Egypt to participate in anti-Daesh meeting in UK

The Egyptian foreign ministry announced yesterday that it will participate the Global Coalition Against Daesh’s next meeting in London to discuss ideological and media strategies to counter the militant group.

The ministry said in a statement released yesterday that it will participate in the conference’s Group for Strategic Communication session tomorrow.

“The meeting is held amid a growing international consensus that military victory over Daesh in Syria and Iraq is not the end of the road,” the ministry’s spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said, according to the statement.

“There is no way to eliminate the terrorist group completely without achieving victory on the ideological arena and refuting the extremist discourse,” he added.

According to Abu Zeid, the meeting is set to discuss the plan to fight Daesh and like-minded groups at the ideological and communications levels through 33 aspects that include combating extremist discourse via social networking websites and the encrypted information networks that such groups used to recruit new members and obtain funds and weapons.

Read: Daesh threatens Egypt with attacks on polling stations

The plan also includes presenting and promoting the “true moderate Islam”. Such campaigns should not be confined to the offline realm but it is essential they take place in the online world, according to Abu Zeid.

Last month, Egypt’s army launched a major military operation, titled “Sinai 2018” in the Sinai Peninsula aiming to crush a Daesh insurgency that has been targeting security forces and most recently civilians.

Critics have questioned the operation saying it is another means through which Al-Sisi is quashing dissenting voices and silencing opponents. Since he came to power in a military coup in 2013, Al-Sisi has arrested opposition members, jailed them and left them facing trial in unfair courts which do not allow them a defence. Extrajudicial killings of prisoners have also been reported in Sinai.

Read: Daesh claims responsibility for air base attack in Egypt’s Sinai