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Thread: Egypt 2007-2016 (merged thread)

  1. #41
    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    Perhaps. I do not fully understand their agenda or allegiances, but there are militants in the Sinai who give the security apparatus problems. Cairo is different terrain though.
    The Mubarak regime had a significant apparatus to watch and control those discontents, so I think it would be hard for any hardline, radical opponents to take action without it ratcheting up to pretty open conflicy very quickly. Egypt is not some burgeoning state. Its security forces would be fairly capable of controlling a critical situation unless you're talking about a very wide sort of insurgency, which I do not see this expanding to.

    I will say this though...Egypt's current state of affairs is a complex problem and the issues are not black and white. What's even more interesting is the fact that you won't be able to pull tribal identity out of the average man on the street like you might an Afghan farmer from Helmand or Khandahar.
    Last edited by jcustis; 08-19-2013 at 02:20 AM.

  2. #42
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default What did happen to the police vehicle?

    Jcustis remarked in Post 26 partly about:
    We can pick up a few clues of the nature of the response, from the footage and stills that are out there of the crack down. One specific one that comes to mind are the sequence of pics of the armored 4-wheel vehicle spilling off of the 4-story overpass.
    I've only seen headlines about this incident, so EA Worldview provide a very short video clip before the 'spilling off' and this commentary:
    One of the dramatic stories during Wednesday’s mass killings in Egypt was that anti-regime protesters had pushed a police vehicle off a bridge in a Cairo suburb of Nasr City, near the sit-in that was being attacked by security forces.

    We featured a picture of the incident, which supposedly killed several officers, and video which showed the vehicle on the ground as clashes raged around it.

    This morning, however, a video has been posted which appears to give a very different version of the event — amid congestion on the 6 October Bridge in Nasr City, the police vehicle hits a bus. It then reverses and skids off the bridge.

    While men are following the police van as it backs up, they are not close enough to have “pushed” the vehicle.
    Link:http://eaworldview.com/2013/08/egypt...-on-wednesday/
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-19-2013 at 01:57 PM. Reason: add Post number
    davidbfpo

  3. #43
    Council Member TheCurmudgeon's Avatar
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    Default Posted elsewhere but....

    I thought this might be appropriate here too ...

    From and article entitled "Egypt’s Military: Doing What Germany’s Should Have Done in 1933"

    Sudanese writer Al-Hajj Warraq, got it exactly right in an Egyptian television interview last year. He said:

    Democracy is about more than just the ballot box. Democracy is a culture engraved upon the cerebral box before it is the ballot box. One cannot talk about freedom in the absence of free minds. The tragedy of the Arab Spring is that when the tyrannical regimes fell, the fruits were reaped by movements that preach closed-mindedness, rather than free thinking. The outcome will be regimes that are worse than those that were toppled.

    Apparently, the Egyptian people – at least the 30 million who were in the streets marching against Morsi – agreed with him.
    "I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

    Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
    ---

  4. #44
    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    David,

    There is video out now from a ground level POV, and itt is chilling to watch the vehicle slam to the ground on its roof. The occupants likely died on impact.

    I never believed the descriptions that the crowd pushed it off the bridge. Bad driving was of course the less obvious cause.

  5. #45
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    Revolution is the ugliest, most brutal form of democracy. All the more reason for governments to open legal venues to their people to express their political discontent. This is the essence of our own bill of rights. But Kings cling to power tightly, typically only turning loose of total control as their head strikes the cobblestones.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  6. #46
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default What did one General say?

    Egyptian police General Amr in an interview:
    We are 90 million Egyptians and there are only 3 million Muslim Brotherhood We need six months for. liquidate or imprison all this is not a problem, as we have already done in the 1990s.
    Link to Le Monde, French newspaper, to a IMO badly structured article, which includes this quote:http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/articl...3103_3212.html

    No wonder some speculate the 'Algerian model' maybe followed:http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/midd...erian-playbook
    davidbfpo

  7. #47
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    David:

    Slightly off topic but the appropriateness of the articles you cite reminded me of the splendid job you are doing as moderator. Keep up the good work.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  8. #48
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Stakelback On Terror

    Video discussion on the second phase oh the Arab Spring



    http://blogs.cbn.com/stakelbeckonterror/

  9. #49
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default The Brotherhood :Americas Next Great Enenmy

    Interview of Author Eric Stakelback Author of The Brotherhood a book about the Muslim Brotherhood and how dangerous they are and their links all the way back to NAZI Germany!


    http://www.booktv.org/Watch/14856/Th...eat+Enemy.aspx
    Last edited by slapout9; 08-22-2013 at 07:07 AM. Reason: stuff

  10. #50
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Batons not bayonets mattered

    A powerful Reuters special report, their title is 'The real force behind Egypt's 'revolution of the state':http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...99908D20131010

    It starts with (minus one passage):
    Little attention was paid when a group of Muslim Brotherhood leaders broke free from their cells in a prison in the far off Wadi el-Natroun desert. But the incident, which triggered a series of prison breaks by members of the Islamist group around the country, caused panic among police officers fast losing their grip on Egypt.

    In all, 200 policemen and security officers were killed that day, Jan 28, called the Friday of Rage by anti-Mubarak demonstrators. Some had their throats slit. One of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders to escape was Mohamed Mursi, who would become president the following year.
    As Egypt appeared to move towards the removal of President Mursi's MB government, much was made of the potential for interaction with the Egyptian military by the US military - was there a relationship with the "batons".
    davidbfpo

  11. #51
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Sinai: a strategic peninsula

    For sometime I have wondered about the level of political violence in the Sinai peninsula. During the Mubarak era there were irregular terrorist attacks on the tourist areas along the eastern shoreline (Gulf of Aqaba) and sometimes violent clashes with others, including the Bedouin. For details try a search on BBC News. Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_Peninsula

    Today:
    A suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car on Thursday into a checkpoint outside a coastal city (El-Arish) in Egypt's volatile Sinai Peninsula and detonated it, killing three soldiers and a policeman..
    Link:http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/relig...liceman/nbKnf/

    Strategic why? Aside from geography there are the tourists from West European, with some Russians too, are a major employer and a key source of foreign exchange. Egypt's main foreign exchange source is the Suez Canal, which remains a key global shipping route and last month Jihadists claimed responsibility for RPGs fired at a container ship:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23918642

    Then there is the running sore of the Gaza Strip, with a Hamas government and the problems of border control - the smuggling via tunnels into Gaza. Egypt of course signed the 1979 peace agreement with Israel, which imposes limits on the number of Egyptian troops allowed and the presence of the partly-US observer mission MFO:http://mfo.org/

    In August 2013 it is suspected Israel launched an air strike on suspected Islamic militants, illustrating patience may be limited when Egypt's capability to exert control is limited:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23642422

    This week I learnt from an observer of another factor - the presence before Mursi fell of thousands of Jihadist militants. These are not the "usual suspects" i.e. AQ as the vast majority of Egypt's jihadists renounced the violent jihad, in an agreement with state security many years ago. Those who did not agree remained in prison, two thousand were released by Mursi's government and eighteen thousand who had emigrated were allowed home.

    Some of these ex-Jihadists reportedly went to the Sinai, where the MB was training its own street fighters (although I am sure they had another name).

    A nice "cocktail" and fully stirred up by the removal of Mursi's government, with the follow-on action taken to ban the MB.

    A place to watch.
    davidbfpo

  12. #52
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    All things considered, the Egyptian military should hope that if an insurrection blows up, it will happen on the Sinai rather than take on an urban character, as it would be easier to isolate and eliminate them far from the cover of a civilian population and probing media cameras.

    The only real danger would be a programme for the construction and launching of suicide fireships and torpedoes to take out the commercial shipping.

  13. #53
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    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.

  14. #54
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    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/
    davidbfpo

  15. #55
    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    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.

  16. #56
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
    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...
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

  17. #57
    Council Member jcustis's Avatar
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    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?

  18. #58
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Unlikely partners?

    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

  19. #59
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default All is NOT well

    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.
    davidbfpo

  20. #60
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default To kill or not to kill: Army and politics in post-revolution Egypt

    Dr Omar Ashour, Exeter University, always gives a valuable insight into his home country and this time seeks to answer:
    what explains the decision to stage a coup and the repressive follow-up? Political science can offer a few explanations.
    Just in case you forgot or preferred to not know:
    in the post-coup environment, the levels of repression and bloodshed are unprecedented in its modern history.

    The number of victims killed by security forces in less than 7 hours on August 14 in Raba al-Adawiyya and al-Nahda Squares exceeds the number of victims of Muammar al-Qaddafi's two-day massacre in Abu Selim Prison in June 1996 (1269 victims), and Napoleon's massacre in the process of storming al-Azhar Mosque in 1799 (around 600 deaths). The Abu Zaabal massacre [Ar] in which 38 anti-coup political prisoners were killed inside a prison transport van, exceeded the number of victims of a 1957 massacre committed by Nasser's security forces in Tora prison.
    Link:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...113526674.html

    As others have asked - will Egypt follow the Algerian way?
    davidbfpo

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