Grey jeans, black trainers and a surface-to-air missile were all that could be seen of the man waiting under a tree for an Egyptian military helicopter to fly past in early January 2014. He fired and the aircraft tumbled to the ground, a moment captured on video by the group that would become Isis Sinai Province, and released in triumph soon after.

The attack served notice to the Egyptian military and the rest of the world that Sinai’s Islamist insurgents had stepped up their ambitions and their capacities, drawing weapons and inspiration from the region’s other spiralling conflicts. If last week’s explosion on board a Russian Metrojet flight from Sharm el-Sheikh proves also to have been their work, those ambitions have reached a new level.

Cairo has long struggled to control the sparsely populated expanses of the Sinai Peninsula, where Islamists have found refuge with smugglers, criminals and others keen to escape too much official scrutiny. But until little over a decade ago, it was a place militants went to hide, train and plot, not somewhere they carried out attacks.

A shift in ideology, the fallout from a government crackdown, and chaos in neighbouring states have transformed the area from dangerous haven to conflict zone. Factions have united into a group with unprecedented access to funds and weapons, and which has become the most ambitious Isis franchise outside Syria or Iraq.

This is the group that claimed responsibility for downing Metrojet flight 9268 last Saturday, after it came down over the Sinai Peninsula with the loss of all lives on board. If it is confirmed that explosives were smuggled on board, it would be the first time since 2004 that a bomb has been used to down a jet. The last such attack was twin suicide bombings in 2004, also on Russian planes.

“There is only one umbrella group, Wilayat Sinaa [Sinai Province]. It simply brought together every militant jihadist in Sinai and from across Egypt,” said Mohannad Sabry, author of the newly published Sinai: Egypt’s Linchpin, Gaza’s Lifeline, Israel’s Nightmare. “They all dissolved within the greater umbrella of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which began operating in 2011 and pledged allegiance to Isis in 2014 to become recognised as the strongest branch of Islamic State outside of Syria and Iraq.”

Membership has never been over 500 or 600, he said. “The highly sophisticated militarist elements do not exceed a few dozen members and are highly protected, the rest of the group are simply foot soldiers which the group sends to the frontline of its operations,” Sabry said.

The group’s relatively small size belies its impact. A string of complex and deadly attacks on almost every possible target in the region – from government forces, international military observers and economic interests to a tourist bus – grabbed national and international attention. Suicide bombings of army checkpoints last October and in January and July this year that killed dozens of people were the bloodiest peacetime attacks on the country’s military.

The last one paved the way for the group to hold a small parcel of territory for the first time, cementing its allegiance to Isis ideology of governing as well as fighting.

The 2014 downing of the military helicopter announced the group’s possession of advanced missiles, probably smuggled from Libya in the chaos that followed the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, and intention to target aircraft.

While man-portable air-defence systems (MPADs) cannot hit passenger jets at cruising altitude – ruling out a missile strike on the Metrojet plane – they are a real threat to any plane landing or taking off within range, which could include the Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

Last year Sinai Province also signalled an expansion of its war from the northern heartlands of the insurgency to the tourist resorts of the south, with a bus bombing that killed three Korean Christians and their driver. Beyond Sinai, cells in mainland Egypt bombed police headquarters in Cairo and Mansoura, and tried to assassinate the interior minister.

The deadly swath the group has cut through the area, and the brutal response of the Egyptian military, has brought some of Sinai’s problems to the attention of a wider audience. Its current crisis is rooted in part in unforgiving geography, its critical location at the heart of a troubled region. Captured by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, it was held by the country until the Camp David Accords paved the way for its return to Egypt.

Hosni Mubarak presided over that transfer during the 1980s, and the growth of Sharm el-Sheikh as an international tourist resort and holiday destination for members of the Cairo elite, who accumulated villas along its beaches.

Perhaps because of limits on the Egyptian military presence – under a deal monitored by international observers who still patrol the region – he did little to make its people feel part of the country, or give them any economic stake in its success.

For decades their struggles with economic marginalisation and political repression were muffled by a virtual blackout on reporting from the region, or drowned out by heavy promotion of the sunshine and beaches of the southern coastal resorts.

The traditional Bedouin inhabitants of the area have perhaps the longest list of grievances against the government, evicted from traditional lands to make way for government-backed settlers, excluded from deals to exploit natural resources like oil and gas, out-numbered in their old homes.

There are no firm statistics available, but with the growth of tourism and other industries, they now make up less than half and perhaps even under a quarter of its half-million official residents, according to regional security expert Zack Gold.

Traditional trade networks became smuggling routes, in part because of lack of other opportunities, driving a further wedge between the government and the Bedouin. In the 2011 revolution, they were among the first to rise up, and the fiercest fighters against the government.

While mistrust of authority and well-protected smuggling routes made Sinai a welcoming base for those targeting Cairo, ensuring them some sympathy and local recruits, the Islamists in Sinai were never fighting a Bedouin revolt. “Tribal leaders do not encourage violent extremism and, indeed, the current Islamist insurgency challenges the Bedouin tribal structure and wellbeing,” Gold said.

Particularly since joining Isis, Sinai Province fighters have stirred up resentment with heavy-handed attempts to control the local population. They have killed dozens as alleged spies, threatened tribal leaders who they believe oppose them, and tried to stop smuggling of cigarettes and marijuana because both are condemned as vices in their hardline interpretation of Islam.

These attacks, and the indirect economic impact of attacks on both tourists and international military observers, the two main employers in the area, are eroding any residual sympathies residents might have for a group fighting the loathed government.

“The Bedouin community has called on the Egyptian regime since 2011 to begin incorporating them in serious action against the militancy. Their calls were ignored,” Sabry said. “Numbers-wise, if the Bedouin community is leading an insurgency or backing the militants, this group would have thousands of fighters within its ranks – this hasn’t happened so far.”

The Bedouin played inadvertent godfathers to the current insurgency through their smuggling tunnels to Gaza, though, linking Palestinian militants who crossed the border looking for freedom or refuge to Egyptian radicals hiding out in the area who they would later fund and train.

Egyptian solidiers captured by Israeli forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

“In the 1980s and 1990s, fighting was primarily in Cairo and Upper Egypt. Individuals would go to Sinai to train but not have much to do in terms of carrying out attacks,” Gold said. That changed when a terror group that would eventually provide members and inspiration for Sinai Province introduced suicide bombings to Sinai in 2004, launching the peninsula’s own battle with Islamic militants.

Tawhid wal-Jihad, or Monotheism and Jihad, a group that shared its ideology and name with an early incarnation of al-Qaida in Iraq, launched its first suicide attack on the resort town of Taba, killing over 30 people. Another 88 died in car bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005, and the year after that dozens more were killed when Dahab was hit.

“Tawhid wal-Jihad focused its attacks on the tourist industry,” said Gold. “There were of course some battles here and there with security forces ... but what they are known for is the massive bombings at tourist resorts from 2004 to 2006.”

With the vital tourism industry at risk from the string of regular, deadly attacks, the government cracked down hard. The group’s leaders were killed in police shootouts, and roundups sent many members to jail. The punitive, wide-ranging nature of the crackdown meant it swept up many ordinary people from the region, turning them against the government.

Resentment of security forces mingled with the memory of the group’s impact through its bombings, so that even as it faded as a real threat, it came to serve as inspiration for a new generation of militants.

“The former members of Tawhid wal-Jihad who led the attacks on Taba and Sharm in 2004 and 2005 also joined the ranks of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis since its early days,” Sabry said. “One of them was the most lethal mastermind of ABM, Tawfiq Mohammed Freij.”

Freij masterminded and personally commanded a cross-border attack on Israel in August 2011 in which eight Israelis were killed. The incident also stirred up major diplomatic tensions, because Israeli forces chased fighters back across the border and killed three Egyptian policemen in the pursuit. Freij was reported to have been killed by one of his own bombs last year.

The group’s initial focus on Israel was reflected in its original name, which translated means “Supporters of Jerusalem”. Founders were probably trained in a Gazan militant camp, and leaders appear to have contacts across the border.

Affiliation to Isis came after one of the commanders spent several months in Raqqa last year. It brought extra funds and weapons – reporting restrictions on the peninsula make it hard to assess how much – but also shifted the group’s priorities, Gold said.

Its new international focus, determination to rule, and disregard for the local population could offer Cairo an opportunity to stamp out the insurgency by finding allies among the people of Sinai. To do that, though, it would need to drop punitive policies, like the mass destruction of civilian homes after Isis attacks, and increase economic and other opportunities for the people of Sinai.

For now, Cairo is still pursuing control at any cost, rooting out militants with harsh reprisals and indiscriminate military operations that risk creating a new generation of insurgents. “Even if the government succeeds in putting an end to the attacks, it will never succeed in putting an end to the radical, extreme and revenge-seeking resentment,” Sabry said. “It is a seed that eventually, in many cases, grows into an armed terrorist or militant organisation.”

Sinai’s troubled history

1967 Israel captures control of Sinai from Egypt in the six-day war.



1973 The Yom Kippur war. Egypt recaptures part of the east bank of the Suez canal, a zone stretching a couple of kilometres into Sinai.



1978 The Camp David Accords lay the grounds for a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and the eventual withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the peninsula, along with Israeli settlers.



1982 Israel withdraws from most of Sinai, and lightly armed troops from 12 countries deploy to monitor the terms of the treaty with Israel as the Multinational Force and Observers. The treaty has been formally violated by an increased Egyptian military deployment in recent years to tackle the growing strength of militant groups, but Israel is also worried about the rise in violence and supports these stepped-up efforts.



1989 Israel hands over the small border town of Taba, the last place it controls in Sinai, to Egypt. In the decade that follows, militants will criss-cross the border with Gaza, but see Sinai as a place to retreat and train, not a target zone for attacks.



2004 Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad) launches a new era of insurgency inside Sinai when a fighter drives a truck bomb into the Hilton in Taba, killing over 30 people, most of them Israelis.



2005 The same group kills 88 people in car bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, then more than 30 in an attack on another resort in 2006. The threat to the vital tourist industry prompts a heavy response from the Egyptian government, and much of the group’s leadership is wiped out. Many members are jailed, others go underground.



2011 Revolution sweeps through Egypt, including Sinai where a teenager launches the local uprising by firing on the hated security force headquarters. President Hosni Mubarak is ousted, but in the turmoil that follows, a new militant group takes shape in Sinai.



The Taba Hilton hotel, which was car bombed in 2004. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

2014 Ansar Beit al-Maqdis shoots down a military helicopter with a Manpad missile probably acquired from Libya. A suicide bomber from the group targets a bus of Korean tourists, killing three and their driver, and an attack on an army checkpoint kills over 30. In October the group announces that it has pledged allegiance to Isis, and changes its name to Sinai Province.



2015 Two more bloody attacks on army outposts kill dozens, and for the first time the group holds a small piece of territory.



October 2015 Metrojet flight comes down over the Sinai peninsula with the loss of all lives. Sinai Province claims responsibility. UK and other countries halt flights to Sharm el-Sheikh over fears a bomb was placed on the plane.

