Partisans and Holy Warriors in the Sinai (Jihadi Entity, Egypt)

• Local Name: أنصار و المجاهدين
• Transliteration: Ansar wal-Mujahideen
• Alternatives: N/a
• Status: 2012 – 2014 Defeated
• Conflicts: Sinai Islamist Insurgency, Egyptian Islamist Militancy

The AwM was a small Salafi jihadi group active in the Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula during the early 2010s. The outfit was led by its founder Adel Habara, a former operative of the Assembly of Monotheism and Jihad in the Sinai [JTJS; Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad fi-Sina’a].¹ Its ranks were made up of a few dozen militants who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham].² AwM members were among the first Egyptian jihadis to embrace the organization. The outfit reportedly received financial support from elements within the DaIISh.³

The AwM grew out of an informal group of Islamists active in the town of Abu Kabir. They launched a series of attacks against the security forces in the Sharqiya governorate in 2012. In one of these incidents, a policeman was shot to death in the town of Abu Kabir.⁴ On another occasion, AwM operatives attacked police vehicles in nearby Bilbais.⁵

By 2013, Habara and a section of his cadres had moved to the Sinai where they gathered new associates. The AwM soon became a key component of the Islamist insurgency on the peninsula. On Aug. 19, 2013, Habara and his men intercepted two minibuses carrying off-duty policemen and executed 25 officers.⁶

Habara was arrested by security forces as he was on his way to blow himself up at a market in city of Arish on Aug. 31, 2013.⁷ In the following months, the Egyptian authorities rounded up many of the AwM’s members. By mid-October 2013, at least a dozen operatives had been apprehended.⁸ In December 2013, security forces rolled up a cell of AwM operatives in Abu Kabir which had been planning to launch attacks in the governorates of Ismailiya and Sharqiya.⁹ On Jan. 10, 2014, a key AwM associate was arrested as he was trying to flee to Libya.¹⁰

The trial against Habara and 34 of his men began in February 2014.¹¹ It lasted for several months. In October 2014, Habara and six other AwM operatives were sentenced to death for their role in the 2013 killings of policemen.¹² Habara was hanged on Dec. 15, 2016.¹³