September
5, 2013, a suicide car bomb explodes in Nasr City, a suburb of Cairo,
near the Minister of the Interior1.
The attack, which injured at least 20 people, is claimed by Ansar
Bayt al-Maqdis, a jihadist group in the Sinai. Two months later, the
jihadists post a video of the bomber, Walid Badr, former officer in
the Egyptian army and especially veteran of the jihad in Syria.The
Syrian conflict indeed provides valuable experience to Egyptian
jihadists who seek to destabilize the military regime. At last count,
between 119 and 358 Egyptians have already taken part in the fighting
in Syria. Another fighter of the same group, Saeed al-Shahat, had
killed a police officer and had blown his belt with bombs when
security forces had invested his apartment. He also was a veteran of
Syria. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has gradually established itself as the
most violent among the Egyptian jihadist groups nebula : the car
bombing of December 24, 2013 in Mansoura shows that its capabilities
are growing, perhaps under the influence of returning combatants wo
have fought in Syria.
Hundreds
of Egyptians were left to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the
late 1980's. Veterans of that conflict had enlarged the ranks of two
later linked al-Qaeda organizations, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who had spread terror in Egypt in the
1990's. Overthrow of President Morsi has provided ammunition to the
jihadists. An ideologue, Sheikh Abu al-Mundhir al-Shinqiti, called
for war against the security services ; ISIS declared its support for
his Egyptians "brothers". On 1 September 2013,
Egyptian security forces arrested Adel Habbara, allegedly linked to
al-Qaeda, who led a group called Al-Muhajereen wal-Ansar in the Sinai
Peninsula, which is responsible for the execution of 25 soldiers in
August. Habbara have sworn allegiance to ISIS and would have seen
promised 10,000 dollars to fund the activities of the armed group.
Videos of the group are increasingly referring to the speech of
Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. In addition to the Egyptians who went
to fight in Syria , the group also recruit among the community of
Syrian refugees arrived in Egypt since 2011. The right arm of the
commander of the Islamic State in Iraq, the ancestor of ISIS, was
also up his death in April 2010, an Egyptian, Abu Ayyub al- Masri2.
.png) |
| Le drapeau d'Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.-Source : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Ansar_Bayt_al-Maqdis_%28%D8%B4%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA_%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%A9_%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%B1_%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AA_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3_3%29.png |
Egyptians
who go to fight in Syria therefore come from quite diverse
backgrounds , even if their profile has common points. Aboubakr
Moussa, who was killed in battle alongside the Syrian uprising, was
student of one of the best graduate schools in Cairo and became
"religious" after his university entrance. At the
mosque, he met a man whose sister he married, the widow of a Chechen.
He tries to win Chechnya but is repressed by the Russian authorities
and imprisoned six months by the Egyptian police. Remarried after his
first wife having left, he participated in the overthrow of Mubarak
and is in aid convoys to Libya - we do not know whether he took part
in the fighting there. He then went to Syria via a network obviously
quite organized and fought in Damascus, in the provinces of Idlib,
Homs (and to al-Quseir) before being killed on 1 September 20123.
Refat Ahmed, a jihadist who had escaped from Egyptian prisons in
favor of reversing Moubarrak, was killed in Syria July 7, 2012. He
had fought with arms in hand against Gaddafi before joining the
Syrian jihad4.
Abu Rami, 37, made four trips back to Syria in 2012, where he won the
Syrian confidence of an association responsible for maintaining order
in the territories liberated by the insurgency. He entered in Syria
by Turkey, as many foreign fighters ; according to him the trip would
cost $ 250 in total. He further stated that the volunteers for jihad
in Egypt were educated people without social or financial problems.
By February 2013, the Egyptian government has published the names of
10 national citizens killed in battle in Syria. Abu Rami added back
in 3 more, which would be entered by Lebanon and would have died in
Homs this month. Abu Ahmed , an Egyptian student of 34 years in
England, left his wife and child to join a brigade of the Free Syrian
Army via the crossing point of Bab el-Hawa at the Turkish border.
Although affiliate of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya , he claims he have not
used this network ; it is the meeting of an exile starting again for
jihad who convinced him. He bought an AK-47, belonging to a dead
fighter, for 700 dollars and paid 80 dollars for ammunition. He cooks
for his armed group before being engaged in small operations and
being wounded in the leg and then he was treated and returned to
Egypt5.
Jérôme
Drevon6
also explains how the conflict between al-Nosra and ISIS impacted the
Egyptian jihadist landscape. One faction, called "purists",
is aligned with ISIS and rejects al-Nosra, especially because this
movement welcomes Egyptian volunteers who do not have the same
political ideas that jihadists, as Sheikh Hazim Abu Ismail. These
Egyptian jihadists reject both al-Nosra which is confined to the
Syrian jihad only militarily, but also the direction of al-Qaeda,
i.e. Zahawiri, who supported al-Nosra in his quarrel with ISIS. They
rallied to Abu Umar al-Kuwaiti, who leads a group of foreign
fighters, Jamaat al- Muslimin, located near the Turkish border to
Atme and Bab el-Hawa. The group is associated with EIIL but more
excommunicated al-Nosra, what rejected ISIS itself. Purists oppose it
in the mainstream of Egyptian Salafism which itself promotes
reconciliation current. What is interesting, perhaps, is the
centrality of the Syrian experience in the redefinition of jihadism
stemming from Salafism .
In
early 2014, the Egyptian jihadist attacks multiply : car bomb outside
the headquarters of the security forces, fire in broad daylight on an
important figure of the Ministry of Interior, destruction of a
military helicopter above the Sinai with a MANPADS7.
Shooter of this material (SA-16) was obviously trained in the use of
this : has he an experience acquired in Syria ? He shot in any case a
Mi-17 over the northern Sinai. Also it remains to be seen whence the
arm comes from8.
According to a study of the Meir Amit center, hundreds of Egyptians
have fought in al-Nosra or ISIS in Syria. April 13, 2014, Egyptian
authorities announced they hold Wa'el Ahmed Abd al-Fattah, a former
employee of the Egyptian oil company that has served in al-Nosra. It
would be entered Syria via Turkey in 2012. A month earlier, on March
10, this is Muhammad Ahmed al- Dura Taliawi who was arrested by the
security services ; he participated in the attack on the headquarters
of these in January, in Cairo. Came back from Syria in March 2013, he
seeks to carry out attacks against Israel, then get in touch with a
member of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. At the time of his arrest, he opened
fire on the police that replicate and hurt him. September 23, 2013,
Ansar Bayt al- Maqdis announced in a statement the death in Egypt of
two veterans of the Syrian Jihad, Fahmi Abd al-Rauf Muhammad (Abu
Djana) and Samir Abd al-Hakim (Abu al- Baraa). Wa'el Abd al-Fattah ,
who was part of al-Nosra, was also arrested by the Egyptian
authorities because of its terrorist projects9.
Another
study of the Meir Amit center on volunteers from Arab states who left
to do jihad in Syria estimated to 40 the number of Egyptians already
killed on the spot, mostly from villages or small towns and little
from Cairo or Alexandria. Several Egyptian cadres in Syria belong to
Ansar al-Sharia organization. This organization is led by Sheikh
Ahmed Ashoush, a veteran of the Afghan Jihad and Al-Qaeda, returned
to Egypt in 1991, arrested in 1993 and detained until 2011. Released,
he was again jailed in December 2012 for terrorist activities. Hashem
al-Ashri, who lived in the United States for 15 years, said in June
2013 that he helped the Egyptians to go to Syria. According to him,
most come from the middle classes, which allows them to pay for a
plane ticket and a weapon, two critical elements for foreign fighter.
He advised them to go to a neighboring country and then to the border
where a rebel group is responsible for bringing them to Syria10.
1David
Barnett, « Blowback in Cairo.The Syrian civil war has now
reached the heart of Egypt. », Foreign Policy, 9
janvier 2014.
2Mohannad
Sabry, « Al-Qaeda emerges amid Egypt’s turmoil »,
Al-Monitor, 4 décembre 2013.
4Bill
Roggio, « Egyptian jihadist killed in fighting in Syria »,
The Long War Journal, 12 juillet 2012.
5
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, « Egyptian Fighters Join 'Lesser Jihad'
in Syria », Al-Monitor, 17 avril 2013.
6Jérôme
Drevon, « How Syria’s War Is Dividing the Egyptian Jihadi
Movement », Carnegie/Syria in Crisis, 9 janvier 2014.
9Involvement
of Operatives Who Returned from Syria in the Terrorist Campaign
against the Egyptian Regime, The Meir Amit Intelligence and
Terrorism Information Center, 4 mai 2014.
10The
Phenomenon of Foreign Fighters from the Arab World in the Syrian
Civil War, Most of Them Fighting in the Ranks of Organizations
Affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Global Jihad, The Meir Amit
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, mai 2014.