The U.S. military has determined that Islamic State of Iraq and Levant was expanding throughout Egypt.
A U.S. Army report said ISIL has moved from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to Cairo, Western Desert and Upper Egypt. The report said ISIL was trying to link the Sinai theater with Libya, with a more than 1,000-kilometer border with Egypt.
“The Islamic State has struggled to execute this strategy, yielding mixed results with no shortage of spectacular failures,” the report, titled “The Islamic State’s Pyramid Scheme, said. “The lack of abundant local resources and experienced recruits in the Nile Valley, along with the relative strength of the Egyptian security services, has hindered the group’s designs. Nevertheless, if its strategy succeeds, the results could be devastating for Egypt’s security, economy, and for the region.”
The April 2016 report by the army’s Combating Terrorism Center said ISIL has been operating in Egypt for 18 months. The report, based on Egyptian security investigations, said ISIL was using its presence in Egypt to target Western interests as well as consolidate control over the Nile Valley. In September 2015, Egypt reported an ISIL cell in the Giza province.
“The group has also killed far greater numbers of local Sinai civilians in 2015 than previous years, for the first time targeting them with Islamic State-like abandon, risking a backlash from local tribes,” the report said.
“Killing civilians in the mainland and harming the economy and livelihoods by attacks on tourism may also trigger a backlash from potentially supportive constituencies.”
The report identified Ashraf Al Gharably as the architect of ISIL operations in Egypt in 2015. Another key figure was Hisham Ashmawy, a former Egyptian SOF officer who would later command Al Murabitoun, an Al Qaida affiliate. The two men were said to have coopted a range of Al Qaida-aligned
militias.
“Al Gharably was planning what he had hoped would be a spectacular comeback to be unleashed in a dizzying succession of attacks last summer to destabilize Egypt significantly,” the report said.
The report, authored by research fellow Mokhtar Awad, said ISIL, which merged with Ansar Beit Maqdis in 2014, was using foreign fighters for operations in Egypt. In June 2015, Al Gharably sent three operatives to blow up a temple in Luxor, but the attack was foiled.
“As Al Gharably’s network suffered these setbacks, new cells made up of fresh Islamic State recruits whose loyalty is only to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi rose in their stead,” the report said. “They have shown a greater ambition to wage armed insurgency near Cairo and start to link the Western Desert with the capital and beyond, yet suffer from lack of experience and capability because of the decapitation of many of the former ABM Nile Valley operatives like Al Gharably.”
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