(New Yorker) Robin Wright - Now that the Islamic State's caliphate in Iraq and Syria has been destroyed, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula is gaining notoriety as the hottest front line against jihadist groups, including ISIS, an al-Qaeda franchise, and smaller cells. Since 2013, the Egyptian hinterland has witnessed more than 1,700 attacks, according to the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Sinai Province, the local ISIS affiliate, has claimed credit for 800 of them. Almost 1,000 Egyptian police officers and soldiers have been killed while fighting extremists and insurgents. A report on Sinai Province by the Woodrow Wilson Center claims that "foreign fighters - largely from Libya, the Maghreb and Europe - have migrated to the Sinai, where they constituted as much as 80% of the Sinai Province's fighting force by mid-2017."
2017-11-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive