24-Dec-13: Violent chaos in Egypt escalates to more chaotic and considerably more violent

From CNN's coverage

We keep hearing about how Israeli actions are what keep the Middle East turmoil going. But the hour-by-hour Syrian carnage and the ongoing pan-Arab repression of minorities are among a host of factors reminding us how untrue and self-serving that simplistic view of a complex situation is.

An Associated Press report yesterday (Monday) pointed to the steady rise of terrorist rhetoric and violence in Egypt, and in particular at threats made by a group with Palestinian Arab ties against Egypt's post-Moslem Brotherhood government.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or the Champions of Jerusalem, said it considers Egyptian troops to be infidels because they answer to the secular-leaning military-backed government. The group and others based in the Sinai have been blamed for a surge of attacks against the security forces since a July coup toppled the country's former Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. In reaction, Egypt's armed forces launched a military offensive in the Northern Sinai province in August, going after suspected militants in the region. Speaking at a public forum Monday, the military spokesman Ahmed Mohammed Ali said so far the operations have resulted in the killing of 184 militants and the arrest of 803 others. He said about 25 percent of those killed and arrested are foreign fighters, but didn't provide further details. The group is believed to have ties with Palestinian militants in the neighboring Gaza Strip and officials have said other foreign militants have found refuge in Sinai during the ongoing turmoil. [AP]

The terrorists of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis have mostly been in the news owing to the wave of terror attacks they have instigated in Egypt's volatile Sinai Peninsula. AP quotes Egypt's army saying that since August it has killed 184 terrorists in North Sinai, where near-daily attacks have been carried out against security forces. We have been writing regularly in this blog about the spiral downwards into murderous chaos that has infected the Sinai in the past two years.

Now those jihadists have raised the stakes, calling in a statement yesterday (Monday) on the country's army and police to desert. Otherwise, it said, security officials will face death at the hands of the terrorists.

Early today (Tuesday), they delivered on the threat. Egypt is in a state of shock as it sees the Islamist terrorists strike viciously beyond the confines of the troubled Sinai. From AFP in the early hours of this morning:

A powerful blast at a police headquarters in the Egyptian city of Mansoura early Tuesday killed at least eight people and wounded 90 others, officials said. Egyptian security sources said the explosion in the city, north of Cairo, was massive and a part of the building had caved in... The impact of the explosion was felt around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away and shattered windows of nearby buildings, the security sources said. [AFP]

Al Ahram says the police headquarters bombing, around 1:00 am today, has risen to at least 14 lives and injured 130. Some reports [for instance, Telegraph UK] say that the Egyptian prime minister

"has declared the Muslim Brotherhood movement a "terrorist" group, after a car bomb ripped through a police building and killed at least 14 people. Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi's condemnation of the group comes just weeks ahead of a referendum on a new constitution that is billed as the first major step toward democracy since the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in July... An Egyptian court has already banned the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi belongs, while the interim military-installed authorities have often accused the group of funding and training militants in the restive Sinai Peninsula."

At Aljazeera, they say there will be an Egyptian cabinet meeting later this morning to consider formalizing the Moslem Brotherhood ban.

23-Jul-13: Does what happens in Sinai stay in Sinai?

At National Geographic, they have no problem locating those
Gazan tunnels [Image Source: NG]

The Sinai peninsula, the part of Egypt that is closest to, and has the greatest immediate impact on, Israel is ablaze. Looking closely at what happens there is enough to cause real trepidation for us Israelis. We have watched (and written in this blog) about its slide into chaos for years. Now it's getting worse.

Yesterday (Monday) was a bad day, as the editors at The Tower (quoting Bloomberg, VOA and Al Arabiya noted:

At least six Egyptians were killed on Monday in a string of attacks carried out against police station and army checkpoints in the Sinai Peninsula. The attacks, conducted by Islamists, added up to the single worst day of violence this month: At least 10 attacks were carried out by Islamist militants against police stations and security and army checkpoints in Sinai’s two main northern cities of Rafah and El-Arish near Egypt’s borders with Israel and the Gaza strip . Two civilians, two army officers and two policemen were killed, Reuters reported. Over the weekend gunmen killed four security officials in separate attacks in the northern city of el-Arish. Earlier Monday at least six people – five policemen and one civilian – were wounded in an attack on a security camp near Rafah.

The violence has grown from an already high base since the overthrow of the Mohammed Morsi/Moslem Brotherhood regime earlier this month.

From VOA:

The pace of attacks on security forces in the northern Sinai by Islamists loyal to former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has intensified since the army ousted him from power more than two weeks ago. About 20 people have died in the attacks, including soldiers and civilians.

Doesn't (of course) come remotely close to most of the other current Arab-on-Arab bloodbaths, like the one in Syria. But given the cast of thugs involved in this, it's worrying enough. At The Tower, they say

The Egyptian army blames the Iran-backed terror group Hamas for the much of the violence, accusing the group of maintaining tunnels between the Sinai and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip through which jihadists move personnel and weapons.

And at Al Arabiya, they speak of Egyptian efforts to stem the Hamas element in this:

Earlier this month, an Egyptian senior military official claimed 40 tunnels connecting Gaza and Sinai were destroyed as part of the effort to crackdown on terrorism in the region.

Unfortunately, there are orders of magnitude more Gazan tunnels than the 40 that the Egyptians say they destroyed.

10-Apr-13: "I cannot help but cry out long live the descendants of apes and pigs"

[Image Source]

From Arabian Business this week:

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, the Arab world’s wealthiest individual with an estimated fortune of $25.9bn, is the rumoured buyer of the planet’s largest superyacht. The recently launched Azzam cost $609m... Few details have been released about Azzam’s interior, other than it will require a crew of about 50 and will be delivered to its owner later in 2013... The UK’s Daily Mail tabloid reported that Azzam had been paid for by Prince Alwaleed, a prominent investor and member of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Alwaleed’s Riyadh-based firm, Kingdom Holding, owns stakes businesses including Citigroup and Twitter. If Alwaleed were to be revealed as the yacht’s buyer, Azzam would be the latest in an impressive list of high profile assets that includes a Boeing 747-400, for which he paid about $220m for. The Kingdom Holding chairman also confirmed earlier this year he had sold an A380 double-decker (airliner), valued at about $319m. A spokesperson for Alwaleed did not respond to Arabian Business’s query regarding his possible purchase of Azzam.

It's beyond the scope of a simple and relatively-focused blog like ours to give people advice on what to do with their money. But seeing a man spend $600+ Million on a recreational vehicle (the name Azzam means very determined, resolute) gets you thinking about what kinds of things money like that could do.

Think for instance of the hospitals, vaccination programs, educational facilities for girls and women, and water purification projects that could turn people's difficult lives completely around.

Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia is a clever fellow. He surely knows what we just said. You would have to assume that such a public figure, in deciding to drop more than half a billion on a bauble, assumes the purchase is not going to hold him back in life but on the contrary - advance him, and raise his standing in the community that matters to him. This quote, also from Arabian Business, would seem to support that thought:

“The Middle East continues to lead demand in the global superyacht market,” said Mohammed Hussain Al Shaali, chairman of Gulf Craft. “We are very optimistic about this region as more people are finding their way to the water." 

(We know that finding their way to the water is a powerful and urgent motif in Arab public discourse.)

In other words, it's an action that lends itself to interpretation - one that throws light on the values of the society in which he moves.

A recent column in the Egyptian daily Al-Watan ("Motherland") takes an unexpectedly robust look at the way people use their wealth.

It's a theme that surely resonates throughout the oil-soaked parts of the Arab world, given the stark contrast between Arab haves and Arab have-nots. But for us non-Arabic-savvy news readers, it's one that rarely gets much attention. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an active not-for-profit that has been shining a light since 1998 on what the Arabic-speaking world is saying to its own people, published a translation of the column this week. It originally appeared a month ago.

In it, Khalid Muntasir - said to be a secular commentator ("known for his polemical writings against Islamism" according to this 2008 book) - takes a scornful look at Islamist super-piety and racism, contrasting it with... ah, let's quote him rather than paraphrasing:

• "The founders of Facebook and Google and the Russian billionaire [Yuri Milner] are the ones who truly love life, change it for the better, and have passion for freedom and creativity. They respect [true] scholars, as opposed to those whom we call scholars merely because they memorized 100 old books and can recite them without interpreting or even understanding them – scholars that could be replaced by a single DVD containing these books, which  can be read at the stroke of a key on a keyboard costing less than $1. These emperors of the internet founded an organization that awards the world's biggest prize without any preconditions of age, faith or gender, and with no limit on the number of times you can win.
• "When the Jewish internet and social network magnates get together, put aside their competition and unite to declare a $33-million grant for medical research on incurable diseases that prolongs human life, I cannot help but cry out 'long live the descendants of apes and pigs,' as they were described by [Egyptian President] Dr. [Muhammad] Mursi and his [Muslim Brotherhood] movement.
• "On the other hand, those who detonate bombs in the midst of the innocent, murder tourists and eviscerate them, assassinate politicians, thinkers and intellectuals, and accuse others of being infidels can go to hell, where they can continue indulging their sick taste for violence and blood.
• "As I read the article on this organization, I also happened to watch a video sent to me by one of my friends, in which an important [Muslim] speaker lectured on the benefits of having a beard in treating impotence, and [explained] how the beard gives the man virility and strength. I closed the article, shut off the computer, sighed and said: It's no use. Free us [of your discussions] on whether it is permissible to eat the flesh of demons, whether a woman can disrobe in front of a male dog, and on treatments using camel urine, fennel flower, bee stings, etc. 
• "The voice of the sheikh in the neighboring mosque rose and echoed as he cursed the Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs, [wishing] that they would scatter in every direction and that their wives become widows and their children orphans, while the worshipers rejoiced in the mighty victory..."
• "By God! Who is more conscionable, moral, and loves life and his fellow man? Is it these three Jews who contribute to science, health, happiness and the improvement of life, or [Al-Qaeda leaders] bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and Al-Zarqawi, [Taliban leader] Mullah 'Omar, and those who display their pictures, kiss them, memorize their ideas and adopt them? Who does more good to humanity and the world, and even to Muslims..?

The grant-giving organization to which he refers is

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences... founded by Art Levinson, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner to recognize excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life... who collectively have agreed to establish 5 annual prizes, US$3 million each, going forward. These prizes will be awarded for past achievements in the field of life sciences, with the aim of providing the recipients with more freedom and opportunity to pursue even greater future accomplishments [more]

People who read the kind of posts we write here are unlikely to have difficulty accepting the cogency of Dr Khalid Muntasir's case. But life, as we have learned, works quite differently from the logic he represents. We're unfortunately not in a good position to know what impact his recent Al-Watan column had on its readers. We suspect his is not exactly a household name in Egypt. By contrast, the 'resolute' and 'determined' man who evidently spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an ultra-luxury boat is at the top of the "annual countdown of the world’s most influential Arabs" (see "The world's most powerful Arab").

It's trite to say that determination, influence and economic power can do a lot to benefit mankind across ethnic, religious and every other kind of boundary. Maybe it's harder to see that when you're sailing the seas on the deck of a vessel of "innovative and timeless design... providing luxurious and sophisticated accommodation".

But it's true all the same - a question of values.