes defiance. A Sinai resident, Abu Musallam, summed up his people’s attitude towards government violence: “They bomb the house; we build a hut. They burn the hut; we build another hut. They kill; we give birth.”

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