Is America's three-decade deployment to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula coming to an end?

The Obama administration is quietly reviewing the future of America's three-decade deployment to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, fearful the lightly equipped peacekeepers could be targets of escalating Islamic State-inspired violence. Options range from beefing up their protection or even pulling them out altogether, officials told The Associated Press.

The American forces have helped marshal peace in the peninsula since Egypt's 1979 historic peace treaty with Israel. Some 700 members of an Army battalion and logistics support unit are currently there. They mainly monitor and verify compliance, and have little offensive capability. Several other countries also provide personnel.

Egypt has battled militants in northern Sinai for years, but attacks against its military and police have expanded since the July 2013 coup of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, with the Islamic State affiliate based in Sinai claiming responsibility for several large-scale assaults. Egypt's army under current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is trying to snuff out the insurgency.

For the United States, the fighting is troublesome, centered in the heart of the volatile Middle East near key maritime trading routes and alongside the most durable peace yet established between Israel and an Arab state. And it risks putting the so-called Multinational Force and Observers in the cross-hairs.

Armed primarily with light weapons, armored personnel carriers and similarly limited materiel, the forces lack the capacity to take on Islamic State or other militants across the sparsely populated, desert territory. As a result, officials said, the Obama administration has been conducting an "interagency review" of the U.S. posture in the Sinai.

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http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/08/18/us-weighs-more-security-withdrawal-option--sinai-forces/31942785/