Egypt is waging a fight against perhaps a thousand jihadis in the Sinai:
A shadowy Islamist militant group based in the remote Sinai desert is emerging as a major threat to Egypt's stability, and there are no signs that the army-backed government has devised an effective strategy to contain it.
With assassinations, suicide bombings and shootings, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has earned a spot on the global jihad map and its bloody campaign spreading across Egypt is cause for alarm in the West, which sees the biggest Arab nation as a strategic partner.
They claim the recent bombing of a tourist bus in Egypt.
I hadn't realized the casualty toll from Sinai fighting has been this high:
In the Sinai Egyptian over a hundred police and soldiers have been killed fighting Islamic terrorists so far this year. Since 2011 over 450 policemen have been killed by Islamic terrorists in Egypt, most of them in Sinai. The police are taking more casualties than the army, which is only really active in Sinai.
Egypt revealed that its AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships had recently fired 24 Hellfire missiles at Islamic terrorists in the Sinai. According to the 1979 peace deal with Israel Egypt is not allowed to operate any of its 35 AH-64s in Sinai but in 2012 Israel agreed to allow Egypt to operate AH-64s in Sinai against Islamic terrorists.
The Arab Spring has been an opportunity for fledgling democrats to make gains against dictators and monarchs, but the shaking up of autocrat powers has left an opening for jihadis to make moves, too.
It's a long war with no easy solutions.
