The Sinai insurgency was an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that occurred from 2011 to 2023 in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution of 2011.
The Sinai Peninsula was historically a lawless region of Egypt rife with arms trafficking; security provisions in the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 mandated a diminished security presence in the area, enabling militants to operate with a freer hand. Limited government investment in Sinai, the harsh terrain and lack of resources of the region, and governmental discrimination against the local Bedouin tribes rendered the poor region ripe for militancy. After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship in the Egyptian revolution of 2011, Egypt became destabilized, and radical Islamists in Sinai exploited the opportunity to use the region's unique environment to wage an insurgency against Egyptian military and commercial facilities. Local armed Bedouins with long-standing grievances against the central government in Cairo - such as their ban from the military and police, their inability to get jobs in tourism, and the theft of their lands - served as the core of the al-Qaeda-affiliated militant groups such as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis. The concurrent Libyan Civil War increased the quantity and quality of weapons being smuggled into the area, while hardline militant Muslims who had used Sinai as a launchpoint for attacks against Israel turned on the Egyptian state.
In August 2011, the Egyptian government launched Operation Eagle to restore law and order, driving Islamist insurgents and criminal gangs out of North Sinai's urban centers and severing the link between militant groups in the Sinai and Gaza by augmenting its control over the Gaza border crossing. However, the operation had limited success, and, a week later (on 18 August 2011), Salafist jihadists launched massive cross-border attacks on Israel, with twelve militants in four groups killing 6 Israeli civilians, 1 IDF soldier, 1 Yamam policeman, and 5 Egyptian soldiers. In August 2012, an attack on the Rafah barracks led President Mohamed Morsi to appoint Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Defense Minister and task him with launching a new operation against armed Islamist groups. Operation Sinai saw the Egyptian army kill 32 militants and arrest 3 more. The secularist general el-Sisi seized power from the Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi in July 2013, resulting in an increase in Islamist violence against security forces, but also a more aggressive crackdown on the insurgents. In the last months of 2014, the Egyptian Army gained the upper hand against the militias that had found safe haven in the peninsula, clearing the populated northeastern Sinai of militants and forcing 1,000 insurgents to shelter in their Jabal Halal stronghold. In November 2014, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis pledged allegiance to the increasingly powerful Islamic State pseudo-caliphate, and ISIL militants killed 33 security personnel in two attacks on Egyptian Army positions in the Sinai. The government responded with a curfew and the creation of a buffer zone on the Sinai-Gaza border. The government also brought in two additional battalions to help put down the Sinai insurrection, and two field armies took part in Operation "desert Storm" in July, with the navy and air force assisting in the blockade of all roads, bridges, and tunnels leading from Northern Sinai to other provinces. In September 2014, the Egyptian Army brought in tanks and six Apache helicopters for another major operation. At the same time, the militants intensified their campaign against civilians by bombing a South Korean church group's bus in Taba in February 2014 (killing 3 Korean tourists and the Egyptian bus driver). In January 2015, a series of car bomb and mortar attacks on army and police bases in Arish killed 44 Egyptian soldiers and civilians. In July 2015, ISIL launched one of the largest-scale battles seen in the Sinai since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, killing between 21 and 64 soldiers in a series of attacks on army and police bases. In September 2015, the government responded with Operation Martyr's Right in Rafah, Arish, and Sheikh Zuweid, killing 535 militants. In October, a Russian passenger jet was bombed by ISIL as it flew over Sinai, killing all 224 aboard. 2016 saw an initial increase in insurgent attacks before a decline later in the year, while 2017 saw ISIL kill 40 Christian churchgoers in the Palm Sunday church bombings and killed 23 soldiers in a July 2017 attack on an army checkpoint. In November 2017, 40 gunmen attacked a Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed during Friday prayers, killing at least 235 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in Egyptian history. In 2018, the Army announced a new operation; from 2018 to 2020, 840 militants and 67 soldiers were killed. The Egyptian government utilized the support of the Sinai Tribal Union to attempt to restore peace to the region, and the fall of ISIL in Syria and Iraq was accompanied by its decline in Egypt. On 25 January 2023, President el-Sisi announced the end of the terrorism in North Sinai, although leftover mine explosions, IED attacks, and occasional militant attacks continued in the region.