Wilayat Sinai, an organization identified with the Islamic State, has recently suffered a series of serious blows from the Egyptian army. Most prominent among them was the air strike in early August 2016 that killed dozens of senior commanders, launched as part of a targeted campaign against terrorism in Egypt in general, and in Sinai in particular. The recent decline in the intensity of Wilayat Sinai's attacks against the Egyptian army, alongside a drop in its media activity and propaganda systems, may point to cumulative damage to the organization and a decline in its strength. The weakening of the organization, which was considered one of the most dangerous of the Islamic State’s allies, has diminished its glamour in the eyes of its patron. Nonetheless, it is too early to conclude that a terrorist organization whose power rests mainly on the resentment of an alienated population that feels economically and socially disenfranchised and lives far from the grip of an effective central government – i.e., the Egyptian regime in Cairo – will not survive the intensive attack against it and regain the ability to continue its high profile terrorist activity.
