Algeria is competing to be the next Arab nation to witness a popular revolt. That is assuming soccer is a barometer of rising discontent in a region experiencing a wave of mass protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and sparked civil war in Syria.
In fact, there is increasingly little doubt that soccer, a historic nucleus of protest in Algeria, is signaling that popular discontent could again spill into the streets of Algiers and other major cities.
Egypt experienced a state of unrest on Friday, as numerous protests across the country took place. While various protests shared similar demands, people largely voiced their concerns on varying issues.
In Alexandria people took to the streets to denounce the rule of President Mohamed Morsi, calling for early presidential elections. A similar protest took place in Cairo, where security surrounding the cabinet building was intensified in preparation.
The recent discovery of oil and gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean off the Israeli, Cypriot and Lebanese coasts is a great boost to the independence and self-sufficiency of these countries.
But the discoveries also add to existing tensions between Israel and Lebanon as both are claiming the oil and gas reserves as their own. In April, natural gas from the Israeli Tamar reserve began to flow from an offshore rig in the Mediterranean Sea into Israel, giving the country the chance to hone its energy security and freedom.
The Cyprus issue, energy security and the exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone were examined during a meeting in Athens between the Defence Ministers of Cyprus and Greece, Fotis Fotiou and Panos Panagiotopoulos, respectively.
Fotiou also discussed with Panagiotopoulos the situation in the wider south-eastern Mediterranean region and Turkish threats against Cyprus with regard to oil exploration.
The FBI is asking for is the ability to fine those companies that don’t comply with a wiretap order, even if they’re technically unable to do so within a time limit set by the FBI.
In other words, if you can’t provide the feds with a back door to your system, the government will keep piling on fines until you go out of business. The idea, of course, is to compel companies that provide secure communications to also build in a means for the feds carry out get their wiretaps.
A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs. The results are published inScience1. Flu hybrids can arise naturally when two viral strains infect the same cell and exchange genes. This process, known as reassortment, produced the strains responsible for at least three past flu pandemics, including the one in 2009. There is no evidence that H5N1 and H1N1 have reassorted naturally yet, but they have many opportunities to do so.
“It is our hope that the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC, can play an important role in the future providing security for this region,” he told an audience at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies Research. Across the board, he said, Washington is urging allies to build local capacity. “That’s what we’re doing for the UAE and that’s what we’re doing with other countries. Yes, we give them the help they need, we give them assistance, but the fact is that they have to help provide for their security.” For months, many commentators from Riyadh to Doha to Manama have sensed and relayed this shift in US policy.
“The year 2014 can be expected to usher in another major war involving the U.S.” The threat of war against the United States is making headlines and roiling investors’ nerves. While full-scale war is likely not imminent, it’s something worth considering in light of where we stand in the long-term War Cycle.
To answer this question we need first to realize where we are in the context of the 24-year cycle. This particular cycle, a subset of the Kress 120-year cycle, has been identified as the long-term “war cycle” among industrialized countries. The most recent 24-year cycle bottom occurred in October 1990. This ended a vicious bear market for the stock market.
The only democracy Egypt has known in 5,000 years of recorded history lasted six years — from 1946, when the World War II British protectorate came to an end, until 1952 when Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Free Officers movement dethroned and exiled King Farouk. Nasser’s coup was inspired by Egypt’s defeat in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948. No more than 100 colonels, majors and captains were involved, including Anwar Sadat, who succeeded Nasser upon his death in 1970. Officially, Nasser and his Free Officers said they had taken over to wipe out corruption among their generals who, they charged, had led Egypt to its first defeat by Israel in 1948.
The Central Intelligence Agency conspired with dozens of governments to build a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program that spanned the globe. Extraordinary rendition is the transfer—without legal process—of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation. In the Open Society Justice Initiative’s new report, it stripped people of their most basic rights, facilitated gruesome forms of torture, at times captured the wrong people, and debased the United States’ human rights reputation world-wide.
It was what secularists had feared would secure an Islamist state. After granting himself sweeping powers and pushing through a controversial new constitution, President Mohamed Morsi had been calling for parliamentary elections with haste. With the opposition set to boycott, Islamists were poised to dominate. But when a top court cancelled elections last month just weeks before elections were set, the president’s plans were quickly derailed and a more complex struggle reemerged.
Morocco could be the first victim among the emerging democracies of Southern Mediterranean, a European strategy for economic independence and political sovereignty. The World Social Forum held recently in Tunis, associative altermondialists Maghreb, South European and Scandinavian, had preached an alarming discourse: It would be according to what was discussed by them, a wide ranging a war that is about to pit the EU-27 countries against the democratic spring countries in the southern Mediterranean. Thus, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan, whether it decides its orientation towards democracy or not, will be kept on a leash by Europeans through Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs)
It was a perilous time for Egypt. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was demanding subsidy cuts in exchange for a loan Egypt’s leaders desperately wanted. So they complied, cutting subsidies on the bread, cooking fuel, and gasoline average citizens relied on to live.
Within hours, workers were pouring off the docks in the Suez Canal zone and Alexandria and out of the factories in the Nile Delta, and attacking symbols of the government everywhere – furious about the sudden rise in the price of daily staples. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, angry youth tore up sidewalks to hurl stones at riot police when they ran out of Molotov cocktails
Israel Today newspaper has prepared a special report on the Arab armies in the Middle East; its title is telling; “Long Arm in the Region” is a reference to the Israel Defence Forces. It is claimed that the IDF is planning for a confrontation with Egypt. There is a new unit within the IDF which studies the armies of the Arab states through Israel’s military intelligence agency, Aman.
This agency supplies information on the power centres in the region’s armies and their plans, as well as how to exhaust their capabilities even before a direct confrontation. In the event of war with any Arab state, the new unit is ready to present a detailed plan of attack, cutting off enemy supply routes and rendering it unable to retaliate against Israeli attacks.
Qatar, the small Gulf state that on Tuesday hosts an Arab summit, has become a key regional player thanks to its support for Arab uprisings and the marginalisation of traditional heavyweights.
But the “chequebook diplomacy” of this energy-rich state — a staunch US ally — and its backing for Islamists who have managed to seize power in some countries rocked by the Arab Spring have triggered criticism. The emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, is “obsessed by an ambition to leave his heirs a country that counts on the world map after it was practically unknown only 20 years ago,”
Protests against the Muslim Brotherhood continue to rock Egypt without a word being said from the White House. Now, the Brotherhood and allied Islamists are taking a cue from their Shiite counterparts in Tehran and have announced they are setting up a civilian force with the power to arrest those they deem to be criminals.
At around the same time, Jama’a al-Islamiya threatened to set up a pro-Brotherhood militia to “protect private and public property and counter the aggression on innocent citizens.”
Egypt ministers announced controversial plans to introduce a smart-card system that limits the amout of subsidized bread citizens can buy. The government would start rationing “after two months,” Supply Minister Bassem Ouda told Reuters earlier this week. Besides cutting subsidies, the severe economic crisis has forced the Islamist-led government to introduce rationing. Tension is already high in Egypt with the shortage of fuel, and economists have warned that restrictions on bread sales could cause a “revolution of the hungry.”
A lot of people in Europe, especially the French, cheered heedlessly when the Arab Spring took off in 2011. But then came the 70,000 dead from the Syrian war; the proliferation of terrorism in Libya and Mali; the assassination of the main Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid in a country where there is actually less freedom than before; and of course, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, knee deep in economic and social chaos.
The Arab Spring of these secular republics wasn’t as positive and peaceful as many had expected.
So who is behind the unrest? The money fueling the confrontation comes from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, none of which are enamored of the Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi. They fear that the untidy democracy, such as it is, in Egypt and elsewhere amid the Arab Spring could spill over to their states, and they desire a return to something like the military-backed regime of Mubarak, which was politically reliable and dedicated to suppressing political extremism and even dissent in all forms.
Clashes between protesters and the police in the restive Egyptian city of Port Said that entered their second day Monday have dragged in the military to a dramatic extent into the nation’s turmoil.
At times in the violence, frictions have arisen between the police that were battling protesters and army forces that tried to break up the fighting. Troops in between the two sides were overwhelmed by police tear gas, one army colonel was wounded by live fire, and troops even opened fire over the heads of police, bringing cheers from protesters.
Israel has long been keen to establish a foothold in parts of Africa, for strategic as well as economic reasons. The vast continent offers relatively accessible (and increasingly fought-over) sources of energy and water, as well as emerging markets. While Israel has been able to establish diplomatic relationships with most non-Muslim African countries, nations such as Mali and Niger have so far refused to formally recognise it. Clearly, Israel would like to convert these nations of the Sahel into friends and a potential rear guard against hostile Arab nations in the north.
The collapse of regimes like Hosni Mubarak’s in Egypt, which many considered “an exemplar of…durable authoritarianism” was a salient reminder to many that such revolutions are “inherently unpredictable.” Before long some began to speculate that the protest movements might spread to authoritarian states outside the Arab world, including China. Indeed, the Chinese government was among those that feared the unrest would spread to China because, as one observer noted, China faced the same kind of “social and political tensions caused by rising inequality, injustice, and corruption” that plagued much of the Arab world on the eve of the uprisings.
“The problem with the Brotherhood is that they came to power but are still dealing with the nation as they did when they were in the opposition,” said Abdel-Jalil el-Sharnoubi, former editor-in-chief of the group’s website who left the Brotherhood in May 2011.
“Because they cannot trust the state, they have created their own,” he added. The notion of a state within a state has precedents elsewhere in the Arab world. In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah is the de facto government in much of the south and east of the country and has its own army and telephone network.
In reaction to the escalations, the presidency issued a statement on Tuesday stating that President Mohamed Morsi submitted a new law proposal to the Shura Council to re-launch Port Said’s free trade zone.
Unrest continued in several Egyptian governorates on Tuesday, as calls for civil disobedience escalated in canal governorates and spread to the governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh. In reaction to the escalations, the presidency issued a statement on Tuesday stating that President Mohamed Morsi submitted a new law proposal to the Shura Council to re-launch Port Said’s free trade zone.
Will armies battle each other, as the cry for “blue gold” gets furious? Will “water wars” be as prevalent as conflict for the “black gold” of oil? Two documentary films have wetted public interest – Blue Gold: World Water Wars, and Last Call at the Oasis, and a dystopia novel – The Water Wars – warns of its imminence.
In actuality, history’s pages are already splashed with dozens of conflicts. In 2,450 B.C. the Sumerian cities of Lagash and Umma warred over Tigris-Euphrates water. More recently, Senegal and Mauritaniabattled in 1989 over grazing rights in the Senegal River Valley – hundreds were killed, 250,000 fled their homes. The Pacific Institute provides an excellent map and timeline of 225 water skirmishes.
In Egypt, Libya and Syria, where Qatar tried to play a role post-Arab Spring, it finds itself blamed for much that has gone wrong on a local level. Close ties to Egypt’s new leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood, have alarmed countries like the United Arab Emirates, where the group is banned and which in January said it had foiled a Brotherhood-linked coup plot. Senior officials in the UAE have long believed Qatar has long-term strategy to use the Brotherhood to redraw the region. “There is both greater apprehension and appreciation for Qatar two years after the Arab awakening in the region,”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the first visit to Cairo by an Iranian leader in more than three decades, called for a strategic alliance with Egypt and said he had offered the cash-strapped Arab state a loan.
In a step by Iran to advance ties that were broken in 1979, the Iranian foreign minister said Egyptian tourists and merchants would no longer require visas to visit, Egypt’s state news agency reported. The effort drew a cool response, however. Shi’ite Islamist Iran is still looked on with suspicion by many in Egypt, a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation.
Egypt’s army chief warned Tuesday of the “the collapse of the state” if the political crisis roiling the nation for nearly a week continues.
The warning by Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who is also defense minister, were the first comments by the powerful military since the country’s latest crisis began last week around the second anniversary of Egypt’s uprising. They came days after President Mohammed Morsi ordered the army to restore order in the Suez Canal cities of Port Said and Suez — two of three cities now under a 30-day state of emergency and night curfew.
Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi declared a month-long state of emergency Sunday in three cities along the SuezCanal that have been the focus of anti-government violence that has killed dozens of people over the past four days. Seven people were shot dead and hundreds were injured in Port Said Sunday during the funerals of 33 protesters killed at the weekend. A total of 49 people have been killed in demonstrations around the country since Thursday and Mursi’s opponents have called for more protests Monday.
Like several other key ports in the region – including Piraeus in Greece and Naples in Italy – it is now partially owned by China. The state-owned Cosco Pacific holds 20 percent the terminal, helping make it one of the dominant – if not the dominant – Mediterranean port operators.
Cosco stresses that it is a purely commercial venture and many analysts agree. But few doubt that Beijing has made a wider geopolitical decision to become much more involved in the region. For the last two years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has sent one or more warships through the Suez Canal to visit southern European ports, the furthest its fleet has ever operated from home.
Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Qods Force, a division of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which conducts special operations outside Iran, visited Egypt at the end of December at the invitation of President Mohamed Morsi’s government.
The Times of London reported that the purpose of the visit was “to advise the government on building its security and intelligence apparatus independent of the national intelligence services, which are controlled by Egypt’s military.” During the visit he met with Essam al-Haddad, foreign affairs adviser to Mr Morsi, and officials from the Muslim Brotherhood.
The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West — NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea — and the East—the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall.
Life in Egypt is about to get harder for ordinary people who will bear the brunt of inflation caused by a decline in the value of their currency. As elections approach, President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood may pay a political price. After a 3.2 percent slide in the Egyptian pound’s value against the dollar this week, some importers and shopkeepers say they are factoring in an even bigger decline and that the uncertainty will be reflected in steep price rises.
The United Arab Emirates has arrested an “Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood cell” that trained local Islamists in how to overthrow Arab governments, a Sharjah-based newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the investigation.
The oil-rich Gulf state – of which Sharjah is one part – has previously voiced strong distrust of the Islamist political movement which after long years of being banned took power in free elections in Egypt last year. The cell, of “more than 10 people”, had a defined organisational structure and was recruiting Egyptians in the UAE to join, al-Khaleej newspaper reported.
Egypt’s opposition group, the Popular Front, said on Wednesday that it had laid hands on a leaked document signed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s deputy chairman Khairat al-Shater in which he urged the government to claim “total control of the media.”
Shater, who was the Brotherhood’s main presidential candidate before he was disquieted by the election committee, reportedly also called for shutting down TV channels owned by opposition groups. Al-Tahreer newspaper reported that Shater even advised his brethren at the helm of Egypt’s policy making to find ways to contain the more radical Salafi Islamists.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah II have held secret talks in Amman to discuss Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons, Al Quds Al-Arabi reported on Wednesday.
In recent weeks, fears have grown over the potential use of Syria’s chemical weapons. Russia, one of the few remaining allies of the Assad regime, said on December 22 that Syria was consolidating its chemical weapons stores in “one or two” places.
The Middle East is a region where any political movement appears as rivalry, a place where no one is without a rival, and where there are those who cannot be without a rival. There are two forms of competition: competition against one or more people, like chess, or competition with one or more people over something, like the 100 meters hurdle race. Competition in the Middle East is generally of the second form, and the two states which the struggle for influence in the Middle East has had them confront each other are the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Struggling to quell violent protests that have threatened to derail a referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt moved Saturday to appease his opponents with a package of concessions hours after state news media reported that he was moving toward imposing a form of martial law to secure the streets and allow the vote.
The Egyptian army deployed tanks outside the presidential palace Thursday following fierce street battles between supporters and opponents of Mohammed Morsi that left five people dead and more than 600 injured in the worst outbreak of violence between the two sides since the Islamist leader’s election.
The intensity of the overnight violence, with Morsi’s Islamist backers and largely secular protesters lobbing firebombs and rocks at each other, signaled a turning point in the 2-week-old crisis over the president’s assumption of near-absolute powers and the hurried adoption of a draft constitution.
Opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi clashed near the presidential palace Wednesday. Large crowds of Morsi supporters converged on the palace as the day wore on, until they eventually outnumbered opponents. Edward Yeranian in Cairo reports that witnesses say the president’s supporters battled opponents and tore down their tents and forced many to flee the area.
If a cabal of Egyptian generals had been planning a coup, their moment to strike should be imminent. Tuesday saw new clashes between police and tens of thousands of antigovernment demonstrators outside Cairo’s presidential palace as a constitutional deadlock hardened into a not-yet-violent civil war between Islamists and their rivals — and as political camps brought their supporters onto the streets ahead of a Dec. 15 referendum on a controversial draft constitution.
The Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus had long been looking for appropriate international conditions to begin prospecting for petrol and natural gas and speeded these operations up after becoming a member of the EU in 2004. It prepared the way legally by signing exclusive economic zone agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel and then waited for a propitious set of circumstances to begin drilling. Just around this time in 2010, Israel announced that it had discovered about 685 billion m3 of natural gas in its Tamar and Leviathan fields.
Egypt’s top court on suspended its work indefinitely to protest ‘psychological and physical Pressures’ by Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Mursi who prevented judges from entering the court house, worsening a conflict between the judiciary and the head of state.
The Constitutional court was expected to rule on the case of dissolving the constituent assembly and the Shura Council. However, consideration of both cases has been postponed, with no new or follow-up sessions scheduled as of yet.
Former Arab league Secretary-General Amr Moussa spoke out in a recent interview about Qatar “paying” to have U.S. military presence on its lands in return for protection, said a London-based Arab newspaper.
Moussa said that Qatar’s Prince Hamad Bin Khalifa told the United States he was going to fulfill all their military expenses in Qatar if they agree to establish bases in the Gulf state, according to an interview with Al-Hayat newspaper.
Faced with an unprecedented strike by the courts and massive opposition protests, Egypt’s Islamist president is not backing down in the showdown over decrees granting him near-absolute powers.
Activists warn that his actions threaten a “second revolution,” butMohammed Morsi faces a different situation than his ousted predecessor,Hosni Mubarak: He was democratically elected and enjoys the support of the nation’s most powerful political movement.
Hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday evening, according to reports from the scene. Earlier in the day, minor clashes between police and protestors erupted in front of the US embassy. Reports online suggested that ‘Ahram’ photo journalist, Ahmed Goma, was beaten by government forces while covering the incident.
The violence escalated on Tuesday evening with further reports of tear gas and clashes outside the square. Protestors chanted for the downfall of the regime, leading online commentators to draw parallels with the January 25 revolution.
This week, Robele Ababya wrote a piece titled “Likely war over the Blue Nile River?” that highlighted the growing concern in Ethiopia over the future of Egypt’s tenuous democracy that has seen massive unrest in recent days.
Ababya wrote: “The matter is so serious that I gave it a rather scary title after a lot of soul-searching, but the arrogant stance of prominent Egyptian leaders begged for it as mentioned in the paragraph below – notwithstanding my long held dream that democratic Ethiopia and Egypt will one day emerge as powerful allies working together as keepers of stability and engines of economic growth in the region and beyond in the African continent.”
The courtship of Hamas between rivals Iran and Qatar has been one of the Middle East’s intriguing subplots of the Arab Spring. The bloodshed in Gaza has now sharpened their competition for influence with the Palestinian militant group and the direction it takes in the future.
Qatar has sought to use its vast wealth to win over Hamas with investments and humanitarian aid and encouraging Arab partners to do the same — part of the hyper-rich U.S. allied nation’s broader campaign to bring under its wing Islamist movements that have risen to power
Branded by many protesters as “the new pharaoh,” Morsi embarked on an early confrontation with pro-democracy activists who he tried to win over in his first months in office when he made some equally audacious decisions, such as ordering military chief Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to retire. He also attempted to relieve public prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud of his duties.
The latter decision, made in October to heed a key demand of Egypt’s revolutionaries, initially backfired due to legal obstacles. But Morsi sidestepped that hindrance Thursday after issuing the controversial decree that makes his decisions immune to judicial review.
Observers believe that the reason why some Gulf states have launched a campaign against Muslim Brotherhood members is because they are worried of the group’s reaching power in the Arab Spring countries. Adding to their worries is the developing relationship between Muslim Brotherhood governments on the one hand and the Turkish Republic, which seems to have found in the organization a new ally that could help Turkey extend its influence in the Arab region.
Israeli tanks and troops moved toward the Gaza Strip on Thursday night in apparent preparation for a possible invasion after a day of violence that included a fatal rocket strike in the southern Israeli city of Kiriyat Malachi, raising the likelihood that the region was on the brink of all-out war.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak summoned more than 30,000 reservists to military duty. Barak said the order was intended to make Israel “ready for any development.”
The Israeli army command has not ruled out that in order to destroy the missile arsenals of the Palestinian movement Hamas they might need not only the Air Force, but possibly to launch a ground operation into Gaza, therefore they have authorized the Army to call up reservists.
The Israeli Air Force struck dozens of targets on the Gaza Strip as part of a large-scale operation codenamed “Protective Pillar”, which resulted in 12 Palestinians being killed, including the leader of the military wing of Hamas, Ahmed al-Jabari.
Israel may launch ground invasion into the Gaza Strip if Palestinians keep on firing rockets and mortars against the Jewish state, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
One unnamed senior Israeli government official told The Telegraph that “a ground incursion is certainly not out of the question although we hope it won’t come to that.”
Source: CH4 The prime minister is touring Gulf states, including Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in a bid to sell British-made Typhoon fighter jets and promote the defence industry, which creates over 300,000 jobs. The trip comes just a month after Saudi Arabia was “insulted” by a parliamentary inquiry into the [...]
One of the most curious of alliances in the Middle East have been the clandestine goings on between the Zionist State of Israel and the Saudi royal family, the guardians of Mecca, among the most conservative of Arab monarchs. As I wrote in a previous blog, that relationship is based on a venerable political tenet: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The common enemy, in this case, being Iran, radical Islam, and the political upheaval known as the Arab Spring.
Modernization of the Air Force Jordan will American company Lockheed Martin. U.S. Air Force leadership has already approved several bilateral contracts to improve communication infrastructure Jordanian Air Force for a total of 26 million dollars. Pentagon officials stress that Jordan is considered as a key U.S. ally in the Arab world. Advanced American technology will allow the country to defend its airspace and provide air sovereignty.
American military specialists, along with their British counterparts regularly assist Jordan in enhancing its military capabilities.
If Iran starts to build nuclear weapons Turkey would soon follow, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during an interview with UK’s Telegraph. “Saudi Arabia will turn nuclear within weeks – according to them. Turkey will turn nuclear in several years,” Barak was quoted as saying. Egypt will follow as well, causing a “nightmare” as “nuclear material ends up in [the] hands of terrorist groups,” according to Barak.
“When we talk about the so-called Middle Eastern Spring, we are seeing something that is very similar to what happened in the Soviet Union,” He continued: “You have to remember that aside from Egypt, all the Arab countries are artificial. They were created by two European gentlemen, Sykes and Picot, British and French, who divided up areas of influence on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire – irrespective of nationalities, tribes and other geopolitical considerations.”
The Arab Spring has brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tunisia and Egypt, and may yet in Libya and Syria. Observers have speculated on how they will govern now that they finally lead governments where the practical problems of managing public affairs will confront them. But we need not speculate too much, since the Muslim Brotherhood has governed one country for 23 years: Sudan. Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan, and Hasan al-Turabi are the leaders of Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood.
In what possible way could the United States conceivably share any interests with either the Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda? The answer is mutual opposition to Assad’s bloody reign (both Assad and his father brutally suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist movements for several decades). Since Assad has been a traditional ally of Iran—which is now providing weapons to shore up his fragile hold on power
Rich countries and international lenders on Friday promised $165 million to a fund to provide financing for stronger public institutions in Arab nations seeking to establish democracies. The fund aims to help build economic institutions and promote reforms in countries where huge public uprisings ousted autocratic regimes. Major western economies and wealthy oil states are the founding donors of the fund announced in Tokyo alongside annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
Tthe Egyptian government has less than full sovereignty over the area. The 1978 peace treaty with Israel stipulated that the Peninsula be divided into demilitarised zones, and the Egyptian Army’s local operational capabilities remain limited today. The situation has not been improved by the recent influx of diverse weaponry from Libya, Gaza and Iran. An even greater lack of security oversight by the central government following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, gave radicals and criminals relative freedom of movement in the Sinai.
Gulf Arab countries should work together to stop Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood plotting to undermine governments in the region, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister said yesterday.
The UAE has arrested around 60 local Islamists this year, accusing them of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood – which is banned in the country – and conspiring to overthrow the government.
Followed by Egypt and Syria, “Muslim Brotherhood” trying to overthrow another secular regime – King Abdullah II of Jordan, perhaps the most moderate in the Arab world. King agreed to the dissolution of parliament and early elections, but that is not enough: they seek a change of government in which the monarch would remain purely symbolic function, and the real power will go to the premier Islamists. This evolution of the regime in Amman drastically change the political landscape of the Middle East, and the disastrous consequences it will have on the U.S. and Israel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday he believes “the Arab Spring will be followed by a Persian Spring,” with international sanctions against Iran leading to renewed domestic unrest.
“The Arab Spring will be followed by a Persian Spring, instability is spreading in Iran, and not just in Tehran,” Lieberman told Israeli military radio. “There is no doubt that the protest movement will be strengthened by the approach of the Iranian presidential elections next summer,” he added.
Turkey is at the forefront of nations directly confronting the Syrian government, potentially drawing its NATO allies into a conflict many in the region had hoped to solve locally.
Several regional analysts are confident Ankara will not pursue that route, despite the Wednesday’s incident in which Syrian shells killed five civilians in a Turkish border town. “Turkey will not declare war,” said Nadim Shehadi, a researcher at London-based Chatham House.
The image of an Ottoman sultan glowered at the gridlock from a highway billboard in the Egyptian capital, hands clasped, his feathered headgear and gold-hewn epaulettes in elegant contrast to the grind of traffic below. The poster for a Turkish-made movie about the 1453 fall of Constantinople recalled the early feats of an empire that eventually ruled the Middle East and beyond.
Egypt, like Turkey, has its own grand history – evident in the pyramids and other monuments that its ancients left behind, and in a national pride that’s distinctive in the Arab world.
The descendants of yesterday’s sultans and pharaohs, so to speak, also have ambitions of an outsized role for their respective countries. Each wants to speak for the Middle East.
Through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the US and the UK undertook military expeditions to destabilise secular Arab nations. They undertook an invasion of Egypt, which failed. They sponsored two assassination attempts on Nasser, which failed. They tried to instigate two revolts in Syria, which also failed.
Way back in 1957 the British cabinet had approved Operation Straggle, a plot to engineer a coup in Damascus. The plan was to create disaffection on the border areas, infiltrate armed insurgents into urban areas and instigate uprisings.
Iran is in talks to sell crude oil to Egypt, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) on Monday.
Iran has been looking for new buyers for its oil as western sanctions over its disputed nuclear program squeeze sales to long-time customers, Reuters reported.
Of all the changes brought on by the Arab Spring, it is the ongoing unrest in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province – home to a large Shiite minority, and holding 90% of the country’s oil reserves – that could prove to be the most important in the long run.
When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, tensions over who should lead the Islamic community – by that time covering almost the entirety of the Arabian Peninsula – emerged and persisted. On the one hand were those who favoured a succession that promoted the most qualified individual on the basis of wisdom, good conduct, devoutness and competence. This group came to be known as the Sunnis.
It seems that a possible U.S. attack on Iran is at hand. In recent days, Iran is making frantic efforts to find allies to repel aggression. Last week, Secretary of Defense Persian state A. Vahidi made a sensational statement. According to the head of the military department, it’s time to create a “military alliance of Muslim countries to reflect external aggression to them, and to protect the Palestinian people.”
Observers immediately drew an analogy with the Russian-led military-political alliance CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization Security) and was named the alleged formation of a new “Islamic CSTO” . Recall that now the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty includes six countries: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan .
Egypt is preparing to use aircraft and tanks in Sinai for the first time since the 1973 war with Israel in its offensive against militants in the border area, said security sources.
The plans to step up the operation were being finalised by Egypt’s newly appointed Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as he made his first visit to Sinai on Monday following the killing of 16 border guards on August5.
Egypt blamed the attack on Islamist militants and the conflict is an early test for President Mohamed Mursi – elected in June following the overthrow last year of Hosni Mubarak – to prove he can rein in militants on the border with Israel, Reuters reports.
When the drums of war reach a fever pitch throughout the Middle East, cooperation with Israel’s most important ally assumes even more urgency than ever. The IDF is, of course, a powerful and independent army but in the event of an extensive confrontation, even Israel — a regional power — may run out of ammo. Meanwhile, six secret American bases are spread out throughout the country. According to foreign reports, these depots are chock-full of ammunition, smart bombs, missiles, an assortment of military vehicles and a military hospital with 500 beds. If Israel will be forced to take action against Iran, whether alone or together with the US, there is high probability that it will need a strategic home front — in the guise of those bases full of goodies.
The Israeli army has deployed an Iron Dome air defense system, designed to intercept and destroy rockets, days after two rockets were fired at the town of Eilat near the border with Egypt, a military spokeswoman said Monday.
“An Iron Dome battery has been deployed in the town of Eilat as part of tests, momentarily modifying the sites where these systems are deployed,” she said but did not give further details.
An Islamist militant group claimed responsibility for the two rocket attacks aimed at Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea resort town, SITE Intelligence Group reported on Thursday.
President Mohamed Morsi’s government and allies are pushing back against critical news coverage, suppressing critical journalists and state-run newspapers, putting a journalist on trial, and attacking three journalists on the street, according to news reports.
“This is a troubling backward step that Egypt’s newly elected President Mohamed Morsi should not be taking,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “We urge President Morsi to reverse this course immediately and demonstrate his commitment to press freedom.”
Several journalists have reported suppression at the state-run newspaper Al-Akhbar.
If those who state that there is a Syrian scenario developed by the US and their Middle East allies are right, then the developments in Syria contradict the plan. The regime of Bashar Assad appears to be hard to kill: it didn’t collapse as easy as those in president of Tunisia and Egypt. The Syrian opposition can’t turn the civil war in its favor as in Libya. The opposition admits that they were pushed out from Damascus. According to received reports, the rebels seem to fail “the historic battle” for Aleppo as well. In this context, leaders of anti-Assad forces speak about necessity of a no-fly zone over Syria. The opposition interest is understandable. Such a no-fly zone will at least neutralize Syrian Air Forces devoted to Assad, that would make implementation of military tasks easier for Free Syrian Army. It seems FSA’s urging was heard by Washington.
Germany’s intelligence service fears that members of a radical Salafist group, banned in the country since June, could establish a new, dangerous Salafist colony in Egypt, the German daily Die Welt cited security experts as saying.
In Germany, radical Islamist groups are kept under surveillance relatively easily, but the situation abroad is far more complex, a member of the intelligence service told the daily in an article to be published in its Saturday edition.
Germany banned the Millatu Ibrahim Salafist group in June in a crackdown on radical Islamists suspected of plotting against the state. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said they worked against the constitutional order.
While many have reported on the recent terror attacks on the Sinai border between Egypt and Israel, few have reported on two aspects of the fallout of this Islamist campaign. Until last summer, when a similar group of local Sinai Bedouin crossed the border and attacked Eilat, few in the Israeli intelligence apparatus had Sinai on their radar. But now it is there with a vengeance. With crisis comes opportunity for bold, ambitious military-intelligence operatives.
The question is who will take responsibility for combatting the terror threat represented by Sinai Islamist militants. Traditionally, the Shin Bet would take primary control of such matters. But given that the terror attacks are trans-national, the army can make an argument that it should be responsible. This is not a matter of dry jurisdictional bureaucratic matters.
Vladimir Snegirev of Rossiyskaya Gazeta sat down with former prime minister and Middle East expert Yevgeny Primakov to discuss the situation.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Let us talk about Syria first. All the signs are that the situation there is becoming more and more alarming. There are early signs of panic in the capital, something that was not the case only three or four months ago. What are your thoughts on all this?
Yevgeny Primakov: A full-scale civil war with the participation of external forces is being fought in Syria. There are all sorts of mercenaries and volunteers from other countries fighting against the regime alongside the Syrians. The latest report says that President Obama has issued a direct command to the CIA to back the Syrian opposition.
An evacuation plan of 200,000 French citizens living in Israel has been developed to cope with the rising dangers. Objective: Do not be caught off guard should a barrage of missiles equipped with conventional weapons or unconventional fired by Iran or Hezbollah was abatteraient on Israeli territory. Among the rescue scenario envisioned by diplomats face a departure of French nationals aboard small boats then joining the French warships cruising off the port of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. To complete the device, several dozen French were appointed to serve as coordinators to relay instructions to organize the evacuation, assembly points and procedures and contact details of contact persons.
Egypt launched air strikes in the Sinai region close to the border with Israel on Wednesday, killing more than 20 suspected Islamic militants, the state-run Ahram news website said.
The air strikes on positions in the town of Sheikh Zouaid followed the deaths of 16 border guards last Sunday in an attack blamed partly on Palestinian militants.
The incident marks the first time the Egyptian Air Force has been called into action in Sinai since 1973. As per peace agreements, Egyptian Air Force activity must be coordinated with Israel.
More than half a century ago, the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet said in one of his poems “the age I am living in does not scare me.” What would any Arab poet write about our age, where everything has become mixed up? It is the age of the reversal of ideas, the collapse of principles and the slaughter of values. It is the age where ethics are crushed, and is followed by searching for terms and justifications for condemning it, amid fierce wars for power, wealth and money. It is the era of partisanship at the expense of nations that are disintegrating like sacrifices on the altars of power.
It is the era of decadence, the reversal of concepts, and legitimization of conspiring against nations, destroying them, and selling them as corpses to organ traders.
Sunday’s bloody attack by unknown assailants on Egyptian border guards in the Sinai Peninsula is being heralded as another example of the deterioration of Egyptian state control over the volatile region since the fall of the Mubarak regime.
Following emergency meetings with military, governmental and intelligence officials, President Mohamed Morsi briefly visited the Egypt-Israel border town of Rafah Monday afternoon in a bid to restore people’s confidence in the country’s security situation.
The European economy is deteriorating and leaders across the continent are being booted from office in favor of a new generation of politicians. Rising tensions in the Middle East and uncertainty over leadership changes in emerging markets worldwide are adding to investor concerns.
Tina Fordham, Senior Global Political Analyst at Citi, is out with her mid-year outlook, presenting all of the bank’s views on all of the biggest political risks emanating from the world’s key hotspots over the remainder of this year and into 2013.
The attack on Sunday evening – which Egypt and Israel blamed on Islamist militants from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – was one of the bloodiest in years and the deadliest against Egyptian troops who have become targets of militants in the desert along the Egypt-Israel border.
It also raised new fears in Israel about the Egyptian government’s ability to reassert control over the lawless Sinai.
CitizenLab has exposed spying activity targeting Bahraini anti-government activists using a version of the FinFisher intrusion and remote monitoring capabilities made by Gamma International.
The FinFisher surveillance software attained notoriety during the Arab Spring when protestors in Egypt stormed the Egyptian state security headquarters and found documents showing that state security was in talks with Gamma to purchase the software.
After all is said and done, if the U.S. is willing to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, it can also benefit from conditional recognition of Hamas, which could damage Iran’s field of influence.
The Iranians are not blind to such a scenario, and despite statements of unlimited support for Assad, they seek alternatives for the era following his downfall. Their focus of interest and activity is now on the Kurdish region of Iraq, which could serve as the link between Iran and the Kurdish minority in Syria and a way to wield influence on the Syria that emerges in the future.
The Developing Eight (D-8) Organization for Economic Cooperation has launched a “seed bank project” to fight global food crises.
D-8 Secretary-General Professor Widi Pratikto told Anatolia news agency that the world was facing another food crisis.
“To prevent a new food crisis, the organization has launched a ‘seed bank’ project which will be focused on the sectors of agriculture, food safety, energy and trade as well as industry and transportation,” said Pratikto.
US officials say they believe intelligence gaps have impeded efforts to support the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad.
The officials say spy agencies have expanded their efforts to gather intelligence on rebel forces and Dr Assad’s regime in recent months, but they are still largely confined to monitoring intercepted communications and observing from a distance.
Interviews with US and foreign intelligence officials revealed that the CIA has been unable to establish a presence in Syria, in contrast with the agency’s prominent role gathering intelligence from inside Egypt and Libya during their revolts.
THERE IS a crisis of confidence in Cairo. The wrangling between the judiciary and the executive might plunge the strife-torn country into a renewed phase of power struggle.
Often, it is so mindboggling to interpret as to what each organ of the state means when it comes down with its own diagnosis to overcome the vacuum at work. The military junta that has ruled Egypt de facto since president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown seems to be in a straight-jacket module while asserting its influence.
Egypt’s top intelligence agency, long a secretive power behind the country’s ruling system, is taking a small but unprecedented step out of the shadows in an apparent attempt to win the public’s support in the face of potential challenges from the new Islamist president.
In an unusual move, the General Intelligence Service — known as the “Mukhabarat” in Arabic — released a 41-minute-long documentary boasting of its achievements, presenting itself as the defender of the nation and vowing to continue to protect the country.
“The eye of the Egyptian intelligence does not sleep,” the narrator says. In one of the film’s many dramatic images, it shows footage of a falcon — the agency’s symbol — circling in the sky and swooping down to snatch up a snake.
The country’s media reported on Wednesday that it would be the first time the interceptors were being deployed near Egypt, but they have been used to track rocket attacks from Gaza.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the battery “will be placed near Eilat as part of an operational deployment program which includes changing the locations of the batteries from time to time,” in comments published by Reuters news agency.
Iron Dome, a system produced with American funding, uses radar-guided missiles to blow up Katyusha-style rockets with ranges of 5-70 km (3-45 miles) and mortar bombs in mid-air, Reuters said.
It’s never been harder to be a dictator, says at least one analyst. Faced with rapid demographic growth, massive increases in unemployment for college graduates, and changes in the information environment, modern authoritarian regimes are increasingly coming under challenge. But in response, they are using 21st-century techniques themselves, to wield their power and maintain the status quo.
In the battle between repression and freedom in the 21st century, opposition movements are increasingly turning to modern technology and non-violent methods.
For months now, Western policy makers have been racking their brains to figure out what strategic interests have made Russia so intent on supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad — a leader who, facing a popular uprising, seemed to be on his way out anyway.
It is an understandable question, but perhaps the wrong one. Decisions are flowing from President Vladimir V. Putin, whose career has left him overwhelmingly wary both of revolutions and of Western intervention.
If we see an unfinished revolution, and the struggle continues between the military establishment, the civic forces and Islamists in a pivotal country like Egypt, how far could such a situation affect US interests in the Middle East?
It will affect the US interests in the sense that it will contribute to increased unrest in the Middle East, and continued unrest in the Middle East is likely to create increasingly less propitious circumstances for a constructive American role in the Middle East. There is no doubt that American influence is declining, but before anyone begins to applaud the emerging decline of America’s presence in the Middle East, they better ask themselves what are the likely wider consequences of such decline.
Perhaps the only real practical argument that can be made for Western intervention in Syria is that civil wars have a nasty habit of jumping borders and simply becoming wars. As Syria’s vicious crackdown on an armed insurgency continues, and violence spreads to the capital of Damascus, its neighbours are becoming increasingly wary. This is especially true given last week’s shoot-down of a Turkish reconnaissance plane near Syrian airspace (Syria claims in its airspace) and a reported ineffective attack on another Turkish plane that was searching for its downed comrade.
Now that Egypt has its first freely elected president, Egypt’s powerful generals appear headed toward copying the Turkish model from decades past — retaining overwhelming powers while allowing a civilian regime complete with the trappings of democracy to emerge.
It is not the model that many in today’s Turkey boast about, but rather one dating back to the 1980s and 1990s when civilians ran Turkey’s day-to-day affairs under the watchful eyes of the military.
Sudan is grappling with Arab-spring style protests, albeit smaller in scale than those that toppled leaders in its northern neighbours. Police arrested dozens of protesters at the weekend in an attempt to nip the movement in the bud.
Angered by austerity measures aimed at reducing a $2.4bn (£1.3bn) budget deficit, activists have tried to use discontent to trigger an uprising against the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Security forces have used teargas and batons to break up the demonstrations in several neighbourhoods. Some scenes in the capital, Khartoum, at the weekend recalled events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, with teargas in the air, rocks strewn across streets, and burning tyres.
Three militants, who crossed into Israel’s southern desert from Egypt’s increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula, targeted a two-vehicle convoy carrying workers building a border fence with a roadside bomb, rifle-fire and a rocket-propelled grenade. A passenger in one of the vehicles was killed after it overturned, while a second was badly wounded.
Israeli forces swiftly arrived at the scene and engaged the militants in a gun battle, killing two of them. The third escaped, an Israeli army spokesman said.
The incident, which mirrored a similar attack a year ago that claimed eight Israeli lives, heightened fears in Israel that Egypt has allowed the Sinai to become a haven for militants to attack the Jewish state.
Egypt entered its final day of voting on Sunday with very few people going to the polls to choose Hosni Mubarak’s successor under a cloud of apprehension and anticipation. Turnout appeared dismal in a sign of just how polarizing and demoralizing the choice between a military strongman and conservative Islamist is for the Arab World’s most populous nation.
The country’s military junta was expected to issue a constitutional decree within hours, according to the state’s Middle East News Agency, which would define the president’s powers. It would be a move that revolutionaries and the once-repressed Muslim Brotherhood condemned as a sign the military rulers continue to dictate rather than manage the transition to what Egyptians had hoped would be democracy.
