ANDREW HARROD: SOMALIA ON THE NILE?
http://philosproject.org/egypt-jihad-somalia-isis-islam/
This was an interesting panel at the Hudson Institute over the summer concerning Egypt’s fight against ISIS and other Islamists and a possible descent into chaos.
Egypt’s future has recently been called into question by many experts who are asking if this chaotic country can continue to add any value to the region. That very issue was the hot button topic of a recent panel, “The Future of Egypt: A Somalia on the Nile or a Stable, Robust U.S. Ally in the Region?” The event – hosted at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. – was participated in by Center for American Progress Egypt expert Mokhtar Awad, who verbalized his fear that Egypt could become the Middle East’s next crisis.
Awad painted a bleak picture of the complex security situation in Egypt, one that consists of “multiple-threat theaters and multiple-threat actors” who operate for many different reasons in many different places. He and his fellow panelists drew attention to Egypt’s indigenous, Sinai-based jihadist groups that have links to international jihadi organizations. For instance, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on Nov. 2, 2014, forming the ISIS Wilayat Sinai (Sinai Province).
“The security situation in the Sinai is, in my view, very discouraging,” said Middle East security analyst Jantzen Garnett, noting the increasingly sophisticated attacks ABM has carried out since its ISIS allegiance pledge. Those incidents featured advanced weaponry such as guided anti-tank missiles, Man-portable air defense system missiles, and recoilless rifles. Hudson Institute Egypt expert Samuel Tadros grimly reported that many Egyptian military members – including a former Special Forces officer – have recently defected to jihadist groups, and an Egyptian sailor helped an ABM team seize an Egyptian warship in November 2014 as part of an unsuccessful attack upon Israeli ships.
Garnett said that the ABM’s attempt to emulate ISIS territorial seizures in Iraq with a July 1 attack on the north Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwaid was predictable, but he added that “the size of the operation itself was unprecedented,” and that the Egyptian military repulsed ABM only after 10 hours of fighting. Tadros said that at Sheik Zuwaid, ABM MANPADS deterred Egyptian army helicopters and forced resort to airstrikes from higher-altitude Egyptian air force F-16s.
Today, the Egyptian military controls little of Sinai outside of some military installations and checkpoints, and the ABM has assassinated Egyptian officials as close to that region as the North Sinai provincial capital of Al-Arish. Such intimidating attacks betraying ABM’s developed intelligence capabilities are reminiscent of the Islamic State’s targeted killings during its successful advance upon Mosul, Iraq.
Tadros criticized an Egyptian counterinsurgency campaign that he said seeks to “kill the whole population and thus kill the militants,” a move he called the exact opposite of American Gen. David Petraeus’ tactics in Iraq. While most of the Egyptian troops are poorly trained, the military’s lower ranks’ suffering ABM attacks concurred with a popular push inside Egypt for indiscriminate violence. Describing many Egyptians’ view of the ongoing struggle as a “fight to the death” with jihadists, Tadros said that, “if the military kills 10, the kind of reactions you get in Egypt are, ‘Why didn’t they kill 100?’” He advocated empowering Sinai locals to fight jihadists and said that Egypt benefits from a relatively new high level of cooperation with Israeli intelligence.
But Tadros was worried about Egypt’s exposure to Libya’s “ungovernable territory” that has been plagued by civil war and three Islamic State affiliates. The Egyptian military – historically oriented toward conflict with Israel – had a weak presence there in the Western Desert, where jihadist threats pose serious dangers of reaching the Egyptian Islamists’ heartland in the country’s south.
Awad said that his primary concern is the violent, non-jihadist Islamists currently operating in Egypt, either acting in retribution for security force abuses or advocating for the return of the Muslim Brotherhood to power. “ABM is largely confined to the Sinai, both in terms of its objectives and largely in terms of its operations,” he said, adding that the group’s “pledge to ISIS is kind of forcing them to be more than what they really are in their DNA: the top Egyptian Islamist jihadist group.” The key threat is this reservoir of thousands of Islamist young people in mainland Egypt, the majority of whom are not affiliated with any group, and who lack a clear political strategy.
The panelist warned that these individuals could view the Islamic State as the “best possible example to follow,” one that provides the Islamist ideological full package. Describing what he called the model ISIS salesperson, Awad portrayed an individual who would cite Islamic State gains in Iraq, Libya and Syria, for emulation in Egypt. An Egyptian ISIS member in Aleppo, Syria told Awad that he did not consider Egypt ripe for jihad, but Awad stressed that such evaluations could change. “While ISIS is containable in the Sinai Peninsula, an ISIS insurgency in mainland Egypt would be a cancer that you really can’t stop,” he said.
Substantiating Awad’s fears, Garnett spoke about recent ABM attacks outside Sinai in Egypt’s Suez province. Another Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a July 11 car bomb attack at the Italian consulate in Cairo, suggesting that ISIS could have an independent affiliate in mainland Egypt.
Tadros said that such prognoses invalidate the Cold War mentality in American policymaking circles that erroneously view Egypt as a regional leader. Although Egypt is the Middle East’s most populous country, Israel’s neighbor and a guardian of the vital Suez Canal, an Egypt consumed by domestic turmoil could not counter Iran or guide an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “Egypt is no longer one of the competitors in the region,” Tadros said, adding, “It’s the prize in the region in a deadly political contest,” a nod to the panel title’s reference to Somalia.
Perhaps overshadowed by the Middle East’s many other crises, Egypt is now becoming part of – not a solution to – the region’s many, compounding troubles. The Hudson Institute’s Lee Smith had joked in his opening remarks that the Egypt panel “has nothing to do with the Iran deal,” but while the rest of the world worries about Iranian nuclear aspirations, other dangers – like Egypt – lurk in the wider Middle East.
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