Landscapes of Control: The Geography of Counterinsurgency in the Sinai, Egypt

This article presents a mixed-methods approach to understanding spatial conflict dynamics, with special attention to the embodied effects of violence and security on civilians. Our case study lies in the northeastern corner of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where an affiliate of the Islamic State has waged a long-running insurgency against the Egyptian state and the local civilians. In response, Egyptian state forces have created a landscape of control featuring a network of earthwork fortifications designed to curtail movement that have become spatial loci for repeated violence. In this article, we investigate how the Egyptian military’s counterinsurgency tactics have affected conflict dynamics in two ways. First, we draw on the concept of biopower to narrate the effects of the state forces’ counterinsurgency landscape on the Sinawi civilian population. Given the hardships imposed on civilians by this landscape, we then seek to quantify its effectiveness in stopping the insurgency. The results of this analysis show that the state forces’ tactics have exposed civilians to a great deal of violence while failing to diminish conflict activity at a range of spatial scales.