CAIRO — Within months of the military takeover here two years ago, a little-known group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis managed to penetrate rings of checkpoints and heavy security to carry out a string of startling attacks, assassinating a senior
CAIRO — Within months of the military takeover here two years ago, a little-known group calling itself Ansar Beit al-Maqdis managed to penetrate rings of checkpoints and heavy security to carry out a string of startling attacks, assassinating a senior police official at his home near here and blowing up a security headquarters here and in Mansoura, Egypt.
They were inside jobs. The Egyptian authorities concluded that the group had received crucial advice from two policemen, Lt. Mohamed Eweis and Col. Sameh el-Azizi, who were among a series of military and security officers the group eventually recruited.
Now the same group, operating as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, is the prime suspect in yet another inside job: British and U.S. officials say they believe it increasingly likely that the group planted a bomb on the Russian charter jet that exploded last week in midair over the desert north of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard.
No government has confirmed that Sinai Province has taken responsibility. But the group has eagerly claimed it, and others in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have celebrated — positions that reflect drastic changes in both the Islamic State and Sinai Province since the Egyptian unit first pledged its allegiance one year ago.
Attacks by the Sinai Province, previously a mostly Bedouin group that focused mainly on fighting the Egyptian security forces, have quickly grown in sophistication and bloodshed. If its role in bringing down the plane is confirmed, Sinai Province may have even momentarily surprised and surpassed its vicious parent, and, some analysts said, risked a broad backlash against the Islamic State itself.
If the militants in the Sinai found an inside man who could help bring down a Russia-bound jet, “did the ISIS guys in Syria say, ‘Sure, why not? The more enemies the merrier?’” asked William McCants, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” a study of the group. “Or are they just celebrating it after the fact, so they don’t look out of the loop on such a major attack?”
The parent group, based in Raqqa, Syria, has much to lose by approving or even embracing the apparent bombing, he argued. Although supporters of the Islamic State are calling the jet’s crash retribution against Russia for its intervention in Syria to prop up President Bashar Assad, McCants noted that the Russians had mostly attacked Western-backed rebel groups that were foes of the Islamic State.
“Russia has been hitting their enemies for them,” McCants argued. “I can’t imagine the guys in Raqqa want Russia to go all in against them.”
Until now, the Islamic State has focused mainly on local sectarian battles. It has started wars against two nations, Syria and Iraq. It has linked up with local groups in Libya, Afghanistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. It has encouraged its far-flung affiliates and lone individuals inspired by its example to improvise their own attacks of all kinds against Westerners and their interests.
But its priority on taking and governing territory has until now distinguished the Islamic State from older groups like al-Qaida, whose primary strategy was inflicting enormous casualties on the civilians of a distant foreign power. No group acting in the Islamic State’s name has ever bombed a civilian airplane, the archetypical terrorist attack of an earlier era.
“This brings to reality our worst fears,” said Mokhtar Awad, a researcher at the Center for American Progress who tracks the Egyptian militants, “that this group that has the most territory and the most resources and the most power in jihadist history is now a launching pad for terrorist attacks.”
“This is their way of retaliating,” he said. “Terrorism used as a tool of war — to try to deter attacks by a foreign power.”
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For much of its history, Sinai Province has focused on local targets, particularly Egyptian military and security personnel. Its roots date back to early in the last decade, when a handful of Bedouin returning from universities on the Egyptian mainland sought to form an ultraconservative Islamist militant group. Capitalizing on resentment of the Egyptian government, they organized mainly among their own Sinai tribes and called their movement monotheism and jihad.
But their group formed at the tail end of a broader Islamist insurgency that had resorted to massacring tourists, an obvious tactic for militants seeking to cripple the Egyptian economy. The militants carried out a mass shooting in Luxor in 1997 that killed 64 people and then a series of bombings at Red Sea resorts, including Sharm el-Sheikh, that killed more than 145 people between 2004 and 2006.
The strategy backfired because it alienated millions of Egyptians, particularly those working in tourism. With the public on their side, the Egyptian security forces finally crushed the militants, including the group in Sinai.
After the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the interim military rulers released scores of political prisoners and seasoned jihadis, and some of the same Sinai militants then formed Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or the Partisans of Jerusalem. They were reportedly joined by Palestinian extremists who had clashed with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and by followers of Mohamed al-Zawahri, the brother of al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
This time the militants took aim at Israel, repeatedly destroying pipelines that shipped Egyptian natural gas across the border. When President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi led the military ouster of President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, the group shifted the focus of its attacks to the Egyptian security forces.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis quickly demonstrated proficiency at making bombs, blowing up a security headquarters in Mansoura, a city in the Nile Delta, in December 2013. Its attacks killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers. Its numbers expanded to as many as a few thousand members, with cells operating in the Nile Valley and in the Western desert as well as Sinai, according to Western diplomats briefed on intelligence reports.
But, apparently mindful of the experience of earlier militants, the group seemed to try hard to minimize civilian casualties. It often took pains to detonate its bombs in the middle of the night or on days when buildings were empty.
That began to change last fall, when a faction of the group based in Sinai decided to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.
The Sinai group began beheading suspected informants, imitating the Islamic State’s trademark punishment. Its attacks became noticeably more sophisticated and coordinated, with simultaneous strikes at many locations. Its online media took on some of the slick polish of its Syrian parent.
Last summer, the group, adapting the Islamic State’s territorial ambitions, seized control of the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwaid, forcing the Egyptian military to call in airstrikes to regain control.
The militants used a guided missile to hit an Egyptian naval ship in the Mediterranean Sea. They claimed responsibility for bombing the Italian consulate in Cairo. And Sinai Province released online an Islamic State-like video of its militants beheading a kidnapped Croatian employee of a French energy company. It was the first time the group had targeted a foreigner that way, and it said the killing was punishment for Croatia’s “participation” in the war against the parent group.
With the bombing of the Russian charter jet, Sinai Province stands to vault ahead in jihadi prestige and recruitment. But some analysts now wonder if the Egyptian offshoot has taken the Islamic State’s ideology of violence against its enemies even further than its leaders envisioned, multiplying its powerful enemies.
“You can’t just say ‘let a thousand bloody flowers bloom’ without some of the blood splattering back at you,” McCants said.
So far, though, the Islamic State seems enthusiastic.
“We thank our heroes and lions in the North Sinai,” a man standing in the rubble of Aleppo, Syria, declared in a video released over the weekend by the Islamic State group in the city. “We hope that they would down more planes,” says another. “As you kill, you will be killed,” a third warns the Russians.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
