by Mahmoud Fouly
CAIRO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has gone through decisive developments over the outgoing year 2014. The most remarkable event was the ex-military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was inaugurated as president to succeed Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.
Sisi led Morsi's overthrow in July 2013 after mass protests against the Islamist president's one-year rule. The new leadership then launched a massive crackdown on Morsi's supporters that left about 1,000 of them killed and thousands more arrested including Morsi himself.
Since then, extremist, who support Islamic rule and believe the current leadership is launching "an anti-Islam war," started to launch anti-government attacks that killed hundreds of police and military men in the Sinai Peninsula and other parts across the country, including the capital Cairo.
In turn, the military-oriented administration of Sisi, even before he was elected as president, announced that the country is in a state of "war against terrorism."
WAR ON TERROR
The Sinai Peninsula has always been the host of extremist groups in Egypt, and al-Qaida-inspired groups took it as the base for their anti-government attacks.
Since its formation in 2011, the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) group rose as the largest and most extremist in Egypt, and it later claimed responsibility for most of the anti-government attacks against Sisi's administration since Morsi's overthrow.
The group claimed responsibility for the car-bomb attack that killed around 30 Egyptian soldiers in North Sinai late October, leading the authorities to impose a curfew on some parts of the province, evacuate houses at the borderline with the Gaza Strip to create a buffer zone and intensify anti-terror military operations in the northern part of the peninsula.
Several blasts rocked the country over the past year as part of the extremists fight against "anti-Islam war," while the security forces killed and arrested hundreds of them, mostly in Sinai, as part of the leadership's "anti-terror war."
The ABM group has recently pledged allegiance with the regional Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and changed its name to "Sinai State" as a group loyal to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
BROTHERHOOD BLACKLISTED
As part of its "anti-terror war," the new leadership designated the Muslim Brotherhood group, from which Morsi hailed, as "a terrorist organization" earlier in 2014. The police also pursued its members until there is no one in Egypt dares to show any sympathy with the group.
Top Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and most leading members are currently in custody over provoking violence and killing of anti-Brotherhood protesters.
Badie has been sentenced to death more than once, but the appealable verdicts haven't been carried out. Those Brotherhood members who managed to flee the country found refuge mostly in Qatar and Turkey.
Brotherhood loyalists and supporters of the ousted president have been holding weekly protests denouncing Morsi's removal as "a coup," yet the protests have been getting smaller due to massive security campaigns.
Although the United States designated the ABM as a terrorist group, it rejected to label the Brotherhood as a "terrorist" organization.
GULF SUPPORT FOR SISI
Most of oil-rich Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Bahrain, showed utmost support for Sisi and his new government as he cracked down on the Brotherhood whose expansion ambitions threaten their powers.
Besides supporting Sisi with billions of U.S. dollars to stabilize Egypt's deteriorating economy amid political chaos, Saudi Arabia and then the UAE have both branded the Brotherhood in 2014 as "a terrorist organization," yet Qatar is a known supporter of the group.
Giving in to pressures from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Qatar has recently expelled several leading Egyptian Brotherhood refugees from its lands and nodded to put an end to its campaign against Sisi's leadership.
Egypt welcomed Saudi's recent initiative to fix ties with Qatar, and it is still not clear whether these gestures will succeed in ending the rift between Cairo and Doha.
Generally, Egypt's "war on terror" has become the motto of the government in the post-Morsi stage under Sisi's leadership. It was recurrently repeated by the president and the head of the government almost on all occasions.
"Egypt is going through a war against terrorism in defense of the whole world," said Egyptian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab in November.
Later in an Egyptian anti-terrorism conference in December, the prime minister stressed that the country has "a long way" to go to battle terrorism.
