Egypt's President Sisi calls for ISIS to be defeated in Sinai in three months.

Egyptian President Abdel Fartah al-Sisi with his Minster of Defense. Reuters. 

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has called on his army to defeat ISIS in the Sinai in three months after the massive terrorist attack that killed 300 people. Reuters. Though ISIS has not taken credit for the attack, an ISIS flag was found at the scene. ISIS has a strong presence in the Sinai Peninsula and they have conducted several terror attacks and raids in Egypt. Sisi has said that his forces are allowed to use any "brute" force necessary to defeat militants in the Sinai. Egypt's military has had difficulty battling the ISIS fighters in Sinai as their army is better suited to conventional warfare as opposed to counter insurgency. The Sinai is one of the few remaining ISIS strongholds after their defeats in Syria, Iraq and Libya. 

My Comment:

I didn't get a chance to cover the horrible terror attack in Egypt that killed 300 people. I wasn't around that weekend but I can at least cover the follow up from al-Sisi. 

This is exactly what needed to happen in Egypt. ISIS has been running amok in the Sinai for far too long. They have mostly been battling the local security forces but they have conducted some spectacular terror attacks as well. The latest one, the one that targeted a mosque and killed 300 people, was the most spectacular but hardly the only one. ISIS in Egypt has targeted many Coptic Christians, has executed a westerner and even destroyed a Russian jetliner. Indeed, ISIS in Egypt is one of the most dangerous ISIS affiliates and is well known for pulling off major terror attacks. 

The terrorism threat is reason enough to target the militants in the Sinai, but they are also a backup base for ISIS. With their holdings in Syria and Iraq mostly liberated, ISIS needs new bases to operate from. Given that the other options, like Afghanistan and Nigeria, are quite a long way from Syria and Iraq, Egypt may be one of the major destination for Jihadists. And since Egypt has many thousands of Western tourists and can threaten Europe and Israel as well, it is not a good thing to have them running around in the country. 

ISIS cannot be allowed to regroup in the Sinai, but so far Egypt has failed to destroy them. Why? I think part of it is that their military is poorly suited for counterinsurgency. They are mostly a conventional force and they don't have much experience in fighting rebels groups and insurgents. 

A conventional force is largely limited in what it can do against insurgents, especially those like ISIS that has some support from the local civilians and can blend in with them well. A less conventional force can integrate with the civilians but the Egyptian Army doesn't seem to have that option. Sending an armored column into a village isn't the best way to win hearts and minds.

That explains al-Sisi's comment that he is authorizing "brute force". That's about all they can do. Instead of counter insurgency, they will likely just blow everything up. That's a simplification of course but essentially all they can do is just attack everything without much worry about civilian casualties. 

Such a strategy can work but it has some very serious downsides. The most obvious is that high civilian casualties is very bad press. Though the national news media probably won't care, the crackdown might not play well in the international press. 

Second, a crackdown can backfire due to the impact on the civilians themselves. Obviously if a crackdown starts killing civilians, those civilians might join up with ISIS under the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory. ISIS has a long history of trying to gain the hearts and minds of civilians in areas they capture, despite their brutality. If ISIS can get social services up an running in territory they control in Egypt, they might make the civilians switch sides. 

That being said, going the opposite way with it has major downsides. That was our policy in Iraq and Syria against ISIS and it failed pretty miserably. Critically when Trump was elected we switched our policy and not very long after ISIS was routed. If a country only sticks to trying to prevent civilian casualties then they can't win on the battlefield. 

It's hard to balance between saving civilian lives and actually trying to win a war. Through most of history nobody cared about civilians but the western powers at least have swung the other way. I don't know for sure which side of that balance Egypt is going to come down on, but I hope ISIS is defeated either way.