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:
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