THE Egyptian army fought three wars against Israel in the sands of Sinai. But its ever harsher campaign to bring the restless north-eastern corner of the peninsula to heel risks turning what started three years ago as minor unrest into a full-blown jihadist insurgency. Militants who once championed such Bedouin complaints as their exclusion from government jobs have evolved into diehard radicals. On November 10th Sinai's strongest group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), pledged allegiance to jihadists of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It had already adopted the self-declared caliphate's black ensign as well as tactics such as the beheading of captives and the webcasting of propaganda videos. Since he overthrew Muhammad Morsi, Egypt's Islamist president, last year, General (now President) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has not been shy about using force. With a nod from the government in Jerusalem his army has poured men and materiel into Sinai, the eastern half of which is supposed to be mostly demilitarised under the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Hardened fighters now face government tanks and helicopter gunships, with increasingly terrified civilians caught in-between. Casualties are rising. In October the insurgents, most of them from local Bedouin tribes, killed more than 30 Egyptian soldiers and police. Security forces claimed to have killed scores of rebels. News reports counted 14 civilian dead. The region's 300,000 Bedouin now add to their grievances the army's shelling of schools, mass arrests, random shootings and house demolitions echoing Israeli tactics across the border in the Gaza Strip. Curfews shut them up from dusk until dawn. Telephones work intermittently, the internet even more rarely. Few cars move since petrol stations are largely dry. The roads, in any case, are dotted by checkpoints. The bridge over the Suez Canal has been mostly closed to civilians. North Sinai used to be one of Egypt's richest provinces, thanks to the smuggling trade, particularly that going through the underground tunnels which provided an economic lifeline and an arms conduit for Gaza. Wealthier Bedouin replaced their shacks with villas topped with bizarre pagoda-shaped roofs. No more. Once a crossroads between Asia and Africa, the northern part of the peninsula feels under siege. Israel has built a wall along its frontier of 240km (150 miles), severing the once-lucrative traffic in drugs and African migrants. Egyptian forces have smashed the tunnels; lest some have escaped detection, they have begun blowing up houses near the border. More than 1,000 families on the Egyptian side of Rafah are being moved out. When tribal leaders beseeched the authorities in Cairo to limit their plans for a buffer zone, initially 500 metres wide, but perhaps stretching to 5km, Mr Sisi refused. As the Egyptian military operation hardens, says a Bedouin academic, "they are turning the population into the enemy by making them suffer". Since surfacing in Sinai in June 2012, the Partisans have become stronger. Tribal elders, resentful of jihadists' assault on Bedouin customs as un-Islamic, have fled for their lives to Cairo; some have been killed en route. Drawing on tribal and smuggling networks stretching from the Arabian peninsula to Libya, other jihadists have gravitated to Sinai, some with weapons discarded from Libyan arms depots. Gaza's besieged Islamists are wondering whether to throw in their lot with the jihadists, too. The Partisans have repeatedly hit the gas pipeline running from Egypt to Israel and Jordan. They have struck security targets in the Nile Valley, tried to assassinate Egypt's interior minister in Cairo and attacked the intelligence headquarters in Ismailia, on the Suez Canal. They have yet to attack tourist resorts on the southern end of Sinai, as aggrieved locals have done before. But these could be next. Source : economist
