Assessing the Jihadist Threat in Egypt: Mainland Egypt

(MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images)

Police raids apparently have degraded the capabilities of Wilayat Sinai, the Islamic State-aligned remnant of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, that claimed credit for a July 2015 explosion outside the Italian Consulate in Cairo.

The activities of radical jihadist groups have died down in mainland Egypt in recent months, but that does not mean the country's security situation is settled. Low-level attacks against police officers and other targets, for example, still occur. But between government crackdowns and internal disagreements, Egyptian jihadist groups' power to conduct sophisticated, large-scale operations appears to have been suppressed. Egypt has a long history of radical and even militant Islamism. Ideologues such as Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna held sway in the 1920s, followed by radical theorist Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s. Jihadist groups such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Gamaah al-Islamiyah were active in the country from the late 1970s through the 1990s. And perhaps one of the most well-known manifestations of militant Islam was the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo by members of Gamaah al-Islamiyah.