BEYOND SYRIA IRAQ

MOKHTAR AWAD
no Mumbai-style attacks, where gunmen indiscriminately opened fire on
tourists, and, most important, it used no improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
in major population areas. At the same time, the group invested resources in
executing cross-border attacks against Israel and firing rockets at Israel, and it
repeatedly blew up the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline. This strategy was so successful
that the “masked men” whom authorities blamed for the pipeline bombings
had become a popular meme in 2011 before ABM revealed its responsibility.
Only one notable attack against tourists took place, in February 2014,
on a tourist bus headed to Israel.
This approach changed, however, in late 2014, as the group grew closer
to pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and became “IS Sinai.” Although
some indications suggest an ideological affinity between the group and IS
existed since at least early 2014, nothing indicated the former was going to
wholeheartedly mimic the latter’s tactics. The group had always killed and
sometimes beheaded alleged spies and informants, but now the frequency
and brutality of such killings increased. In the first Hijri calendar year following
the pledge, the group chillingly said it killed 130-“plus” such spies,
while offering otherwise precise numbers.
Furthermore, reports multiplied of the group’s targeting of specific families
and clans. Most notably, relations deteriorated with some clans in the
powerful Tarabin tribe in Sinai. The group was now in open hostility toward
a segment of a major Sinai tribe, a far cry from its carefully polished image
as the protector of the population. However, it was really the downing of
the Russian airliner that marked the clearest departure yet from the group’s
modus operandi, killing hundreds of civilians in an attack that specifically
advanced the interests of core IS.
In another demonstration of IS influence on what was now IS Sinai, the
latter has invested resources in an attempt at hisba and pretensions of governance
structures that are trademarks of the former. This, too, is not only a
departure from how IS Sinai used to operate, but also a largely impractical
step, since IS Sinai does not control any population centers and has limited
resources to spend on hisba activities. For pure propaganda purposes, for
example, the group has posted photos of its men handing out cash envelopes
or small bags of food. While some media outlets have, unfortunately, conflated
this with serious services provision, no evidence of any sort shows IS
Sinai provides services that can rival what ordinary Egyptian charities or even
the Egyptian military give to Egypt’s poor.
Nevertheless, the pretensions of “wilayat-hood” suggest how the group
14