Blunt approach to COIN fails?
An unusually long anonymous Reuters article, which appears to have had access to officialdom, residents and just maybe others:http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/0...A2F05320140316
Amidst the details is the suggestion the militants are moving into Egypt proper.
Will Gaza be the global jihadists' next 'ground zero'?
A short piece from Haaretz by Aaron Zelin, which includes remarks on the appearance in Gaza of IS and their social wlefare activity:http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premi...E8CC3C3A150929
Sinai in lockdown after bomb kills 30 troops
Quote:
Cairo (AFP) - Egypt imposed a state of emergency Saturday across parts of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as the military pounded suspected jihadists after a suicide car bombing killed 30 soldiers.
Friday's bombing was the deadliest attack on security forces since the army deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, to the fury of his supporters.
The state of emergency in the north and centre of the Sinai will remain in place for three months, the president's office said.
A curfew is in force from 5:00 pm to 7:00 am.
Egypt also announced it would close the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, the only entry to the Palestinian territory not controlled by Israel.
http://news.yahoo.com/car-bomb-kills...142753454.html
All Egypt’s a prison with soldiers as guards
A long article on Egypt in LRB:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n04/tom-stevenson/sisis-way
It ends with:
Quote:
The Egyptian state demands compliance: ‘security’ is all that counts. Anyone thought to be a threat to civil order is extracted from the population, locked up and imaginatively punished, terrifying those who remain outside the cage. And of those who four years ago dreamed of a new society and are not themselves behind bars, most are now succumbing to the lethargy of defeat.
Let General Sisi explain. An interview (in English):http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1017434.html
Collusion to Crackdown: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt
Dr. Omar Ashour's latest Brookings paper 'Collusion to Crackdown: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt' and summarised in part:
Quote:
Ashour concludes that Egypt's prospects for social stability and economic recovery will remain bleak if the relationship between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood is not redefined within institutional, democratic rules of political competition. He argues that Egypt’s military should embrace a balanced civil-military relationship to realize broad, long-term benefits and avoid otherwise inevitable and costly clashes with segments of Egyptian society. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, Ashour recommends that it reevaluate its recent decisions and work to develop a sustained, solid, and cross-ideological civilian front that can pressure the military to leave politics and allow for democratization.
Link:http://www.brookings.edu/research/pa...n-egypt-ashour
Sinai (and Egypt): far from "stable" or "under-control
A noteworth commentary on the insurgency in the Sinai by Dr. Omar Ashour, of Exeter University & Brookings and near to the end makes a wider point:
Quote:
Historically, military and security blunders in Sinai have caused major shifts in the balance of power within the ruling elite. This includes the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Suez Crisis over other rivals, the death of Abd al-Hakim Amer after the June 1967 debacle, and finally the removal of Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi and his deputy General Sami Anan in August 2012 after 16 soldiers were massacred in a Rafah border post.
The further deterioration in the security situation has caused rifts within the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt's most powerful political entity at the moment. Whether these rifts will expand or shrink remains to be seen.
But as currently seen is Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere in other regions, military-based dictatorial regimes can be future civil war projects - even if, at some point, they succeed in wiping out opposition, as the Assad regime did in Hama in 1982.
Link:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...081441982.html