Amid the international reaction to the chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21st (21/8/13) events in Egypt have been very much pushed into the background. This actually makes me much more suspicious of the timing of that attack.
Saudi Arabia who are heavily backing the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army (SQIA) were outraged when the Egyptian people overthrew Hosni Mubarak in January 2011 because they feared that if Egypt were to turn into a prosperous democracy people within Saudi Arabia would begin to question why they have to put up with a Monarchy almost entirely for the personal gain of the Royal Family. As such the Saudis supported the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi in the hope that its incompetence would discredit the Brotherhood and deter a similar uprising in Saudi Arabia.
Although it has caused division across the world the chemical weapons attack and any possible response should be particularly polarising in Egypt. Part of the Morsi's main problem is that in government the Brotherhood got swept up in the Sunni V Shia holy war element of the conflict in Syria at the expense of running Egypt. As such the prospect of foreign military intervention is likely to invigorate the Brotherhood's protests because they see the SQIA as their ideological siblings. This connection between the Brotherhood and the SQIA means that by association the SQIA are not particularly popular in Egypt and the prospect on US military action in any Arab country is always going to be unpopular. For example the Tamarod movement that helped oust Morsi has called for the Suez Canal to be blocked to any warships attempting to use it to take up position in the Mediterranean for an attack on Syria. Testing the strength of Tamarod's support seems to be the main reason why the US yesterday (1/9/13) announced its intention to move the USS Nimitz from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canak.
As for the security situation in Egypt it seems to be gradually improving with the government being able to incrementally move back the start of the nighttime curfew. In Cairo it now begins at 11pm which is getting close to being lifted completely. The Muslim Brotherhood through their front organisation The National Alliance to Support Legitimacy (NASL) are continuing to hold weekly protests such as last Friday's (30/8/13) "Friday of Determination" protest. However support for these protests is dwindling with Friday's said to total no more than 20,000 people nationally and in some parts of Cairo fewer then 100 people took part in the marches. There were though 6 deaths and 190 reported wounded on Friday but these appear to be the result of clashes between the protesters and local residents rather then the result of action by the security forces.
This dwindling support for the protests seems to have prompted something of a split within the Brotherhood with some factions calling for peaceful civil disobedience while other factions seem to be taking on the classical terrorism tactics seen in the Sinai. For example on Thursday (29/8/13) 1 police officer was killed and 3 wounded when gunmen on a motorbike opened fire on their checkpoint in Port Said. On Friday (30/8/13) gunmen in a car opened fire on a police station in the Heliopolis district of Cairo killing 1 police officer and wounding another. On Saturday (31/8/13) there was another drive-by shooting at a Church in Port Said which wounded 4 police officers. This was followed by a suspected RPG attack on a container ship in the Suez Canal which failed causing no damage or injuries. On Sunday (1/9/13) a rudimentary bomb was discovered and diffused in a bag at the central train station in Alexandria. Today 2 people were injured when a hand grenade/home made bomb was thrown at a police station in the Cairo suburb of Giza. So far all of these terror attacks have been crude and amateurish but they are something the security forces need to pay close attention to in order to prevent the terrorists becoming more professional. Based on what is going on in the Sinai Egypt's security forces seem to be able to cope with this emerging threat because there the number of arrests and deaths of terrorists is increasing while the number of attacks is decreasing.
As for Morsi himself on Sunday (1/9/13) he was formally charged and will face trial over the killing of 7 protesters who had assembled outside the Presidential Palace on December 4th 2012 (4/12/12) to protest one of Morsi's many diktats/decrees. Obviously I've not seen the case papers but if, as is being reported, prosecutors have corroborated testimony from police and Republican Guard commanders that Morsi ordered them to remove the protesters only for the order to be refused they have more than enough to go to trial and probably convict regardless of whether they can prove that Morsi ordered the Brotherhood thugs who attacked the protest to do so. The case against Morsi over the January 2011 prison break is still being prepared.
The other massive piece of news from Egypt recently is that yesterday the 50 members of the Assembly to rewrite the constitution was announced. Along with the 50 alternates all I have at the moment is a list of 100 names that I do not recognise. Therefore I will comment further when I've had time to familiarise myself. However the formation of the assembly does represent a huge step in the right direction in terms of returning Egypt to democracy and cementing the revolution.
20:35 on 2/9/13.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment