The militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis escalated its campaign against the army last week, carrying out two attacks in central Cairo. The first of these was in the Helmiya Al-Zeitoun district and the second at a military police checkpoint in Mostorod, which killed six conscripts.

The army then carried out a successful operation against the group at its home base in the northeastern Sinai areas of Al-Toma and Al-Mahdiya, leading to the death of its field commander Tawfik Mohamed Freij, or “Abu Abdallah”.

Security forces also arrested persons who were about to plant explosive devices at the foot of high-tension electrical pylons near the outskirts of the pyramids in Giza. But another cell managed to blow up an electrical transformer in the industrial zone of Mahalla Al-Kubra.

Following the Mostorod attack, interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahleb called an emergency cabinet session during which ministers met for five hours to discuss the mounting terrorist attacks against Egypt's police and army.

In a statement released Saturday evening, the government announced that it would introduce more stringent precautionary measures. A government spokesman also noted that participants in the meeting had discussed the possibility of taking “extraordinary steps,” possibly signaling a return to emergency law.

Interim President Adly Mansour made a similar suggestion in an interview with a private satellite TV channel when he said that he would take any measure necessary to safeguard Egyptian lives.

For the first time, military spokesman Ahmed Ali directly accused the Muslim Brotherhood for the six soldiers' deaths. In previous instances, Ali had directed the blame against Sinai-based militant groups. The shift was consistent with the thinking of many security experts and specialists on Islamist movements, who say there is a strong connection between the Brotherhood and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis.

The Brotherhood developed this relationship in two phases, experts say, one involving the cementing of a relationship between it and Al-Qaeda, a connection that became closer following the army-supported overthrow of the Brotherhood government in July 2013.

Nageh Ibrahim, a founder and former leader of the Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya group, said that “historically there is a big difference between Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. But after 25 January 2011, many new factors came into play. The first is that 25 January gave the kiss of life to Al-Qaeda, which created a branch for itself in Egypt.”

“The Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda became very close, and there was an alliance and cooperation between them. Perhaps one reason for this was the kinship or in-law connection between the head of the former president [Mohamed Morsi's] office and Ayman El-Zawahri, or between the Muslim Brothers and Mohamed El-Zawahri. There was also a phone call between Morsi and Ayman El-Zawahri in which the latter insisted on certain measures at Al-Azhar and elsewhere,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim continued by saying that this “was when Al-Qaeda first came to Sinai and established a place for itself there. Sinai had been isolated for three years from the rest of Egypt in terms of security, but the Muslim Brothers and Al-Qaeda’s organisational structures never intertwined. There was a convergence of interests and cooperation between the two. I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic decision-makers made two mistakes. The first was to draw close to the [militant] groups and Al-Qaeda, and the second was to ally itself with them.”

In the second phase of the Brotherhood’s relationship with the armed groups, the relationship shifted from an alliance to a merger. According to Samir Ghattas, director of the think tank Maqdis Centre, “the strategic embrace between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda gave rise to a degree of intertwining and co-identification in the interests of consolidating the Muslim Brotherhood in power and promoting the interests of outside parties, prime among them the US, Qatar and Turkey.”

“It began with a containment operation. The first Muslim Brotherhood initiatives in this regard, at American behest, occurred in a meeting held in Libya in 2013 and attended by Brotherhood deputy supreme guide Mohamed Ezzat, who fled the country. This initiative evolved into the creation of militia commanded by the Muslim Brotherhood or a military wing in the Sinai that was tasked with undertaking operations against the Egyptian army and police in favour of the Brotherhood.”

“Proof of this can be found in the relationship between the ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi and the Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri, which was exposed by the telephone conversation between them and in the subsequent meetings between El-Zawahri’s brother Mohamed and Morsi himself.”

Thus, there evolved a strategic relationship at a higher level than just a cooperative alliance. This manifested itself following 30 June in field operations carried out by the Al-Qaeda affiliated Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. Most of the latter organisation’s statements, in which it claimed responsibility for attacks against the army and police, said that these attacks were in retaliation for Brotherhood members killed during last year's violent dispersal of the sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Square.

“There was also the meeting in Lahore, Pakistan, in September 2013, which crowned a number of meetings of the International Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey and which focused on ways to promote chaos in Egypt and retaliate against the army,” Ghattas said.

He mentioned five similar operations carried out by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis in the vicinity of the Al-Salehiya Road in Ismailiya. “The only operation of these to fail did so because there was a mobile roadblock near a fixed one. This fact led to the replacement of many stationary roadblocks in inhabited areas such as Nasr City by mobile patrols.”

A former official and high-level expert in Egyptian intelligence said that “there is no doubt about the relationship between the two sides, and the field operations support this. There are about 100 members who belong to five cluster groups from these organisations. They are now the object of investigations aiming to obtain the greatest possible quantity of intelligence.”

“The huge amount of intelligence that has already been gathered has certainly contributed greatly to the success in taking out important field commanders of the organisation, such as Freij and before him Abu Soheib and others. If we were to draw a map of where the Brotherhood now stands, we would find a Brotherhood sector in the heart of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis.”

According to experts, there are currently three alignments within the Brotherhood. One is armed and directly linked to Al-Qaeda and its branch in the Sinai, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. It carries out its duties on the basis of directives from key Brotherhood leaders of Qotb-ist orientation, such as Mahmoud Ezzat and Mahmoud Hussein, who are currently at large, and their counterparts in the International Muslim Brotherhood. The latter group, the most dangerous, will sustain its confrontation against the state and reject any inclinations towards reconciliation.”

“The second alignment exists among the Muslim Brotherhood bases that have ceased their organisational activities and resigned from the organisation. They have set themselves at a distance from events and adopted a ‘wait and see’ attitude. The third group is that which seeks to re-establish the Brotherhood on a different footing on the basis of recognising the post-30 June roadmap.”

With respect to future scenarios, sources agree that violent confrontations are likely to continue between the paramilitary organisation and the state. Ghattas added that the government will eventually rout these organisations, however intense the fighting and in spite of the immense support furnished to the groups by outside parties, most notably Qatar, Turkey and Hamas in Gaza.

The other wing of this group of Muslim Brothers that is currently demonstrating in the streets will continue to do so, he said. According to Mohamed Habib, a breakaway Muslim Brotherhood leader, there are some 5,000 Brotherhood activists of this type, and estimates leaked from recent meetings of the International Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey suggest that there are two million Brotherhood members or sympathisers who may continue this form of confrontation.

Security experts attribute the latter to the “denial mentality” of the Muslim Brotherhood which in its meetings and platforms abroad has persisted in its attempts to convey the impression that the organisation still has broad grassroots support and has expanded as a result of the sympathy it gained due to the failures of the government’s policies after 30 June.

Because this segment of the Brotherhood refuses to believe that the majority of Egyptians have rejected the group and blame it for the current violence, sources rule out the possibility of reconciliation between the Brotherhood and the state. This is the case, even though some political forces have encouraged reconciliation with the Brotherhood if it were to recognise the post-3 July roadmap, issue an official apology to the Egyptian people and reverse its ideology, in addition to its members being brought to account for acts leading to bloodshed.

Mohamed Ali Bishr, a Muslim Brotherhood youth member in the organisation’s leadership ranks, said that “there are no initiatives being discussed at present and no secret communication channels” with a view to reconciliation.

He said that many of the younger Brotherhood members who have been turning to violence are no longer under the control of the organisation’s leadership – after seeing many of their colleagues wounded or killed in clashes with security forces, they have come to see their confrontation with the state as a personal feud.

Such youths also reject Brotherhood leaders who might be willing to negotiate on the grounds that such negotiations would barter away the rights of the victims at Rabaa Al-Adaweya, Bishr said. He added that few Brotherhood members wanted to see a settlement at any price in order to ensure a foothold for the Brotherhood in the political process. “When they tried to convey messages at home and abroad to this effect, they received no response from the military establishment or even from the foreign agencies that they had asked for support,” Bishr said.

Ahmed Ban, a breakaway Muslim Brotherhood leader and researcher on militant Islamist movements, said that “there is a crisis connected with the recent army statement to the effect that the Muslim Brotherhood is involved in [the violent attacks].” He rejected the notion of an organic relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. If anything, there was a mere “convergence of interests,” he said, though he acknowledged that some Brotherhood youth had turned to violence.

On the question as to whether the Brotherhood would engage in ideological revision or respond to reconciliation initiatives, Ban said that “there is division in the Muslim Brotherhood leadership on this matter. Some advocate the need for a settlement, while others believe it is too difficult.” Ban himself suggested that the best scenario would be an initiative from inside the prisons that would converge with an initiative from abroad. Only in this way could “we speak of an opening on the horizon. Without it, the government and the Brotherhood will remain in a permanent state of hostility,” he said.

Alaa Ezzeddin, director of the army's military studies centre, said that “it would be difficult if not impossible in view of current developments and the results of all opinion polls and assessments to conduct a reconciliation process. The more realistic expectation is that the state will succeed in asserting itself by confronting terrorism and restoring the prestige of the government.”

*This article was first published in Ahram Weekly