Red zones Sinai peninsula is a near-unbroken stretch of Islamist insurgency as only one safe enclave remains

The Foreign Office map of the Sinai peninsula tells the story of this remote area of Egypt.

Almost all of the region’s deserts and mountains are marked red for “advise against all travel” or amber for “advise against all but essential travel”.

Like a besieged outpost, only the tiny perimeter encompassing the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh is marked green and considered safe enough for Britons. The ancient monastery of St Catherine’s, built in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Sinai, is now thought too dangerous for visitors.

Over the past four years, thousands of square miles of Sinai have slipped out of the control of the Cairo government and into the hands of a plethora of Islamist movements, including the terrorists of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Last year, Isil bluntly declared Sinai to be a province – or “wilayat” – of their supposed “Islamic State”. Day after day, gunmen proclaiming their loyalty to Isil fight the Egyptian army, which has responded with air strikes by helicopter gunships.

The Sinai insurgency began after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Although Isil attracts all the attention – particularly with its claim to have destroyed a Russian airliner over Sinai on Saturday – it is actually a new player in an old conflict.

The nomadic Bedouin tribes of Sinai bitterly resent their treatment by the Cairo government, which they accuse of stealing their land and water for tourism projects and trying to stamp out their way of life.

Isil and other violent Islamists have exploited these grievances to turn simmering Bedouin anger into a fully fledged insurgency, directed at Western visitors as much as Egyptian rulers. The authorities have responded by turning Sharm el-Sheikh into a closely guarded enclave in a region awash with resentment and violence.