Effectiveness of decision to include Egyptian Hasm and Sinai Province on terrorist lists

Mohamed Yosry

The United States has included the ISIS Sinai Province and Hasm movements in Egypt on the terrorism lists.

The decision, issued Thursday, January 13, also included two leaders of the movement on the list of prohibited persons, Alaa Al-Samahi and Yahya Musa, who fled to Turkey.

The question that arises now is what is the value of this decision for Egypt at this time? What is its impact on the Brotherhood and ISIS?

Hasm

The founding of the Hasm movement was due to the repercussions of the dispersal of the Rabia al-Adawiya sit-in in eastern Cairo on August 14, 2013, after which a number of armed entities affiliated with the Brotherhood were formed.

These entities started with weak and inexperienced cells, including the so-called Free Movement, Revolutionary Punishment, Dengue, Molotov and Fancy movements, which adopted a number of operations in which Molotov cocktails were used, including the burning of two police cars above a bridge in Giza in February 2014.

Then the Hasm and Liwa al-Thawra movements were formed at a later stage, with more organized mechanisms than others, after the supervision of the group’s specific operations was assigned to Mohamed Kamal, whom the Egyptian Ministry of Interior managed to liquidate in October 2016.

Scaled motion

Cairo has succeeded in curtailing the movement significantly and has worked to paralyze its joints almost completely, as happened with other entities that completely disappeared from the scene after drying out the sources of their funding and even their presence on the ground, including the Helwan Brigades, Soldiers of Egypt and Revolutionary Punishment, as a result of the security pursuit.

Hasm does not present any security threat to the Egyptian state now, as it completely disappeared from the scene since January 2019, only appearing through the media re-promotion of its presence in August 2020 through a video published by Yahya Moussa about the assassination of former Attorney General Hisham Barakat five years after the incidenr, with the aim of deluding the Brotherhood’s financiers into the continued existence of the movement, which is an extension of the Brotherhood’s secret organization.

Iron fist

The recent decision by the US Treasury Department to include the Hasm movement and the Sinai Province organization on the lists of “banned” rather than terrorist groups does not constitute a thing of significance for the Egyptian reality, given the success of the Egyptian security in besieging the terrorist movements and its success also in drying up of their sources of funding, which is evidenced by the reality and supported by the group’s erratic behavior.

A look at the movement’s activity during the previous years reveals the extent of its extinction as a result of the great security vigilance that does not allow it to move in Cairo or the governorates, even at its peak, because the movement is completely hidden from view since August 2019. The last operation during which it appeared two years earlier, except through the emergence of individual operations similar to the operations of lone wolves, which confirmed the weakness of the movement. This occurred in February 2019 in the Ghouriya area behind Al-Azhar Mosque, through a suicide bombing.

Sinai Province

The terrorist organization began its activities in Sinai in November 2013. It was first called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, before declaring allegiance to ISIS in 2014. It carried out a number of terrorist operations against the Egyptian army forces, the most prominent of which was Operation Karm al-Qawadis in October 2014.

The organization is active in the media, similar to ISIS, by publishing pictures and producing videos showing the battles and attacks, the latest of which was issued on January 10, 2021, which was a compilation of previous footage carried out by the terrorist organization during past years. There is nothing new about it.

Effectiveness of the decision

The decision of the US Treasury Department stipulated the addition of Sinai Province and the Hasm movement to the terrorist lists of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Although many optimists say that the decision is the beginning of declaring the Brotherhood among the terrorist lists in the United States, the decision may not indicate anything new or benefit this optimism for two reasons.

The first reason relates to timing, as the timing of the decision came too late, after the Egyptian security vigil proved its control over the situation, as it restricted the movements of the Brotherhood, whether individually or collectively in Cairo and the governorates, and this restricted the activity of Sinai Province to a very narrow range of not more than a few kilometers at the far northeast part of Sinai.

The second reason is the formula, as the wording of the decision came in a manner that bore the phrase “banning two Brotherhood leaders”, which differs from adding to the lists of terrorism, and the two individuals declared banned were sentenced to death in Egypt.

In addition, in 2018, the US State Department had previously placed both the Hasm movement and the Revolutionary Brigade on the special list of international terrorist organizations due to acts of violence targeting civilians, both of whom operate in Egypt and are affiliated with the Brotherhood.

Situation on the ground

Evidence that the decision does not concern the Egyptian side much after the great successes achieved by the Egyptian administration, especially in Sinai, was announced by Major General Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha, Governor of North Sinai, on January 6, 2021, of Arish port receiving the first commercial ship after it reopened, which means an early clear announcement of the end of terrorism in North Sinai.