The Sign of the Cross: Are Egypt's Copts a Stepping Stone to Wider Attacks by Islamic State?

On 9 April, over 47 people, mostly Christians, were killed in two coordinated suicide attacks on Coptic churches in the Nile Delta cities of Tanta and Alexandria. The attacks followed a spate of shootings targeting Christians in northern Sinai in February 2017, which forced dozens of Coptic families to flee the area, and a suicide attack near the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo in December 2016, which killed at least 25 people. All of the attacks were claimed by Islamic State (IS). A subsequent shooting on a police checkpoint outside St Catherine’s Christian Monastery in South Sinai on 18 April confirmed that the group intends to maintain a high intensity of violence against Christians in Egypt.

From an ideological perspective, the Coptic community has long been identified as a target in traditional jihadist doctrine. However, the current acceleration in IS’s anti-Coptic campaign also fulfils several new objectives from a strategic point of view, given the group’s current challenges across the wider region. As such, it is more likely that these considerations, rather than historical doctrine, are driving the current increase in the frequency and intensity of attacks.

Firstly, the push to increase attacks against Christians in Egypt, who are an alleged marginalised minority in the country, forms part of an attempt to stoke sectarian divisions, which IS has openly acknowledged as a necessary pre-condition for the establishment of its territorial footholds. The group’s rapid growth in Iraq and Syria, for example, took advantage of deep divisions between the two countries’ Sunni and Shi’a populations. Leveraging anti-Christian sentiment among disaffected conservative Muslim communities gives the group the nearest approximation to these deep sectarian cleavages, which have proved so crucial for IS elsewhere.

Secondly, the strategy of co-ordinating attacks against Christians across both the Sinai and the mainland creates an inflated media impression of IS co-ordination and expansion across the whole country. This stands in contrast to reality, wherein the group’s presence in Egypt is more accurately characterised as two distinct nodes: an isolated insurgency located in a remote area, a significant distance from mainland centres, and a handful of smaller urban cells originating in Greater Cairo and the more populous mainland governorates. Media headlines of geographic expansion provide a muchneeded counter-narrative to the coverage of ongoing territorial losses the group is sustaining in Syria and Iraq. 

Thirdly, IS has been able to capitalise on existing gaps within Egypt’s security apparatus. Christians in Egypt have long complained of their vulnerability to harassment and persecution by anti-government militants as well as Islamists. However, churches, religious gatherings and Christian communities are not considered security priorities for the government. As a result, well-planned and executed attacks on churches and other soft targets associated with Christian gatherings have a higher chance of success in Egypt than a campaign against more politically or economically sensitive groups, making the Copts an expedient target. This is likely to last for as long as other sites are prioritised by the government. 

However, while these factors may demonstrate that IS has long-term ambitions to expand in Egypt, understanding this backdrop also highlights the limitations to these ambitions. 

Despite tensions between conservative Muslim communities and Christians, Egypt has a more cohesive society than the fractured populations which provided the seedbeds for IS in either Syria or Iraq. Its population has also not been subjected to sustained periods of civil war and, as such, the legitimacy of its central government and military forces remain effective and largely intact, despite recent years of volatility. Sowing sectarian divisions in Egypt is, therefore, likely to prove more difficult for the group, preventing them from repeating their earlier territorial victories elsewhere in the region. 

There is also little to demonstrate that there are strong support links between IS’s groupings in Egypt. A temporary alignment of targets may give the group’s collective operations the cosmetic impression of synergistic growth; however, it has not enhanced its logistical capabilities in the way of materiel, personnel or information sharing. The constraints of operating as isolated cells in challenging security environments, therefore still apply. 

Finally, new security measures, such as the state of emergency approved by parliament on 11 April, will likely limit the group’s ability to expand in Egypt beyond its current targeting pattern. As a result, while intensified IS intent in Egypt is more bad news for Egypt’s Christian community, the group is unlikely to be able to act on its ambitions beyond opportunistic tracings within the cracks in Egypt’s security wall.