By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 July 2025
Roman Eastern Foederati and Arab Monotheism Before Islam
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Tag Archives: Sinai
Islamic State Spokesman Marks Ten Years of the Caliphate
How the Egyptian Dictatorship Helps the Islamic State
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 December 2018
Al-Naba 159
The 159th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) newsletter, released on 6 December 2018, had a very interesting story on pages nine and ten about three “repentant officers” (dubat al-tayibeen) from Egypt who joined IS in the Sinai. The two trendlines this story highlighted were: (1) the movement of trained military cadres from the Arab states into IS’s security apparatus, as has been seen with the elements of Saddam Husayn’s fallen regime; and (2) the radicalisation of those Islamists previously prepared to work through the democratic process by the 2013 putsch in Egypt, and the violent crackdown afterwards, which shut down all peaceful paths to change. Al-Qaeda has made this point a staple of its propaganda for some time. Continue reading
Egypt: Between Dictatorship and Islamism
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 July 2018
Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai (image source)
Five years on from the military coup d’etat in Egypt that brought to power Abdel Fattah el Sisi, the problems of the country—political, economic, demographic, security—remain as intractable as ever. Indeed, in many cases, the problems are worse than before. Among the problems that are noticeably worse now than in 2013 is security, specifically the Islamic State (Daesh) insurgency in the Sinai. Continue reading
The Islamic State, Libya, and Interventionism
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on February 19, 2015
Rebels with Qaddafi’s “golden gun”
Yesterday morning in Libya, it was announced that militias from Misrata were moving into Sirte to combat the Islamic State (I.S.). The militias preparing to fight I.S. are drawn from Libya Dawn, the Islamist coalition that ousted the internationally-recognised government in August 2014. Continue reading
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