Reuters says its 30 but says, in other reports, its 16. (the guardian gave up on Egypt ages ago and now just pays to reprint Reuters and occasionally hires a few locals for bits and pieces who can't otherwise get a full-time job). The numbers are irrelevant but the questions are interesting.
Why would such a very large group of cops be in one very remote place (assuming the dead were only a half or a third or less of the total police group). How well armed were they. Why was such a large group of cops, and not army, put into a terrorist risk zone. How large was the terrorist attack group. Do they send large cop contingents into remote oasis/Western Desert locations (like this one) to deal with terrorist threats and if they do so what is the army doing. Where were all the hundreds of attack helicopters, sophisticated machine guns, armored personnel carriers, 3,000 tanks not to mention the hundreds of F16's? of the army.
The media fails to mention, and this is not insignificant, who were the terrorists. Were they 'locals' or Libyans and if the latter are they connected with that group that, alone, Egypt and Russia support? Obviously to do such a killing it was a large, well organized and well equipped terrorist group. Probably one that had enticed the cops into a trap - based on bad Egyptian intelligence. What is very odd about the Egyptian Government reports is that they say there were no terrorists dead. Hoe could you have 30 dead cops and no dead terrorists?
I think its true that this is the biggest single killing of Egyptian security in recent years - so someone should loose their job.
There are lots of questions but the President made his views about the cops competency when he said to the New York media a few years ago that the Egyptian police were a 'million man mafia'. If they are so bad they should not be involved in dealing with terrorists who, in this and other examples show, are quite good at what they do. We need the proven capacity of the 'ever victorious' Egyptian army to deal with them as well as they have in Sinai over the last 6 years.
The anti-terror capacity of the Egyptian army is mind-blowing.
What would be interesting, but will never be released, is how many of the dead were conscripts. This is relevant for two reasons. The popular view is that the worst conscripts are forced into the cops. The second view, impossible to prove, is that conscripts are put without proper training and leadership into high risk areas. The second view is given some support when you look at the earlier deaths of army and police in Sinai - they were not specialist commando, SAS types - there were very young amateurs. Still, on the other hand, why would you want to risk your best and brightest and well trained when you could toss in some illiterate farmers son?
The western view of Egyptian military, security and police capacity is absolutely clear. Its not good - its worse than not good.
The only question is why all the tens of billions in the past 4 years have gone onto high status, high technology, high prestige PharonIc spending to fight a war with another nation state when the only threat is not a nation state - its marauding small groups of terrorists. Meanwhile Egypt gets delivery from France of its new high technology navy whilst its real needs are effective officers, a logical counter-terrorism strategy and skilled and trained specialist forces. Its simple and cheap and its about police/military skill, intelligence, training, initiative and hard work.
