Egypt 2007-2016 (merged thread)

[TheCurmudgeon]

I started with an idea, that a military, any military, is sworn to defend ( and feels a real duty towards) it citizens.

Now, reality is that whom the military considers "citizens" is a cultural matter. Further, any military, particularly in those parts of the world (like Indonesia) where the military is expected to fund its own operations (though various means) may be divided between the military's best interest and the citizen's best interest, may present a natural wedge between the military and the citizen. Despite this most military's feel duty bound to protect and defend the civilian population.

Where there is a total break down of civilian rule the military feels compelled, based on their oath, to step in. Is this so wrong? Should we not find ways to support this? If "yes" what are the parameters of our support?

[SWJ Blog]

Egypt: When a Coup is Not a Coup

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[SWJ Blog]

The 23 Twitter Accounts to Follow on Egypt

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[SWJ Blog]

The Egyptian Sinai: A New Front for Jihadist Activity

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[davidbfpo]

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.

[condottiere]

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.

[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.

[CBCalif]

"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."

Apparently the Chinese and probably others are getting concerned.

From: StratRisks at http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/18623 March 25, 2014

The growing economic alliance between Israel and China is moving forward with a $2 billion, 300 kilometer freight rail link connecting Eilat, on the Red Sea, with Ashdod Port, on the Mediterranean, Germany’s Deutsche Welle news magazine reported on Monday. ...

The rail link will both increase access to goods for Africa, where China is the continent’s biggest partner, with trade worth $120 billion, while also providing an alternative shipping route to the Suez Canal, controlled by Egypt.

[davidbfpo]

The RPG attack was in September 2013, not last month - as you posted. I thought I had missed something. See:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23918642

Interesting strategic development, a Sino-Israeli investment in a railway line. A good catch.

[davidbfpo]

A new Henry Jackson Society report 'Terror in the Sinai', has yet to be read here; their summary:

...examines the terrorist threat coming from the Sinai Peninsula. The report assesses the presence of al-Qaeda and its ideology in the Sinai, emerging ties between Salafi-jihadist groups and local Bedouins, and the successes and failures of the Egyptian army’s recent military efforts in confronting the threat. It finds strong indications of an influx of foreign fighters and weapons into the Sinai and a threat against the Egyptian state and Israel that is more co-ordinated and sophisticated than ever before.

Link:http://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-co...nai-Report.pdf

[davidbfpo]

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

[AdamG]

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

[davidbfpo]

A reasonably comprehensive report on the attacks on January 29th, by "Wilayat Sinai”:

These organized and qualitative attacks targeted 10 military headquarters and bases in three different cities at the same time, including the largest headquarters of the army in Sinai, known as Battalion 101, in el-Arish. The attacks left more than 35 military personnel dead and 70 others wounded.

Link:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/orig...cks-army.html?

[davidbfpo]

A long article on Egypt in LRB:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n04/tom-stevenson/sisis-way

It ends with:

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

[davidbfpo]

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

[SWJ Blog]

Status Quo in the Sinai

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[SWJ Blog]

Disrupting the MFO: ISIS in Sinai

Entry Excerpt:



--------
Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

[davidbfpo]

Dr Omar Ashour of Exeter University has a Foriegn Affairs article which is blistering in its portrayal of Egypt's campaign in the Sinai:https://www.foreignaffairs.com/artic...orn-insurgency

Here are three choice passages:

To be sure, guerrilla warfare is not new to Egypt. What is new is the quality, which is comparable to regular Special Forces operations.

There are many reasons for the durability of the Sinai insurgency. Of particular importance are the military capacity and resources of the insurgents, the regime’s counterinsurgency blunders, and the changing political environment in which both operate. Other elements do matter, of course, including SP’s propaganda and perceived legitimacy, but they are secondary to the others.

Even as the insurgents have waged an unusually effective guerrilla war, the regime has waged an unusually ineffective counterinsurgency. Cairo’s counterinsurgency policy in Sinai was built on three pillars: repression, intelligence, and propaganda. Intensive, reactive, and mostly indiscriminate repression was the hallmark of the policy in the north.

There is a small main thread on Egypt's Sinai problem (with 21 posts and 8925 views) and the current thread on the Russian airliner crash (with 33 posts and 2254 views).