Omar Ashour

The group’s ob­jec­tives in us­ing ter­ror­ism are not new, but its ca­pac­i­ty for car­ry­ing out at­tacks is.

The lessons for Egypt are nu­mer­ous and they will cer­tain­ly af­fect the fu­ture of de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion in that coun­try.

Cairo’s se­cu­ri­ty poli­cies in Sinai re­main im­moral and in­ef­fec­tive – so far ex­ac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem.

How will the con­flict­ing “cap­i­tals of hell” im­pact Egypt’s se­cu­ri­ty and po­lit­i­cal land­scape? Prob­a­bly not so pos­i­tive­ly.

For change to hap­pen, the lessons of the past five years should be kept in mind for the fu­ture rounds.

The group’s strat­e­gy start­ed to change af­ter the Iran­ian and US air strikes be­gan in 2014.

In Britain, one side per­ceives the Sisi regime as a ca­pa­ble gov­ern­ment but the oth­er is crit­i­cal of the coun­try.

Egypt­ian judges act on their own in terms of re­press­ing whomev­er they per­ceive as sta­tus quo crit­ics.

Two years af­ter the bloody crack­down on the pro-Mor­si pro­test­ers, Egypt is far from the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic club.

Sinai Province’s mil­i­tary prowess is un­matched by any Egypt­ian rebel group in Egypt’s mod­ern his­to­ry.