World Threats

The West is nervously awaiting the Egyptian parliamentary elections in September, hoping that the secularists can limit the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence. However, a recent outburst by a top secularist leader shows that even the alternatives to the Islamists will reevaluate the peace treaty with Israel.

“The Holocaust is a lie,” said Ahmed Ezz El-Arab, the vice chairman of the Wafd Party, Egypt’s largest secular party. “The Jews under German occupation were 2.4 million. So if they were all exterminated, where does the remaining 3.6 million come from?”

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Over 400 al-Qaeda militants have moved into the Sinai Peninsula, a senior Egyptian security official told Al-Hayyat TV Monday. According to the report, Egyptian forces are pursing the militants, which were described variously as Bedouins, Palestinians and foreign Arab citizens. Additionally, the statement claims Egyptian forces are monitoring reports of “a number of attacks against security forces in the Sinai city of El Arish.”

The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also addressed Egypt’s security problems in Sinai during a meeting of his government’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Egypt has had difficulties exercising its sovereignty over Sinai” he said, adding “What’s happening in Sinai is that global terrorist organizations are meddling there and their presence is increasing because of the connection between Sinai and Gaza.”

Central to Israeli concerns here are worries that the recently reopened Rafah border crossing will enable terrorist groups to transfer larger quantities of weapons and militants from Sinai into the Gaza strip.

According to the Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Coordinator of Government Activities Activities in the Territories (COGAT) some 162,000 people passed through the crossing in 2010 alone. Without independent monitoring officials from COGAT have called Egypt’s recent move to reopen the crossing “dangerous” and have called on the international community to stop it.

Egyptian terrorist organization Gama’a al-Islamiya has decided to form a political party to contest the country’s coming elections. According to a report from Egypt’s Al Masry Al Youm, the Islamist group known for its roles in the Luxor Massacre and the attempted assassination of former president Hosni Mubarek in 1995 says it is forming a”civil political party based on Islamic principles”.

Senior leader Tarek al-Zumar, who, along with his cousin Abboud, was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, adds, “The party will not use violence in dealing with any situation or with the state and will abide by Egyptian law and the constitution”. The two were among hundreds of prisoners held on terrosim-related charges that we reported were released from Egyptian jails in March.

Though Gama’a al-Islamiya has not yet decided on a name for their new political party or how many seats they will seek, Zumar is echoing the rhetoric of other Islamist leaders suggesting his party will also not field a presidential candidate.

The development comes as Salafist leader Khaled Saeed, founder of the newly established Fadila Party announced his group has struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood where neither party will run candidates against the other. “We shall meet in a few days to determine how many parliamentary seats each party will compete for” he said, adding “We do not want to antagonize any political party that is based on a religious reference.”

The recognition of Salafist leaders as emerging political figures in Egypt is clearly swelling. This threatens the success of liberal reformists who previously benefitted from their complete rejection of the political process on religious grounds.

As I wrote here for FrontPage Magazine, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is engaged in multiple cover-ups and deceptions ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for September. The Investigative Project on Terrorism has a comprehensive update on the Brotherhood’s scheming.

First, the stated goals of the Brotherhood have changed. First, it said it’d only compete for one-third of the seats in parliament. In early April, this changed to “35 to 40 percent,” which was quickly followed with a qualifier saying the Brotherhood would not go above 49 percent. Now, its position has changed again. The group says it will compete for half of the seats. This is a reflection of the Brotherhood’s confidence, as Supreme Guide Badie boasts that the group would win 75 percent of the seats if it wanted to.

This is a major exaggeration, in my estimation, as I wrote in Pajamas Media that the latest poll shows the Brotherhood in second place:

…the Wafd Party has a 46 percent approval rating, followed by the Brotherhood at 38 percent. Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party still has significant support with a 26 percent favorability rating. When respondents were asked whom they intend to vote for, 23 percent said they are backing the Wafd Party. The Brotherhood scored 12 percent, only two points ahead of the NDP.

The Brotherhood may also be engaged in some taqiyya in regards to the presidential race. It has vowed not to run a candidate, but a senior official, Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, has declared his candidacy as an Independent. The Brotherhood says it is investigating the matter and is unhappy with the insubordination, but some leaders including former Supreme Guide Akef are expressing their support for him.

The IPT also notes that the “moderate” image of the Brotherhood is becoming ripped apart. It has formed a bloc with Salafist parties and the Supreme Guide recently sat side-by-side with Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, in the headquarters of the Brotherhood in Egypt (see photo here).

The secularists need to get their act together. The Egyptian population’s main concerns are stability, political liberalization and economic improvements. The secularists can make a strong case that the Brotherhood is an Islamist extremist group that cannot be counted upon to deliver freedom and is not qualified to handle the economy. But time is running short….

Following several nights of sectarian violence which resulted in the deaths of 12 people and the firebombing of a church in Imbaba, an estimated 50,000 people gathered at a unity rally held by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis on May 7th in Giza. Safwat Hegazy, a Salafi preacher, proclaimed that both groups share the same goal- “one caliph” and a unified Islamic state, which he declared to be imminent. He assured the Copts that they are protected under Islam, stressing that they need not seek protection from abroad.

At the rally, meant to demonstrate a united front by the two groups, Hagezy condemned the burning of the church and accused foreign entities of inciting sectarian violence, a typical reaction to episodes of violence against Copts. The burning of a church in Alexandria over New Year’s drew a similar response. Always eager to blame intervention by outside forces, the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood have refused to address the issue of extremists within their own ranks, despite the arrests of 190 individuals from both groups, all to be tried for  involvement in the firebombing.

The Copt minority has continuously suffered since Mubarak’s resignation.  Copts have been left largely unprotected, resulting in such tragedies as Saturday’s church burning, only the latest example of violence against Christians. Recent violence against the Copts demonstrates that the revolution is far from over. It undermines the illusion that the revolution in Egypt was a secular uprising that united the diverse population around purely political and economic issues. After briefly uniting in Tahrir Square, Egypt’s population has fractured along largely religious lines since achieving the only goal that united them: the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak could be executed for his role in the deaths of pro-democracy protesters, the country’s Justice Minister, Abdel Aziz al-Gindi, said recently. Mubarak is currently being held by Egyptian police, accused of extensive financial corruption and ordering the killing of anti-regime protesters during February’s revolution.

The head of Cairo’s appeals court, Zakaria Shalash, also suggested last month that Mubarak could face the death penalty if convicted. In a trial which is suspected to last at least a year, Shalash says the verdict will hinge on the testimony of Mubarek’s former interior minister, Habib al-Adly, who is also on trial for ordering the shooting of protesters. Al Adly has claimed he was given direct instructions from Mubarak to “shoot-to-kill.”

Presently, many wonder if Mubarak will live to face trial. The 82 year-old former dictator is in police custody at a hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, while he recovers from a heart attack he reportedly suffered during preliminary questioning.

Egypt’s parliamentary elections are set to be held in September, giving the secularists only about four months to mobilize against the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists that have been organizing for decades in Islamic institutions. The Brotherhood’s ground game is unmatchable, but a new poll by the International Peace Institute provides some hope. It shows that is it the secular Wafd Party, not the Muslim Brotherhood, that has the most support in Egypt.

According to the survey, the Wafd Party has a 46 percent approval rating, followed by the Brotherhood at 38 percent. Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party still has significant support with a 26 percent favorability rating. When respondents were asked whom they intend to vote for, 23 percent said they are backing the Wafd Party. The Brotherhood scored 12 percent, only two points ahead of the NDP.

The secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has a very strong lead in the presidential race with 37 percent saying they will vote for him and an overall favorability rating of 80 percent. Mohamed Tantawi, the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, has 16 percent saying they will back him. Ayman Nour, another secularist, has an approval rating in the 30s. Mohamed ElBaradei, however, has an approval rating of only 10 percent and only two percent of Egyptians intend to vote for him. These findings explain why the Brotherhood is only aiming to win 30 percent of the seats in the next parliament and says it will not run a presidential candidate, though el-Baradei has been closely tied to them.

Another important finding of the poll is that 60 percent of Egyptians want to preserve the peace treaty with Israel, though there is an important qualifier: This must come with the establishment of a separate, independent Palestinian state. It is encouraging that the Egyptian people look kindly upon a two-state solution, but it is unlikely this new state will be created any time soon. There is a significant danger that support for the treaty will steadily erode.

Click here to read the rest of my PJM article.

A delegation from the British Foreign Office met Thursday with Muslim Brotherhood officials in Egypt, a report from the group’s official English website reveals. The delegation was headed by British Consul General Marie-Louise Archer and the Relations Coordinator for the UK’s Foreign Office, Martin Hetringen. Present for the meetings were a number of prominent Brotherhood members, including the head of the group’s administrative office in Alexandria.

The report claims that UK representatives are hoping to promote more open and constructive relations between the British government and the Brotherhood’s party representatives in Egypt. According to the Brotherhood’s Parliamentary spokesman, Hamdi Hassan, the meeting was “a good opportunity to exchange views and discuss [our] view on the forthcoming presidential elections.”

While it may have been clear, formerly, that the Muslim Brotherhood’s political stock would rise rapidly after Mubarek’s toppling, this degree of formal Western engagement with the Islamist group remains quite shocking.While the Brotherhood deny their historic ties to international terrorism, they continue to politically discriminate against women, Christians and Muslim moderates both in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

It may therefore prove both premature and unwise for the UK’s Foreign Office to have appeared getting so cozy with the Brotherhood, given the group is yet to even make public the latest edition of their political party’s platform – which has previously called for a return of clerical rule in Egypt.

Remember when Mohammed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency was seen as a ‘moderate’ candidate to take over Egypt? The former IAEA chief’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood are apparent and his stonewalling to protect the regimes of Saddam’s Iraq and the Mullahs’ Iran are infamous.

Now, as a candidate to take over as the next leader of Egypt, he is making waves. ElBaradei has come out further on a limb than many on the West expected– and more than Israel had feared.

ElBaradei has opened with the commonplace anti-Israel rhetoric, reversing the policy of Egypt’s military dictators for the last thirty years:

Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who had previously announced his intetions to run for the presidency of Egypt, said Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime.”

ElBaradei is a threat to peace in the Middle East. He is no true reformer and will use anti-Israel sloganeering to get himself elected. Even if he does not act on his threat to attack the Jewish state, he sets a bad precedent that hearken back to the chest-beating pseudo-nationalism of Nasser.

London’s Asharq Alawsat daily, has released a report claiming that Mohammed Al-Zawahri, the brother of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, was rearrested only 48 hours after we reported his release from Egyptian prison.

Al-Zawahri had been sentenced to death in 1991 on a number of terrorism related charges, including alleged involvement in the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat. Last week, however, he was released by court order after his lawyers filed complaints questioning the legality of his sentencing, which was handed to him “in absentia” prior to his extradition to Cairo from the UAE.

The younger brother of al-Qaeda’s top deputy, he was once a leading figure in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group under worldwide UN embargo. Further details of his detainment are not immediately clear, as Egyptian Interior Ministry officials are refusing to comment on the reason for his most recent arrest.

The mass-exodus of hundreds of prisoners held on terrorism-related charges continued this week in Egypt.

Mohammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was released Thursday from Egyptian prison after more than ten years of incarceration. Extradited from Yemen in 1999, he had been held on charges of conspiring against the government in relation to the assassination of former Egypt’s former President Anwar Sadat.

His release comes as the Interior Ministry continues to evacuate “political detainees” by direct order from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Just days ago the cartaker-government released Tarek and Abboud al-Zumar, members of the Gama’a al-Islamiya terrorist group who were also held in relation to Sadat’s killing in 1981. They were let go as part of a 69-prisoner release being billed as a concession to rights activist. According to Interior Ministry statements, they, along with al-Zawahiri, will be subject to five years surveillance. Read more here.

In related news, a UN report Thursday indicates the astonishing release of 950 former militants from the Gama’a al-Islamiyya terrorist group. While the Egyptian Interior Ministry has refused official comment on their cases, Montasser al-Zayyat, head of the Lawyers’ Syndicate Liberties Committee representing the freed militants said they have been gradually released over the past 11 days. To find out more read this IRIN release.

Recent events indicate that some of Egypt’s most heavily suppressed Islamist groups are resurfacing.

Stoking the embers of growing political instability is the fiery Islamist leader Muhammad Hassan, a prominent figure in Egypt’s formerly banned Salafist movements. Hassan and his followers convened a large conference the Egyptian city of Mansoura this week to protest any future constitutional changes to the country’s second article which defines Islam as the official religion of Egypt and Islamic Law as the source of its legislation.

In another move that is likely to complicate civil and democratic interests in the country, Gama’a al-Islamiya, the Islamist terrorist group responsible for both the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat and the 1997 Luxor Massacre at Deir el-Bahari, is also consolidating its followers. This week they began the process of creating a formal political party which they say will participate fully in the coming Egyptian elections.

To understand more about the Salafist use of da’wa, a form of proselytization which urges all Muslims to practice their strict form of fundamentalist Islam, read Reuters recent feature which describes the violent history of Salifists in Egypt, their long suppression under former President Hosni Mubarak, and the regrouping of their current leadership.

Al Arabiya reports that Egyptian protesters stormed offices of the Egyptian Secret Police and seized confidential files.

Several of the seized documents focus on the January 25 revolution, which ousted the Egyptian regime. The documents attribute the revolution to a scheme devised by the United States, the European Union, and Israel to infiltrate the region and put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. State security reports found in the office also accuse Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah of taking advantage of their strong ties with the Muslim Brotherhood to storm security offices in Egypt.

Debka provides some amplification to this report.

Friday night, thousands of protesters seized control of the headquarters Egyptian security police (Mahabis Namn El Dawla) in Alexandria, Cairo and the nearby 6 of October town, shutting down its operations across the country. … The capture of the three Mahabis centers opened to disaffected elements the secret files on every political and military leader in the country, confidential information once accessible only to ex-intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman before the uprising. …

Read the rest of this entry »

Islamists in Egypt have not warmed up to the new cabinet presented by the military government. Despite changes, the military decided not to alter some key positions. Due to this and other concerns, the country’s political Muslim leaders did not accept the terms.

Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood believes that former allies of Mubarak are still in charge.

“This new cabinet is an illusion,” Brotherhood senior member Essam el-Erian said. “It pretends it includes real opposition but in reality this new government puts Egypt under the tutelage of the West,” he added.

“The main defense, justice, interior and foreign ministries remain unchanged, signaling Egypt’s politics remain in the hands of Mubarak and his cronies,” Erian said.

The article later states that the labor unions were not pleased with the changes, either. In addition, there are now calls for new protests to overthrow the new interim government.

Fascinating article from the Wall Street Journal. It explains how a group of protestors outsmarted the security services on Tuesday:

On Tuesday, young opposition organizers called for a march on the state television building a few blocks north of their encampment in central Tahrir Square. Then, while the army deployed to that sensitive communications hub, protesters expanded southward into the lightly defended area around Egypt’s parliament building.

The Revolutionary Youth Movement explained how they organized the uprising. Every day for two weeks, he and other officials met in the private home of a mother of one of Mohammed el-Baradei’s campaign officials. Representatives from six other opposition youth groups, including a workers organization and the Muslim Brotherhood, put together a plan.

They decided to have simultaneous scattered rallies near mosques to increase their visibility on the streets and stretch the security forces. They announced the 20 sites where protests would occur, but had a secret 21^st site. Cells of 10 protestors were dispatched to the site, with only one protestor in each cell knowing the location. Suddenly, a group of about 300 emerged and while the protestors at the other 20 sites were unable to march toward Tahrir Square, this group was able to breach it. And that’s when the uprising took on a life of its own.

Sounds like an upcoming Hollywood movie to me.