Egypt 2007-2016 (merged thread)

[Fuchs]

A German reporter from the German public TV's studio in Cairo attempted to get reports about increasing religious radicalisation of the tribes on the Sinai out to the public to no avail. He had done all the journalism, but the media at home wasn't interested.

Only during the revolution in Egypt he was finally able to push tiny bits of info to the public during interviews (not during the news time slots itself).

So this Sinai thing was apparently visible early on for someone in the region and the escalation was predictable by approx. 2009 or maybe earlier.

I doubt this rather remote and barren place is going to produce more than a few irritations, though: An occasional shot at ships in the Canal, at Israeli or Egyptian border guards, some extortion of Gaza smugglers, maybe some extremists from the mainland going into hiding in Sinai.

Egypt as a whole has enough of an incentive to keep the canal usable.

[davidbfpo]

Try this:

A 6-minute analysis of recent events in Egypt, explaining why the military-backed interim Government is more concerned with Salafist attacks in the Sinai Peninsula than it is with ongoing mass protests

Link:http://eaworldview.com/2013/10/egypt...-mass-protest/

[jcustis]

There is an undeniable uptick in violence in the Sinai, not only in frequency but also intensity. Every morning the first thing I do when I get to work is browse the Egyptian news websites, Al-Aribiya, and Al-Jazeera, and there are usually accounts of a shooting, bombing, or security sweep.

At this point, it looks to me like the militants are trying to accomplish a blend of denying Egyptian security forces freedom of mobility in the area, and executing attacks that are violent enough to give less-determined forces reason for pause. This in term allows them to carry on with the illicit activities that are the bread and butter for the Bedouins who are marginalized by the central government. They don't seem to have the resources to conduct much more than localized, small-scale attacks that are fairly defensive in nature, but there are occasions when they have massed

There have been a few spectacular events like the 5 Aug 2012 attack in vicinity of the Karem Abus Salem Border Crossing where 16 soldiers were killed after a large number of attackers stormed the location during the iftar meal.

On 18 Aug 2013, two busloads of off-duty policemen were attacked and essentially murdered after being forced off the two buses they were travelling on, and that sparked another wave of security operations.

A recent RPG attacks on a passing container ship in the Suez was a worry, even though it did not cause significant damage, because it is the Suez after all.

If Egypt does not get a handle on the underlying causes of the militancy in the area, if will have a slow-burning insurgency on its hands that will require regular kinetic operations (with Israeli coordination no doubt) to try and keep a lid on things.

We all know how that tends to turn out.

[Bob's World]

If Egypt does not get a handle on the underlying causes of the militancy in the area, if will have a slow-burning insurgency on its hands that will require regular kinetic operations (with Israeli coordination no doubt) to try and keep a lid on things.

We all know how that tends to turn out.

"The underlying cause of the militancy in the area" is, and has been, the government of Egypt.

Of course governments never like hearing this, and typically the government is the legal/legitimate actor in these contests, and the population in question and those who act out are almost always the illegal/illegitimate actor.

But legal and legitiamate is not the same as right, or just.

I believe these are the same people that Moses took sanctuary among when he was forced to flee after he murdered the overseeer. We all know how that story ended...

[jcustis]

Sir,

I am finally getting to Killcullen's Accidental Guerilla to add to my morning commute's reading. It's the only thing good about the MacDill express.

I forgot that I wrote the following in it:

"One can neither kill nor bribe a resistance out of existance, perhaps into the closet, but not out of existance."

Now where did that come from?

[davidbfpo]

A new report that maybe of value:

The Saban Center’s new Analysis Paper, Sinai Security: Opportunities for Unlikely Cooperation Among Egypt, Israel, and Hamas, examines the interests of various actors in, and neighboring, Sinai; considers areas of mutual concern; and lays out the individual capabilities Egypt, Israel and Hamas have for addressing these threats, as well as opportunities for all parties to combine their core strengths to better address mutual interests. Despite these shared interests, the relationship between each of these actors is also extremely complicated. As such, this paper also considers obstacles to cooperation and opportunities for the United States to encourage trust-building and intelligence cooperation between Egypt and Israel.

Link:http://www.brookings.edu/research/pa...t-israel-gold?

[davidbfpo]

A rather gloomy report, although some interesting local attitudes are revealed and the Egyptian state response is - well - robust:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...i-spreads.html

Numbers of attacks:

..the number of reported jihadi attacks in the Sinai has fallen rom 104 in July to 29 in October.

It is quality that matters:

In September, a car bomb set off by a recruit, a disillusioned former army officer, came close to killing the interior minister in Cairo.