Sinai: the latest front in a global war on terror

In so doing it will also give fresh impetus to Islamic extremism, the most likely culprits being the Islamic State - also known as Daesh - and its affiliates the militant group known as Sinai Province, which first emerged as a jihadist group in 2011.

Little is known about this group which began life operating under the name Ansar Beit al-Maqdis - or Champions of Jerusalem – but it has been a thorn in the flesh for the Egyptian security forces in the Sinai peninsula which has been a war zone for the past two years. According to US security sources the leader of Sinai Province is a former Egyptian trader who operates under the nom de guerre Abu Osama al-Masri who was for a time a student at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the long-established centre for the study of Islam. The centre is closely linked to the Sunni mosque of the same name.

Although Masri was originally considered a moderate he was radicalised in 2013 when the Muslim Brotherhood government collapsed and Egyptian security forces clamped down on Islamic extremists after the present government led by President Sisi came to power. During this period Masri and his associates made contact with IS in Syria where they gained military training including bomb-making and embraced the concept of the creation of a global caliphate before returning to Egypt to engage in a long-running and increasingly bitter guerilla campaign against Egyptian forces in Sinai. Utterly loyal to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi they gained control of much of Sinai and security experts believe that they used their local authority to have the bomb placed in the hold of Flight 9238 – probably through the agency of a suborned baggage handler.

Yesterday French aviation officials familiar with the investigation said the crash was not due to technical failure. Other French officials said the flight data recorder suggested the cause was a "violent, sudden" explosion.

In a wider context the attack is also a game-changer in the confrontation with IS. One former CIA case officer claims that the success will “turbocharge” the popularity of the jihadists by demonstrating their ability to take on world powers. It remains to be seen if the attack on the airliner was undertaken as revenge for Russian airstrikes in Syria but the fact that an aircraft belonging to one of the most powerful nations on earth was destroyed will reignite older fears such as the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 and the al-Qaeda airliner attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001.

Until last week’s events most security experts believed that ISIL was a localised phenomenon and that the violence would be confined to areas under its control in northern Iraq and eastern Syria as it carried out its policy of executing mainly Shia opponents and westerners who had fallen into their hands. However, the Russian airliner attack shows that they have wider ambitions. It also raises the possibility that ISIL might have entered into an alliance with al-Qaeda whose speciality was mounting attacks on airliners or using them as weapons. Both groups are rivals in the wider jihadist war and both have opposing ideologies but any cooperation between the two will be bad news for the west, especially for the US which thought that al-Qaeda had been weakened by the struggle with ISIL and by the killing of its leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Even if a new policy has not been officially agreed the attack on the Russian airliner has already served its purpose by forcing the US to re-examine its airport security policy. When it became clear that Flight 9238 had been destroyed by an on-board bomb the US Department of Homeland Security announced the imposition of stricter measures for passengers boarding aircraft bound for US destinations. This will come as little comfort to the thousands of British and Russian passengers still stranded at Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday and who will not be repatriated until later this week.

In the Kremlin with Putin and his aides

Russia’s decision to follow the rest of Europe by suspending flights to Egypt has placed a huge question-mark over President Vladimir Putin’s policies in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the crash of Metrojet flight 9268 President Vladimir Putin went on the offensive by criticising the British decision to terminate all flights between the UK and the Egyptian resort of Sharm e-Sheikh. In what was described as a “tense” ten minute telephone call between Putin and prime minister David Cameron on Thursday night the Russian leader accused the UK of jumping to conclusions and argued that “all countries should wait for the investigation to be completed”. The last thing the Kremlin wants is to face conclusive proof that one of its domestic airliners was brought down by a terrorist bomb.

At the same time Russia announced that it was increasing the size of its military deployment in Syria to 4,000 personnel and that Russian warplanes had bombed the Islamic State city of Raqqa in northern Syria killing 42 suspected terrorists. All this comes at a time when the UK government remains undecided about whether or not to conduct air strikes in Syria and the topic remains undebated in parliament.

On the surface Russia seemed to be still calling the shots by reinforcing its garrison in Syria and conducting offensive operations against the Islamic State while implying that the UK seemed to be capitulating in the face of IS threats – Russia’s foreign ministry described as “shocking” the British decision to halt flights on intelligence which has not been made public. And yet within 24 hours the Russian government had performed a spectacular about-turn by following the British example. “Until we have determined the real causes of what happened, I consider it expedient to suspend flights of Russian airlines to Egypt,” said Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB intelligence agency on Friday. “First and foremost, this concerns tourist routes.”

At present there are 45,000 Russian tourists in Egypt, mostly at Sharm el-Sheikh and their return to Russia will produce a big logistical problem for Moscow at a time when Putin’s intervention in Syria has been unpopular with most Russians. From the outset of the Syrian deployment Putin insisted that it would be a short-term measure aimed at supporting a major ally and enhancing homeland security but if there is any linkage between IS and the downing of Flight 9268 this will spark fears that Russia is being sucked into an winnable conflict similar to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It will also raise the spectre of further IS attacks on Russian targets and re-awaken fears that Islamists in Chechnya will use the opportunity of renewing their insurgency in the North Caucasus region.

Whatever else the crash of the Russian airliner has dented Putin’s hopes of making Russia a key player in the Middle East. By intervening in Syria in support of the regime led by President Bashar al-Assad and by reinforcing his backing for Iran he hoped to position himself as a bulwark for the Shia faction within the region. Not only did this challenge US hegemony – Washington’s closest ally is Sunni Saudi Arabia – but it brought him into conflict with the emerging Islamic State. Indeed one pretext for Putin’s intervention was the call for the creation of an international coalition to take on and defeat IS.

While these are achievable diplomatic goals they do attract the danger of further escalation and that has been increased by the probability that a Russian airliner was successfully attacked by an Islamic terrorist group. The parallels with past involvement in Afghanistan are obvious as Luke Coffey, a research fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation think-tank, pointed out: “Before the Russian people realise what is going on, ‘advisers’ quickly turn into soldiers, and soldiers quickly come home in body bags.”

In Sharm el-Sheikh and Cairo

Last weekend’s crash of the Russian airliner in Sinai has turned into an unmitigated public relations disaster for Egypt. Not only is it becoming increasingly clear that lax security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport allowed an explosive device to be placed in the hold of the doomed aircraft but the UK decision to ban further flights involving British passengers will have a knock-on effect on the country’s lucrative tourist industry.

As an estimated 20,000 British tourists struggle to make the long journey home it is already clear that the Egyptian tourism industry has taken a huge hit. Millions of foreign visitors are drawn to the country each year and according to figures provided by the World Travel and Tourism Council 13% of the country’s GDP comes from the wealth that they bring with them and the contribution they make to the Egyptian economy.

If, as seems likely, many of that number are deterred from coming back to Egypt the already battered tourism industry will come under renewed strain – the country has already been adversely affected by the presence of jihadist groups in Sinai and also by the political instability created by the Arab Spring unrest four years ago. Last year an estimated 250,000 UK tourists visited Egypt, most of them bound for the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where the airport handled 8.2 million passengers last year, the third highest number in Africa.

But it is not only the tourism economy that is feeling the strain. Also under the spotlight is the regime led by President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi who came to power last year and who by coincidence visited London last week. His visit coincided with the British government’s decision to halt flights from Sharm el-Sheikh and while that might have created diplomatic tensions in his discussions with prime minister David Cameron the agenda had been set some time ago. Sisi was more anxious to underline his own position and to explain that his country and the UK had shared interests in confronting the security situation in the Middle East. Above all he insisted that he had been democratically elected and had the support of his people, telling Cameron that “what has been achieved may not be the best, but we are moving ahead and will make further progress.”

Sisi is a leader who polarises opinions. To some Egyptians the former soldier is a beacon of hope who can save their country after the recent political turbulence but to many others he is a throwback to a darker past. Both sides have a point. Since coming to power Sisi has restored order in Egypt but it came at a price. In 2011 elections brought a Muslim Brotherhood government to power but two years later thousands of their supporters were killed in the violence that led to the collapse of order and to the arrest of 40,000 more. For that Sisi, as head of the army, was blamed.

During his visit to London he insisted that he was taking Egypt on the road to democracy. His critics argue that on the contrary he is only perpetuating a brand of military rule which has been in place in Egypt since 1952. That was supposed to form part of the agenda but instead of talking about collaboration Sisi was left to ponder the fallout from Cameron’s decision to halt all UK flights from Sharm el-Sheikh.

After Sisi returned to Cairo, there came clear indications that Egypt was now moving to accept that the Russian airliner had indeed been downed by a terrorist bomg. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry last night accused unnamed countries of failing to share intelligence relating to the crash of the Russian Metrojet plane a week ago.

"We are the party that is the most closely connected to the issue," Shoukry said. "We expected that the information provided on a technical level would be provided to us on a technical level, instead of it being released to the media in this public manner."