Almost four months after the coup that removed former President Muhammed Morsi from power, Egypt is not even close to calming down and returning to business as usual. A new phase in the turmoil initially unleashed by Mubarak’s overthrow has begun—armed resistance to the new military government by Islamists of different stripes who have been exiled from Egypt’s political process. While this nascent rebellion is starting small for now, the signs are already very worrying. Egypt could be standing on the edge of a war that would pit its “deep state” against the nation’s Islamists who have been forced out of the political process. If this does come to pass in Egypt, the most populous Arab state and a lynchpin American ally, it would be a major defeat for American foreign policy in the region.
Since the Tahrir Square uprising in January 2011, attacks on security forces and largely ineffective security operations by the army have been escalating in the Sinai Peninsula. Escalating violence was widely blamed on local Bedouin tribes and the remnants of the Islamist insurgency Egypt experienced in the 1990s.
After the coup against Morsi, things changed and the violence became much more severe. Everyone’s seen the waves of bloody protests on TV that killed hundreds around Egypt—extremely violent protest-riots have been a staple of Egypt’s revolution since 2011. But recent events have made it clear that many in Egypt are rejecting even the pretense of peaceful protests entirely: bombings, assassinations and ambushes of the security forces are becoming a daily occurrance, and while still centered within the Sinai, they’ve spread beyond it to every part of Egypt. August only saw the death of 25 policemen in a Sinai ambush and the death of 15 policemen in an attack against a police station.
Since the beginning of September, there has been an assassination attempt against the Interior Minister in Cairo, multiple bombings of army and police targets in different parts of the country, attacks container ships in the Suez Canal and against Egypt’s gas transport network. These are just a few events that stand out from the daily occurrences of bombings and shootings. On October 7th alone, six soldiers were killed by a roadside ambush in northern Sinai, three were killed in a suicide bombing in southern Sinai, and Egyptian state television’s largest satellite dish in the heart of Cairo was hit with RPGs.
Some elements of this new burst of attacks make it especially troublesome. We’re starting to see the stylings of international jihad show up in Egypt. This video, showing a series of successful drive-by attacks on Egyptian army officers including a colonel, is classic jihadi propaganda, marked by the black-and-white raya al ‘uqab style flag and nasheed music. It was posted by a group called Liwa al Furqan (Brigade of Severance), which has also posted similar videos showing attacks on ships in the Suez Canal and against state television’s satellite dish. The name and propaganda-video style unmistakably mark Liwa al Furqan as a franchise of the same international jihadi ideology that motivates groups like Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, and ISIS in Iraq.
At this point, the increasing activity of such a group in Egypt should not be surprising. Events in Egypt have completely vindicated the most militant Salafists. Most Egyptian Islamists, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Nour Party, have long supported engagement with the democratic process to gain power within the framework of the secular state and gradually islamicize it peacefully through legislation. The jihadi fringes of the Islamist movement have always warned that democracy is a trap and a lie, created by the West and their Arab allies to keep true Muslims playing along but always rigged to prevent them from ever actually succeeding.
From the perspective of many mainstream Egyptian Islamists, the Morsi coup proved jihadis right. They organized to win elections, only to be deposed by the U.S.-allied “deep state” of Egypt; they tried peaceful protest, only to be slain by the hundreds in the streets of Cairo, banned from politics, and thrown in jail by the thousands. This has provided a perfect “I-told-you-so” moment for the most radical of Salafis, who have been saying all along that the secular state will never allow sharia in any form, even if it means throwing the rule of law and democracy out the window and killing large numbers of people. Therefore, according to them, forcibly overthrowing the secular state is the only way to achieve their goals.
So it looks like Egypt is in for some serious trouble. During the defeated insurgency of the 1990s, the majority of Egypt’s Islamists still had reason to believe that political participation and electoral success was a better path forward than the use of violence and destruction. That dream is dead now, replaced by blood feuds started by the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at Ra’bia Square in Cairo and elsewhere. An entire generation of Islamists is being radicalized; peaceful protest is being abandoned in favor of armed resistance. On the other side, the secular nationalists are pumping out aggressive rhetoric. Neither side is willing to back down or negotiate.
Authoritarian secular nationalists and Islamists have struggled over Egypt’s identity since the British occupation, and Morsi’s presidency and the coup against him have brought this dispute into a new and possibly decisive phase. The gloves are coming off on both sides. The secular nationalists have never been afraid to use force; the Islamists now think they have nothing to lose from using force. Because of this, there is reason to think that the situation in Egypt will only get worse.
Jack Mulcaire is a contributor to War on the Rocks. During the 2011 Libyan Civil War, he helped lead a group of international volunteers that aided and consulted with local rebel councils and units.
Photo Credit: SRA D. Myles Cullen, USAF
Matt 
daemon 
McCallister 
Jack Mulcaire 
Callmelennie 
Curtis 
Appeasing islamists is a big mistake. If islamists like the Brotherhood are such good people why did so many Egyptians go to the streets to see Morsi removed? The Brotherhood is not popular in Egypt. The gloves have already come off a very long time ago (I would include 9/11/01 as evidence particularly). Islamists are fighting for a wicked future in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia and many other places. It is long past time for America to choose sides and stop the hippie sort of “make peace not war” BS. We cannot be on both sides of this. Islamists are modern day Nazis and should be regarded as such. The Nazi Party does not have a voice for a very good reason. It should be illegal to belong to the Muslum Brotherhood just like it is illegal to belong to the Nazi Party. If we are not able to see this after so long at war many sober minded allies are going to lose hope in us. When are going to confront the terrorist training camps in Libya? We are the only party to the conflict that seem to want to keep our gloves on and pass out flowers while we sing Kumbaya.
When you try to crush to MB in Egypt with all vicious means like the sisi did you might succed eventuallay, but you are opening the gates to what’s far worst. You open the gates to daesh.
Now even officers and soldiers of the sisi’s beloved army are turning into daesh fighters.
The Sinai is set ablaze, Egypt is at the brink of civil war thanks to countries like yours backing putschist illegal military regimes that create tremendous tensions and send the country backwards even further.
You gotta stop day dreaming and stop that obssession of trying to turn these muslim populations to the core to your identical image.
It can happen it won’t happen and your claims are just ridiculous.
Mr. Mulcaire,
Based on your research, experience and analysis how committed is the “deep state” to its survival?
How united are the Egyptian security forces?
Is there tension within the Egyptian security forces and if so, what are the factions and why?
How much does the Egyptian government/security forces rely on FID support?
What is U.S threshold for Egyptian violence before U.S. suspends support for Egyptian security forces?
How long can Egyptian security forces hold out against the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Is the caliphate inevitable?
Hello McAllister
I will try to answer your questions
1) Egypt’s “deep state” of military and intelligence officers and their allies in the state-owned industries and sympathetic media conglomerates is fully 100% committed to their own survival; this is their main goal and they have been successful at surviving and maintaining their position through decades of challenges since the Nasser era
2) Egypt’s security forces seem to be very united in the political struggle against the Islamists; there have been no reports of defections for example. They have the backing of a majority of the population. Throughout 20th century Egyptian history the Army has been a popular symbol of a strong, modern and proud Egyptian nation and this historical memory is strong
3) I don’t know if there is tension and faction inside the Army with enough certain for it to be worth mentioning
4) The Egyptian military budget is quite dependent on American aid but the day to day domestic operations of the Armed forces would probably not be dramatically affected by the cutoff of aid since much of that aid is spent on new big-item purchases of foreign equipment like aircraft
5) I have no idea if or when the US might want to cut off support for the Egyptian military
6) The Muslim Brotherhood has no official military wing and the groups now attacking the Egyptian security forces don’t seem to be overt Muslim Brothers. Any connections that might exist between the MB and these groups are unclear at this point although I think it is logical to believe that at least some Brotherhood supporters have been radicalized by the crackdown on them and have turned to violence
7) Only Allah knows if the Caliphate is coming or not
Mr. Mulcaire,
Thank you very much for your prompt response.
My take-away from your article is this: The “deep state” is as committed as the “shadow caliphate” to winning this fight.
One clarification. I was asking about Egypt’s security forces in total. Not just the military. The military is only one of three security agencies. For sake of this conversation, I am not including the secret services. The Egyptian security forces are broadly divided as follows: military (green uniforms), the para-military police forces (black uniforms), and the regular police (white uniforms). Each has its own tradition, corporate culture, chain-of-command, funding sources, differing education levels and susceptibility to rivalry, infiltration and ideological conversion.
Lastly, Allah may not be the only one who knows if the Caliphate is coming or not. The caliphate is system of governance and associations such as the Muslim Brotherhood borrow heavily from revolutionary warfare theory and TTP to achieve their revolutionary aims. The Muslim Brotherhood has borrowed heavily from western revolutionary literature since its inception. The books “Human Factors Considerations of Underground in Insurgencies” and the “Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics” might help in analysis and identifying indicators.
“Al Furqan” means the “The clear dividing line” (between good and evil)meaning,of course,Islam,the Quran, the Hadeeth, etc
It’s also a reference to the Muslim victory at al Badr, which put the Muslims on a strong footing, and established a “clear dividing line’ between the former state of subjugation and oppression in Mecca and the new Muslim power in Medina
Thank you for your better translation of the phrase. I used the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Arabic to translate it but I did not understand the religious connotation and connection to Islamic history that the term carries.
Goddess knows Egypt is no lynchpin ally of the United States. They are a paid lackey and not a very useful or good one. The US only pays them to keep them from killing themselves on Israeli bayonets. When they go all bad and MB on us we’ll probably just let them rush to their own doom minus American $.