Egypt's fight against terrorism.

[newcastle]

Egypt's Failed War on Terror

Why Cairo Is Dragging Its Feet on ISIS
By David Schenker

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, at the White House. At their meeting, Trump assured Sisi that “together… we will fight terrorism.” That is good news for the Egyptian president. After years of strained bilateral relations, the Trump administration is embracing Egypt as a counterterrorism partner. But it is unclear that Egypt is actually an asset in the most pressing battle against terrorism, the fight against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS).

A video that surfaced two weeks ago highlights the problem. It aired on a Muslim Brotherhood network and showed Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula summarily executing a handful of alleged Islamist insurgent prisoners. Beyond what appear to be significant human rights abuses, to date Cairo has demonstrated a stunning lack of will and competence to eradicate ISIS from Egyptian territory. If the Trump administration wants a partner, it should use its burgeoning relationship with the Sisi government to help Cairo improve its counterterrorism practices.

Since 2011, Egypt has been losing ground against a virulent but numerically small insurgency in the Sinai. Notwithstanding its 440,000-strong standing army and $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military assistance, over the past five years, Egypt has been unable to contain—much less roll back—an estimated 600–1,000 insurgents. Indeed, the Sinai-based insurgents have an impressive and growing list of accomplishments. Since 2014—when the local insurgent group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdas, pledged allegiance to ISIS—the group has downed an Egyptian military helicopter, destroyed an M-60 battle tank, sunk an Egyptian patrol boat, and bombed a Russian passenger jet, killing 224 civilians.

During the same time period, ISIS has killed an estimated 2,000 Egyptian military officers and policemen in the Sinai. But they’re not the only victims. ISIS has been targeting Christians too, triggering a mass exodus of that minority from the peninsula. Just weeks ago, ISIS attacked Saint Catherine’s, one of the oldest monasteries in the world.

Beyond what appear to be significant human rights abuses, Cairo has demonstrated a stunning lack of will and competence to eradicate ISIS from Egyptian territory.
The same Egyptian military incapable of protecting Sinai’s Christians has also been unable to safeguard the nearly 1,700 Multinational Force Observers (MFO) stationed in the area to monitor the provisions of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Accordingly, the force—which includes about 700 U.S. troops—has relocated from its base in the north to the relatively more secure south Sinai. ISIS is also threatening Israeli security, periodically lobbing rockets across the border toward the city of Eilat. In turn, last month Israel prohibited its citizens from entering the Sinai. Meanwhile, terrorism is spreading from the peninsula to the previously peaceful Nile Valley and Delta, where attacks against policemen and bombings of Coptic Churches have become routine.

ISIS’s strategy, tactics, and leadership are evolving. Once a locally-led expression of an aggrieved Bedouin population, the insurgents today are increasingly oriented toward Raqqa. As a result, they have received additional funding and developed a more professional media campaign, and their focus has shifted to unabashedly killing Christians. ISIS in Egypt is also adapting more lethal technologies—such as explosively formed penetrators or EFPs—to great effect against government forces and, taking a page from the ISIS mothership, fanning sectarianism.

As the so-called ISIS Sinai Province is evolving, Egypt’s military approach has stagnated. Focused on economic pursuits and force preservation, Egyptian ground forces do not routinely and proactively engage with the enemy. Instead, they are slowly attrited by ambushes and roadside bombs. Further, Egypt is increasingly subcontracting out its security to the Israeli Air Force, which now has carte blanche to target terrorists via manned and unmanned aircraft operating in Egyptian airspace. Israel is “mowing the grass” in the Sinai, but it is not reversing ISIS’s territorial gains, an objective that would require (non-Israeli) boots on the ground.

For many in Washington, ISIS’s relative strength is concerning. The Trump administration may be able to deprioritize or ignore the thorny topic of human rights with Cairo, but it cannot do the same with the rise of ISIS in the most populous Arab state. Yet after the nearly 40 years and $50 billion in U.S. military assistance since Camp David, it’s becoming clear that American assistance to Egypt’s armed forces has not succeeded in making that army even minimally capable, nor has it bolstered the determination of the leadership in Cairo to deploy forces on difficult combat missions.

To be sure, the aid may be helping to prevent some worst-case scenarios. U.S. military assistance, for example, likely dissuades Cairo from moving closer to Moscow. It may also be helping to forestall the collapse of the state and with it, potentially, the migration of millions of Egyptians to Europe. But Washington needs to find creative ways to encourage the political leadership in Cairo to prod the military into doing its job more effectively, especially counterinsurgency operations. Recently, Egypt requested and received U.S. training for detecting and disposing of IEDs. Based on its performance, the Egyptian military also desperately needs training in counterinsurgency tactics, and perhaps on-the-ground assistance and coaching from U.S. personnel. Such U.S. technical support would extend beyond kinetic operations to include other aspects of modern counterinsurgency, or COIN, campaigns, such as economic development and public diplomacy messaging.

The United States should also urge Egypt to make changes to its procurements of American military equipment, which it purchases with U.S. financial assistance. Given the threats Egypt faces, which almost exclusively relate to terrorism and by extension border security, there is little rationale for the kind of big ticket items Cairo has long prioritized, including tanks, fighter jets, amphibious assault/helicopter carrier ships, and upgrades to long-range missiles. It would be far more productive for Cairo to purchase more Blackhawk helicopters to improve the military’s rapid reaction capabilities, and to spend money to help it improve surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance through ISTAR systems that might enhance counterinsurgency operations.

To be sure, the Egyptian military will be loath to accept U.S. suggestions in this regard. Since putting conditions on U.S. assistance has not been successful in the past, the Trump administration should focus on incentives, including leveraging “cash flow financing,” a perquisite that until 2015 allowed Egypt to use future U.S. financial assistance as credit to purchase expensive weapons systems. Washington could reinstitute cash flow financing, which was scrapped in 2015 after the military coup, but only for equipment that the U.S. Department of Defense deems related to counterterrorism and border security operations.

Washington should also consider increasing funding for Egypt’s rather modest military education and training program, known as IMET. In 2016, the U.S. Department of State allocated just $1.8 million to this endeavor. By comparison, in the same year Jordan—whose army is 15 percent the size of Egypt’s—was given $3.8 million for military training. The administration should consider reprograming or earmarking some of Egypt’s $1.3 billion in U.S. Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, to enhance these programs, with a special focus on exposing more Egyptian officers to modern COIN techniques.


Finally, despite Egypt’s attachment to large-scale military training exercises designed to prepare for fighting a nation state, Washington should scrap or radically redesign the annual “Bright Star” operation. In the past, the United States has held this weeks-long training exercise with Egypt, involving at various times amphibious landing drills, airborne jumps, and large-scale tank maneuvers. The problem, of course, is that Egypt has no state enemies, making these drills largely irrelevant. Given vested interests in Cairo and Washington, it may be difficult to end Bright Star altogether, but a significant portion of the exercise should be repurposed to focus on counterterrorism operations, something Egypt really needs.

Egypt will not be easily changed, even in ways that are, to most observers, obviously in Egypt’s self-interest. Nevertheless, Washington should continue to press Cairo to do so, because its success against ISIS in the Sinai and throughout the entirety of the state is in U.S. national security interest interests.

At his White House meeting earlier this month, Sisi told Trump, “You will find me and Egypt next to you [as you] implement the strategy to confront and eradicate terrorism.” Sisi is no doubt sincere in his support for the United States in the war against ISIS. For that matter, he is also supportive of Israel’s military efforts. The real question, though, is how committed Egypt is to its own fight against terrorism.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... war-terror

[Hafiz]

Newcastle – we are reading upmarket.

The author of the article has an impressive cv which includes a period studying at the AUC. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/expe ... nker-david

If this wasn’t a period when experts were derided he might be considered a knowledgeable person.

I think he is being a little bit coy on how bad things are. He also fails to mention that Egypt has Ruskies on the ground playing a short-sighted spoiling game in Libya to upset the western sponsored war-lord and backing his terror-linked opponent. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -sisi.html. This article makes the cheeky point that all the expensive hardware purchased in the past few years is useless against terrorists and that the US aid to Egypt has been 70 billion..

I think the general picture is possibly bleaker with limited prospects for early improvement.

Specialists outside Egypt whose job is to measure terrorism and violence in Egypt say it is bad and getting worse. They said this well before the recent 3 attacks on Copts (most have forgotten the Alex church bombing in 2011, the many attacks on Copts in 2013, the 2015 ISIS beheadings of 20 Egyptian Copts and the recent Copt retreat from North Sinai). The under-reported trends have been there for a long time and the reasons for failure to deal with it are deep seated. But of course the problem is bigger than the Copts.

In Sinai after 6 years of military operations its worse. In addition terror has spread to the rest of Egypt. Total activity is way up. One so-called expert group which counts these things says: “The number of reported terror attacks across Egypt remained high in the second quarter of 2016, with 228 attacks, compared to 211 in the first quarter of 2016 and 119 in the last quarter of 2015.”
https://timep.org/wp-content/uploads/20 ... REPORT.pdf

Paradoxically: “Reports of (government) counter-terror operations continued to decrease in the first quarter of 2016, with 88 reported operations, compared to 127 and 141 in the previous two quarters. This marked a significant drawdown in Egypt’s “war on terror;” at its peak in the second quarter of 2015, 798 distinct counter-terror operations were reported.” And “The Ministry of Interior page, which reported 481 operations throughout the country during the same period last year, reported no counter-terror operations from April to June 2016.” If true,very odd.

Whilst doing less the government claims they kill more militants: “The campaign, which now encompasses a full year of operations, has reportedly led to the deaths of 2,529 alleged terrorists, 801 of which were reported killed in the second quarter of 2016.” This is odd because the CIA and Israel put total numbers of terrorists in Sinai at much less than total numbers allegedly killed in a single year which must mean that the terrorists in Sinai should now be a negative number.

What is no secret, except in Egypt, is the Egyptian army’s problems in dealing with terrorists caused by its training, tactics, intel, recruitment, equipment, and leadership. http://europe.newsweek.com/wikileaks-re ... 8921?rm=eu. Jerusalem has long held similar views on performance: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Analys ... nai-407822

As the US author says the deteriorating situation in Sinai has even affected the long-standing international UN peacekeeping force in Sinai. What he doesn't mention is that New Zealand wants out and the Fijians have already left because of Egyptian failure to control terrorism. I’ve also read somewhere the Canadians want out because the situation is out of control. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11727681

Given these historical problems the new emergency laws handing over control of mainland terrorism to the army may have the same results as Sinai.

The State Security agencies were, as we all know, thoroughly reformed after 2011 by Major General Ghaffar to turn them into law abiding, popular, trusted, crack anti-terror hunters. He did such a good job that he was promoted to Interior Minister and has gone on to preside over the last 3 Copt bombings. https://timep.org/esw/profiles/state-ac ... l-ghaffar/. Criticism of his achievements is now unwise and martial law has been used to seize copies of newspapers calling for the Minister to be questioned on his performance. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... r-for.aspx

Notwithstanding these achievements the Security Services and police efforts on the mainland to protect Copts from even village mobs have been underwhelming and in the Luxor area at least 2 churches have recently been torched including the cathedral of St George in Luxor city.

The Tahrir site maintains an up-to-date map of Egypt which logs all terror attacks including a few which get little attention including a TAR attack (unverified) on the National Security building on the Luxor Cornice in August of last year and a Revolutionary Punishment attack (unverified) on Luxor police the previous March. https://timep.org/security-map.php.

The Tahrir Institute, based in the US, is probably democratic-secular -centrist with a bias towards human rights. Its not unbiased politically. It gives detailed profiles on the major terror and state actors.

Other experts who are paid to follow terrorism in Egypt come up with large numbers of terror attacks greatly in excess of media reporting. For example the Carnegie Endowment for Peace stated in late 2015 in a large report on terrorism in Egypt, that a single group, Revolutionary Punishment: “As of September 2015, the group had carried out (in less than a year) about 150 attacks across sixteen governorates.” http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CMEC ... _final.pdf. It’s a bit out of date but worth reading if you have 30 minutes and still suffer from the view that the fragmenting brothers are now unconnected to terror.

The state of emergency (more correctly martial law) is puzzling. The new constitution and particularly the new security legislation previously gave them all the levers anyone would want against terrorism. They also have 700,000 military, c.1 million police, a 3/400,000 internal security force, a Presidential guard of 50,000 (possibly included in the military numbers) and several million paid informers. Worryingly, the President recently and publically referred to the police as a ‘million man mafia’ I think he understates their numbers. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/ ... revolution

But of course a general state of emergency will apply to everything and everyone not just terrorism and give lots of power to use against much broader groups in the 8-12 months leading up to the next Presidential election. For example, previously all terror trials went to a military tribunal. Now everything can. Previously only terror suspects could be held indefinitely without charge. Now everyone can. It will be lean times for defence lawyers and pesky judges.

In addition the emergency allows for the seizure of property which must be sending a chills up the spines of a few Cairo billionaires who otherwise thought they could bargain with the government.

There is also another widespread view, which includes western trainers of Arab armies, that there are culture issues which predispose the armed forces in the region to outdated strategy, poor man-management, intellectual inflexibility and buck passing. Here is one (dated) article written by a man that spent a long time training the military in the region: http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars. It’s a pessimistic view from a right wing pro-Israeli outlet. I think subsequent history has shown it to be overly optimistic view. If this view about deep seated cultural attributes is true its going to take a lot more than US advisors to turn the problem around.

[Major Thom]

Great news for tourism, especially when they read this

[newcastle]

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/cyprus

Summary

Still current at:14 May 2017Updated:10 May 2017Latest update:
Summary – updated information and advice about the threat from terrorism following a review of the way in which the UK government describes the threat from terrorism in travel advice for all countries and territories; there’s no change in the UK government’s assessment of the level of threat from terrorism in Cyprus
There will be no change to the rights and status of EU nationals living in the UK, nor UK nationals living in the EU, while the UK remains in the EU.
Terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in Cyprus. See Terrorism

Terrorism

Terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in Cyprus. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by foreigners.

There is a heightened threat of terrorist attack globally against UK interests and British nationals, from groups or individuals motivated by the conflict in Iraq and Syria. You should be vigilant at this time.




Να εχεις μια ωραια μερα!

[denisegr]

Im obviously missing something here Newcastle but i dont understand the reference to Cyprus, csre to enlighten?

[Horus]

Denisegr, our friend MT who often denigrates Egypt is currently residing in Cyprus.

[denisegr]

Ahh, dunno why but i thought he had gone to Australia.

[newcastle]

Ahh, dunno why but i thought he had gone to Australia.

A pleasure in store for them at some point