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NO SURPRISES were expected in the three-day ptian presidential election that took place this week. As is customary in dictatorships, any remotely viable candidates challenging President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi have either been forced out or are boycotting the election.

To lend a veneer of legitimacy, there is one other candidate, Moussa Mostafa Moussa — but he is a supporter of the president.

With Mr el-Sisi’s mandate renewed by a landslide, he will still be no closer to solving Egypt’s major problems: seething political unrest repressed with an iron hand, a shaky economy and Islamist insurgencies.

In recent weeks the Egyptian army has launched a concerted campaign against Willayat Daesh, the branch of Isis in Sinai. The largest army in the Middle East is still incapable of eradicating a relatively small jihadist movement attacking its soldiers and civilians in northern Sinai.

According to a New York Times report last year, Israel has worked closely with the Egyptian army in recent years in fighting Isis in Sinai.

The report detailed over a hundred attacks carried out by Israel in the peninsula by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones at the Egyptians’ request.

Israeli analysts who have been following the insurgency closely believe the Egyptian army is having trouble transitioning from a military built mainly around unwieldy armoured divisions to a more mobile force capable of executing an effective counter-insurgency campaign.

But the obstacles facing Cairo in pacifying Sinai are not only military.

As the battle with Isis on the Mediterranean coast

President Abdel Fattah elSisi and in the desert has gone back and forth, hundreds of Islamist fighters have been killed — and yet they always seem to be able to replenish their ranks.

Contrary to reports of veteran fighters arriving from Syria and Iraq and Islamists fleeing from Egypt’s main cities, the main reservoir of volunteers is among the Bedouin tribes of northern Sinai.

The willingness of local Bedouins to join up and risk their lives is a result not just of Islamic radicalisation but also long-term economic stagnation in northern Sinai. By contrast, south Sinai — which includes the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh — has remained calm because the Bedouin tribes there are employed in the tourist resorts.

Without government investment in north Sinai, simply killing off more jihadists won’t end the insurgency.