War of a new kind

It seems that Egypt will continue grappling with terrorism for years to come. The Egyptian government launched a campaign over the last few months to put a cap on the emerging insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula. In its bid to choke off the emerging terror and to make Sinai safer, the government demolished houses, arrested suspects and imposed curfews.
And yet, the road to put an end to terrorism in this particular area seems to be long. On Thursday night, a series of simultaneous and coordinated attacks on military facilities in the Sinai killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers. These attacks were the first since the militant group operating in the Sinai announced its affiliation with the Islamic State (IS). The scale of the assaults shows that the militants still enjoy sufficient ability to target the army and the police despite the crackdown.
This begs the following question: Why has the Egyptian army — one of the strongest in the region — been ineffective in combating guerrillas? Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi came from the ranks of the army. Those who voted for him had faith that only a general from the army could effectively deal with the terror challenge. And yet, it seems that the army is not yet ready to fight this type of guerrillas in the Sinai. The training of the army is by and large focused on traditional warfare rather than dealing with terror.
The situation is the Sinai is a bit complicated. Bedouins who live in the Sinai harbor some resentment against the central government in Cairo. They feel that they have been for long ignored by the government. For this reason, they show no tendency to cooperate with neither the army nor the government. In other words, decades of wrong policies turned the Sinai into a fertile ground for militants to join Ansar Bayt El-Maqdis. Therefore, it is not as if the challenge is related to security. The Egyptian government needs to rethink its approach and implement a multi-pronged approach to effectively deal with the very complicated situation in the Sinai.
Although President El-Sissi inherited this difficult situation from his predecessor, the recurrent terrorist attacks in this particular region on this scale can hurt the image of both the government and the presidency. This writer remembers talking to some sophisticated Egyptian intellectuals with regard to El-Sissi. The running theme was that El-Sissi was well-positioned and well-equipped to restore security. They made the case that security comes first. Short of realizing this commodity, Egypt would not be able to realize economic recovery, they argued. Indeed, expectations were high.
Egypt badly needs a comprehensive review of its military, security, and political approaches.
Acknowledging that the Sinai has become a huge challenge, President El-Sissi pledged to fight terror until the end. In fact, the Sinai has become a haven for militants who mounted attacks on Egyptian targets. But the security approach alone is not expected to pay off. The Egyptian government needs to take into account the long-standing grievances of the native Bedouins. The latter often protested what they deem as economic deprivation and political alienation. The Bedouins’ tendency to cooperate with the militants has little to do with their ideology and more with their perception of their demoted position in Egypt.