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.
(Originally Posted) 17:30 on 13/8/13
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