Despite rumours to the contrary the Egyptian military did not move in to clear the Muslim Brotherhood's camps at the Rabea al-Adaweya Mosque in Nasr city and in Al-Nahda Square in New Cairo city. The main reason for this is that as soon as the rumours of a clearance began the Brotherhood began busing in supporters from across the country swelling the numbers at the camps to an unmanageable level. This actually highlights the main problem I have in talking about how to deal with the camps - any advice I publish on the Internet will be read by the Brotherhood meaning they will have advance knowledge of the military's tactics making the task of clearing the camps even more difficult. By way of a solution I am considering a visit to the Egyptian Embassy in London. After all "Honorary High Commander of the Central Security Force (Cairo division)" will certainly make for a much more impressive description of my occupation at this upcoming Court case then "Unemployed."
Joking aside it is quite clear that something needs to be done soon about the Brotherhood's camps. Both on Friday (9/8/13) and again today those camps have played a central role in Brotherhood demonstrations that have led to violence on the streets of Cairo. Added to that there have been a near continuous stream of incidents of torture carried out by Brotherhood supporters living in the camp being reported both by members of the public and international bodies such as Reporters Without Borders. This along with the traffic disruption, noise and sanitation problems mean that the camps are making life unbearable for local residents which in turn is causing local residents to lash out against the Brotherhood increasing the levels of violence and general sense of insecurity on the streets of the capital. At a meeting on Monday (12/8/13) the government of national unity agreed that rather than charging in to disperse the camps by force the military would first cordon off the camps in order to stop more people and supplies entering while leaving anyone who wishes to leave free to do so. This strikes me as a step in the right direction however while the cordons are in place more work needs to be done to find an alternative site for the Brotherhood's protest to continue.
Quite apart from the moral argument that while they most certainly do not have the right to carry out acts of violence and disrupt the day to day running of the country in a democracy the Muslim Brotherhood do have a right to protest peacefully this actually solves one of the practical problems of dealing with the camps. While I don't have exact figures it is quite clear that both the Nasr city and the New Cairo city camps contain a substantial amount of people numbering in the tens of thousands. From their conduct, public statements and speeches it is quite clear that the Brotherhood will violently resist any attempt by the military to break up the camps and most certainly won't follow the military's instruction to peacefully return to their homes. Therefore any attempt to disperse the camp will in the first instance lead to a violent confrontation across large sections of Cairo in which there will likely be injuries and deaths suffered by both sides. Then because the Brotherhood are reasonably well organised and clearly intent on violent protest it is likely that the two large camps will simply be dispersed into smaller camps across the city which will spread the problem across a wider area and make it worse rather than solve it. The automatic response is that rather than simply aiming to disperse the Brotherhood members the security forces instead move in and arrest them in order to prevent them forming new camps. However the sheer number of people involved make this physically impractical and politically unpalatable. It would though be possible for the security forces to temporarily arrest this number of people in order to transport them a short distance by bus to a new protest site that they would be free to leave if they so wish.
Away from the situation in Cairo the security situation in the Sinai peninsula has flared up dramatically over the past week. Things really began last Wednesday with the assassination of Abdel Hamid Selma a senior figure in the Al-Fawakhria tribe who was gunned down as he was leaving a Mosque. A former member of Mubarak's now disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP) and of the Shura Council Selma recently spoke out in support of Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and the military's removal of Mohamed Morsi. As such it is quite clear that Selma was using his influence over the Al-Fawakhria tribe to help the military defeat Islamist groups in the Sinai. Therefore the Islamist groups killed him in order to stop him disrupting their plan.
That plan became apparent when on Thursday (8/8/13) Israel announced the closure of Eilat airport in response to an undisclosed security threat from the Sinai. On Friday (9/8/13) Israel responded to that threat with a missile strike that killed 4 members of the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis who were preparing to launch rockets against Eilat airport. Attempting to bring down a civilian airliner is of course something that no government will tolerate and Israel will most certainly not tolerate. Today the Mujahideen Shura Council which is a Jihadist umbrella group of which Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis are a part fired Grad rockets into Eilat in retaliation for the Israeli strike. Therefore it is quite clear that the Jihadists in the Sinai intend to provoke Israel into a conflict in order to link the Egyptian military's operation in the Sinai to Egypt in order to portray Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood as defenders of Islam and the military as Zionist collaborators. This is of course nonsense because the Jihadists are not going to destroy Israel by firing off a couple of Grad rockets. They are though likely to provoke an Israeli response that will make life more difficult for Hamas and the people of the Gaza strip.
The Jihadists narrative was certainly not borne out by the Egyptian military's response to the Israeli strike. On Saturday (10/8/13) they used Apache helicopter gunships to attack multiple positions around Sheikh Zuwayed in the Sinai. This operation is reported to have killed 25 members of the shadowy Jihad al-Alami (Global Jihad) group that is believed to be responsible for the August 2012 attack on the Kerem Shalom border crossing in which 16 Egyptian police officers were killed before the attackers fled into Israel. Jihad al-Alami don't seem to have any members of their own instead relying on local tribesmen who are paid to carry out attacks on the groups behalf. As such the group absolutely reeks of being the dirty tricks department of a foreign intelligence agency. Coming in the middle of the 2012 Olympic games the Kerem Shalom attack seemed very much like an Israel attempt to highlight the deteriorating security situation across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region in the wake of the so called 'Arab Spring' with a view to testing out international opinion ahead of November's Pillars of Cloud operation. Therefore by targeting Jihad al-Alami the Egyptian military appears to be retaliating against Israel for the incursion into Egypt's airspace while sending out the message that it will not be draw into a conflict with Israel regardless of whether it is the Jihadists or Israel itself doing the provoking.
17:30 on 13/8/13
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment