News sources recently announced that Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), Egypt’s most active and seemingly best organized terrorist organization that has conducted several successful attacks on state security assets, had formally pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). As the story spread like wildfire over social media outlets, ABM’s official Twitter account denied any such pledge. The incident sparks questions surrounding the false claim, connections between international jihadi terrorism and Sinai, and the reasons why a local group may or may not join an international “Caliphate.”

Zack Gold, a Middle East analyst and author of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague research paper “Security in the Sinai: Present and Future,” explores these ideas on EgyptSource:

Read the entire article on EgyptSource: The Islamic State and the Internationalization of the Sinai Conflict