Declassified e-mails from former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have exposed a suspicious relationship between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. This revelation has sent shockwaves across the Middle East, where many have accused Washington of instigating the Arab Spring revolts that swept several countries in the region in 2011.

Clinton’s Emails Reveal Meddling and Bribes in Middle Eastern Politics

The declassification of Clinton’s emails was ordered by US President Donald Trump as part of federal investigations into her use of a private server for government emails.

In one of the e-mails, Clinton requested the Gulf state of Qatar to finance the Arab Spring revolts through an account dedicated to the Clinton Foundation. In 2016, the foundation confirmed that it had accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar in 2011 while Clinton was still secretary of state without informing the State Department.

Another e-mail showed that Qatar helped the Muslim Brotherhood to establish a media channel with investments amounting to $100 million after the Islamist group complained that its media organizations were weak and unable to compete with other media outlets.

E-mails: Clinton Apparently Worked with Al Jazeera to Topple Egyptian Leader Mubarak

Other e-mails revealed that the former US chief diplomat had coordinated with the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera channel regarding Washington’s hardline position on former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 protests.

Mubarak was swept from power after mass street protests against his 30-year rule. The Obama administration expressed support to the protests against the Mubarak regime.

“My dear Judith: I congratulate President Obama for his principled stance on Egypt. I hope that he will continue in this direction in these critical days ahead. We renew once again our interest in conducting an appropriate interview with him. Frankly, there is no alternative. Sincerely,” read an e-mail dated January 29, 2011 sent by Al Jazeera to US under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public affairs Judith McHale. This e-mail was sent on the same day Obama sent a message of support to the Egyptian demonstrators against Mubarak’s regime.

The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

One year after Mubarak’s overthrow, the Muslim Brotherhood came to power in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous state. The Islamist group was strongly supported by Qatar, a wealthy Gulf state, which channeled billions of dollars to cement the group’s rule in Egypt. The Brotherhood, however, has irked thousands in Egypt and triggered mass protests against its rule, forcing the military to remove Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, from power in 2012.

One of the declassified e-mails showed that Clinton had visited Al Jazeera channel in May 2010 and met with its director back then, Waddah Khanfar. Clinton also met with members of the channel’s board of directors, where they agreed to arrange a visit for a delegation from the TV network to Washington, which happened in mid-May 2010. These discussions were also crowned with a meeting with the former Prime Minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani.

The Importance of Qatar

Egypt, along with its Gulf allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, accuse Qatar of supporting terrorist groups and instigating chaos in the region. In 2017, the four countries severed diplomatic relations with Doha and imposed an economic blockade on the Gulf state.

Qatar has been a safe haven for hundreds of Brotherhood members, who have fled a crackdown launched by the Egyptian authorities to quell violence that erupted after the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood group from power. The Gulf state’s mouthpiece Al Jazeera is also blocked in most Arab countries, which accuse Qatar of using the TV channel to instigate violence and chaos in the region.

Following the Arab Spring revolts, several Arab countries descended into violence such as Syria, Libya and Yemen, amid severe – and ongoing – humanitarian crises in these countries. Now Clinton’s declassified e-mails show that Washington had a hand to some extent in the turmoil that ravaged the region and caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history.

L'articolo Hillary Clinton’s Finally-Released E-mails Rattle the Middle East proviene da InsideOver.

Ever since the forced demise of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 through NATO’s half-hearted operation, the country has been plunged into intense instability and chaos. Instead of introducing democracy to the North African country, the events of 2011 created a power vacuum which two alternative factions – backed by different global and regional players – are trying to fill.

Libya In A Nutshell: The GNA Versus The LNA

On the one hand, there is the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) with control over Tripoli and the surrounding areas while the oil-rich east is ruled by the rebel leader Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), which earlier in April launched an offensive to take the capital. 

The events since then have led to polarization not only within the country but also in the international arena as Libya’s conflict was quickly co-opted by other players—in the neighborhood and beyond—who are trying to secure their own interests. For example, the GNA government – given its Islamist inclinations – has its key allies in Turkey and Qatar, two countries that have previously thrown their weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood in other states too. Beyond that, the GNA also draws some verbal support from the US and other major powers such as Libya’s former colonizer Italy.

In contrast, Egypt—under Abdel Fateh al-Sisi, a ruthless opponent of the Brotherhood—and the United Arab Emirates are backing Haftar’s militia given its anti-Islamist (and dictatorial) ideology. Then there is Russia, which has an on-ground presence through its mercenary forces, the so-called Wagner Group, aiding Haftar’s rebel group. 

Ankara And Moscow: Opposite Sides Of The Battle Line In Libya

Even in a multilateral battleground like that of Libya’s with many foreign powers involved, two actors lately seem to be emerging on the top and calling the shots: Turkey and Russia. Ankara last month signed two memorandums of understanding with Tripoli on military cooperation and maritime boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to the first one, Turkey is now considering deploying troops on Libyan soil to aid the GNA government, and has already sent a bill in this regard to its parliament. Bloomberg even reported that Turkey plans to deploy factions of Syrian rebels and militants under its control.

Turkey’s decision warranted a strong reaction from Libya’s eastern parliament’s head, Aguila Saleh, who termed the offer unacceptable. Egypt’s Sisi and France’s Emmanuel Macron also held a meeting on the development and called for greater restraint, while Italy’s leader Giuseppe Conte proposed a no-fly zone.  

The second of the two pacts extends Turkey’s maritime borders to the Derna-Tobruk coast in Libya, creating an exclusive economic zone. This irritated not only the existing party Egypt – who called it illegal – but also long-time rival Greece. The Southern Cyprus also expressed its concern and displeasure at this agreement. 

With France’s support for Haftar largely limited to the extent of protecting its oil interests and the US taking a passive role at best, Russia has quickly expanded its sphere of influence. The Kremlin already has on-ground presence through its shadow mercenaries in the Wagner Group. 

The GNA’s Fading Power

Since the April offensive when Haftar’s forces stepped up their efforts to take the capital, the GNA government has seen waning on-ground support, raising questions about its legitimacy. In this context, Turkey’s pledge of troops deployment is a welcome move for the troubled Tripoli-based administration and is expected to restore some balance between the two opposite camps. 

Despite their support for the rival groups, Ankara and Moscow haven’t let it adversely impact their bilateral ties significantly at this point. In mid-December, Vladimir Putin and Moscow had a phone call to discuss the situation in Libya and Syria and seemed to reach an understanding that limits any fallout from their direct dealings. That is evident from the fact that Turkey just recently bought Russian S-400 missiles. How long can they keep playing their cards like this without relations breaking down over Libya remains to be seen.

L'articolo Putin And Erdogan Fight For Dominance In Libya proviene da InsideOver.

June 24, 2012, was a day full of hope for the Muslim Brotherhood, which before was known as Egypt’s and the Arab world’s most powerful Islamist organization.

On this day, a senior member of the organization was declared the winner of Egypt’s presidential elections, the first to be held in the Arab country following the 2011 popular uprising that ended the rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The election victory by Mohamed Morsi, who before the presidential elections was hardly known to the majority of the Egyptian people, also gave hope to the branches of his Islamist movement across the Arab region.

The Brotherhood, which emerged as an educational charity organization in Egypt in 1928, could not have been more optimistic.

This optimism was brought about by the series of uprisings that rocked the Arab world at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 and came to be known as the “Arab Spring”.

These uprisings empowered Islamist movements in Arab countries, with the Brotherhood at their forefront, giving them hope that the road to power was finally open, after decades of repression.

The same movements used to claim that they had solutions to the economic, political and social problems of Arab countries.

In Egypt, the Brotherhood, which adopted the slogan “Islam is the solution”, worked hard to control all aspects of life in the populous Arab state after Morsi took power.

In Tunisia, the Ennahda movement, the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate in the North African state, also made political gains. Almost a year before Morsi came to power in Egypt, in October 2011, the movement won 90 seats in the 217-seat constituent assembly which would later draft Tunisia’s first post-revolution constitution.

The Muslim Brotherhood made equally startling political gains in other Arab states, including in Libya, Yemen and Jordan.

In Morocco, the country’s Islamists won the 2011 parliamentary elections and formed the government. They also won the majority of seats in the 2016 elections and formed the government again.

However, the Brotherhood was an utter failure in Egypt. Apart from failing to address the country’s economic problems, they increased its political and social polarization.

Morsi moved from one problem to another by antagonizing the media, the judiciary, the civil society, police and finally the army. This was why when millions of people took to the streets to protest the failure of the Islamist president one year into his presidency in June 2013, almost all state institutions were ready to offer support, including the army which served as a decisive force.

But this was to prove fateful for the Brotherhood, not only in Egypt, but throughout the whole Arab region. The collapse of the Brotherhood regime in Egypt made the organization’s dream of 84 years fall like a house of cards. This led to disbelief among the organization’s members who strutted and fretted, staged protests and sit-ins and finally turned to violence.

They attacked police stations, ministry headquarters and churches. Brotherhood militias killed dozens of policemen and planted hundreds of bombs everywhere in Egypt, precipitating a heavy-handed state crackdown that resulted in hundreds of organization members and leaders being put in jail and hundreds of others fleeing Egypt altogether.

Morsi and most Brotherhood leaders are now being tried on a wide range of charges, including premeditated murder, incitement, treason and espionage.

In the same way, it emboldened affiliates in other Arab states through its political rise in Egypt, the Brotherhood frustrated these same affiliates through its political collapse and loss of power. This triggered a chain reaction throughout the Arab region. The Islamist movement that had only just started to fulfil its dream of controlling the Arab world and leading Muslims, was now beginning the journey towards disintegration and political destruction.

In Egypt, it became nothing more than a pariah organization whose members started to either hide or run away from the country altogether. In Tunisia, the Ennahda, who were preparing to control the entire political scene, started incurring political losses as well. During the October 2014 parliamentary elections, the movement did not win the house majority of seats, finishing second to the Nidaa Tounes movement of incumbent President Beji Caid Essebsi. This foreshadowed the results of the presidential elections which took place a month later where Essebsi beat out Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia’s interim president and the Ennahda party’s favourite in the elections.

Throughout Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and the Gulf, the political conditions of the Brotherhood was no better. In 2016, the Palestinian faction, Hamas, which for years took pride in being an ideological offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared its disengagement from the Islamist organization.

Before and after this move, the Arab world turned into a hostile territory for the Brotherhood, with numerous Arab governments designating the organization as a “terrorist” movement. Egypt did this in December 2013. Saudi Arabia put a terrorist label on the organization in March 2014 and the United Arab Emirates did the same in November of the same year.

Perhaps the failure of the Islamist organisation to turn its rhetoric about reform in Arab countries into a practical plan that could contribute to improving the living conditions of the peoples in the region, was its most serious mistake.

In Egypt, for decades the Brotherhood won the hearts of the people by offering many social services, including the distribution of free food and medicine to the poor. The Brotherhood ran schools, medical institutions, supermarkets, charities, and professional unions. It used all these facilities to offer services to the public which over numerous years grew the popularity of the movement.

This was why millions of people were ready to vote for the Brotherhood’s candidate in the 2012 parliamentary elections. Millions of people were also ready to vote for Morsi who was running against a Mubarak-era candidate.

However, when the Brotherhood gained control of the presidency, parliament and the government, it was able to prove that its decades-old rhetoric about reform and problem solving were phoney and empty.

Morsi and his government were incapable of solving the day-to-day problems of the people. They failed in bringing law and order back to the streets. They failed to make the streets clean. They failed to address Egypt’s acute electricity shortages and they failed to make fuel available at petrol stations.

The Brotherhood also made a mistake in trying to impose its ideology of the Islamic religion on Arab societies.

In doing so, they overlooked the need for freedom and diversity in societies which have suffered under authoritarianism for decades. The Brotherhood just wanted to replace the political dictatorships the Arab people got rid of during the Arab Spring with their religious despotism. This catalyzed their massive public rejection.

The future is uncertain for the Brotherhood, in particular, and political Islam in general, especially after Islamist forces were responsible for the destruction of regional states following the Arab Spring.

But whether there will be a Brotherhood resurgence years or decades from now depends on whether the Islamist movement will be able to redress its mistakes and reinvent itself in a changing Arab world.

L'articolo Uncertain Future for Muslim Brotherhood in Changing Arab Region proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) – Gulf states are becoming unsafe for the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, after Kuwait repatriated eight members of the Islamist organization, almost the largest in the Arab region with branches everywhere in the world, to Egypt.

On July 12, Kuwaiti authorities said they had arrested eight organization members who had committed terrorist attacks in Egypt, including the 2015 assassination of the Egyptian public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat.

The Kuwaiti cabinet said in a statement later that Kuwaiti authorities would repatriate the eight Brotherhood terrorists. It added that the authorities would also search for Kuwaiti nationals who might have been involved in hiding these terrorists.

The arrest of these Brotherhood operatives is a security triumph for Kuwait, and the result of close cooperation with Egypt, the mother country of the Brotherhood, whose theoreticians, including founders Hassan al-Banna and Sayyed Qotb, are important terms of reference for almost all Islamist organizations, including al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Kuwait has a strong Brotherhood presence. Some influential political movements in the small, but oil-rich, Arab Gulf state share the same ideology of the organization. This is why the arrest of the eight members is a strong blow against the local Brotherhood branch, and may have its internal repercussions, analysts said. “Brotherhood-affiliated movements are strong inside Kuwait,” said Tharwat al-Kherbawi, a former longtime member of the Brotherhood in Egypt. “These movements are even represented in the Kuwaiti parliament.”

The arrest of the eight Brotherhood members has filled their organization with fear. It sparked calls for members of the Brotherhood to leave the whole Gulf region for other places that could be safer. “The whole of the Gulf is no longer safe for us,” wrote one Brotherhood member on his Facebook page. “We do not need to wait here, otherwise we will end up being handed over to Egyptian authorities,” wrote another.

Egypt has been waging an all-out war against the Brotherhood since mid-2014, when Egyptians rose up against Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi. The Egyptian crackdown on the Islamist group has caused thousands of its members to be put in Egyptian jails, and thousands of others to escape to other countries, especially to Turkey and Qatar. Nonetheless, in clamping down on the group, Egypt has not stopped at its borders, but taken this clampdown to regional and international levels.

It worked to convince other Arab and international governments of the dangers posed by this group, which has its own militias, most of them active in Egypt. Saudi Arabia designated the group a “terrorist organization” in March 2014. The United Arab Emirates followed suit in November of the same year. Nevertheless, Kuwait bucked this trend, apparently for internal security reasons, given the strong presence of the group inside the country.

Egypt also tried to convince the administration of US President Donald Trump to label the Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization. Reacting to the arrest of its members in Kuwait, the Brotherhood issued a statement on July 13 in which it said that it had never thought of harming Kuwait’s security or stability. It added that it had confidence that Kuwaiti authorities would not repatriate its eight members, expressing fears that once in Egypt, these members would not receive a fair trial.

However, with the noose tightening around them in Kuwait, as well as in other states of the Arab Gulf, except for Qatar, a regional sponsor of political Islam, the Brotherhood have limited options.

This is especially true with the political changes taking place in Turkey, another regional sponsor of the group. Turkey is by far the largest recipient of Brotherhood members convicted by Egypt and wanted by Egyptian authorities. Nonetheless, the Turkish opposition has been growing intolerant to Brotherhood presence in Turkey, and also to the pro-Islamist policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“The fact is that the members of the Brotherhood do not know where to go,” Kherbawi said. “The world is changing around them, and their options are becoming very limited.”

L'articolo Time is Running Out for the Muslim Brotherhood proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) An administrative court will rule on April 27 in a lawsuit on whether the nation’s Salafists, a group of ultraorthodox Muslims, should be allowed to preach at the mosques. The lawsuit was filed by well-known lawyer Samir Sabri who says he is alarmed at the extent of Salafist presence at the mosques.  “They [the Salafists] use houses of Islamic prayer to increase their political outreach, especially in the Egyptian countryside,” Sabri said. “They also use the mosques to generate money for bankrolling their activities.”
The lawsuit and the expected ruling come as the Salafists gain new ground day after day, using the vacuum left on Egypt’s political and religious stage by the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The Brotherhood saw its political heyday in mid-2012 when Morsi, a senior member of its command office, was elected president, fulfilling a decades-old dream of his movement which was founded in 1928.Nevertheless, when the people rose up against his government, only a year on his presidency because of its failure to address Egypt’s economic and political problems, Morsi’s followers turned violent.

Brotherhood militias staged attacks against state institutions, burned down dozens of churches and murdered a large number of policemen, precipitating a heavy-handed state crackdown.

The crackdown has almost totally eradicated the Brotherhood’s political presence on the streets, caused a huge number of its leaders to land in jail and sent other leaders to flee the country.

The Salafists are, meanwhile, using the political demise of the Brotherhood to increase their presence on the political stage.

They control a large number of mosques, especially in rural Egypt and increase their political appeal among poor Egyptians by giving them free food and medicine.

The Salafists are also preparinge to launch their own Tv channel in order to expand their outreach. The new channel will be used in explaining Salafist ideas and throw light on Salafist political ideology, according to Mahmud Abbas, a senior leader of the Salafist Call, the mother organization of Egypt’s Salafists.

Politically unknown before the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the Salafists established their own political parties for the first time after the revolution.

Their principal party, al-Nour (Light in English), won a large number of seats in parliament in the first post-revolution parliamentary elections in 2012. The same party has 12 seats in the 596-seat parliament now.  The Salafists used to be part of the Brotherhood coalition when the latter Islamist movement ruled. However, when the clampdown on the Brotherhood started after Morsi’s ousting in mid-2013, the Salafists took a backseat and watched, fearing for the political gains they made since the 2011 uprising. After all, post-uprising freedoms gave the Salafists the chance to come out of the dark and found their political parties for the first time in their history.

The crackdown against the Brotherhood was also believed to be one against political Islam in Egypt as a whole, even as the Salafists and the Sufis, mystic Muslims, were exempted.

These two Islamist groups were exonerated and allowed to maintain presence on Egypt’s political, religious and social stages. Political observers say this is because the post-Morsi authorities were afraid that they would be accused of being hostile to the Islamic religion as a whole if they had launched an all-out crackdown on all Islamist movements.
But by turning a blind eye to the growing presence of the Salafists, Egyptian authorities are committing a mistake they may pay dearly for in the coming years, the same observers add.

Claiming to follow the purest version of the Islamic religion, the Salafists promote very strict teachings. They advise their followers not to say Merry Christmas to Christians; advocate polygamy; sanction the marriage of underage girls, and want women to be covered from crown to toe.

“They pose a real danger to Egypt at all levels,” said Ahmed Kerima, a professor of comparative religions at al-Azhar University, the academic arm of al-Azhar Mosque. “Salafist ideas are the ideological basis for all terrorist groups, including the most lethal currently on the international stage .”

L'articolo Salafists raise fears by increasing presence on Egypt’s political stage proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) – Speculation is rife in Egypt on the course the Muslim Brotherhood, which used to be the Arab world’s most vibrant Islamist group, will follow in the future, after the tremendous change that happened in the fortunes of the group in the past six years.

The Brotherhood issued a statement on June 28, in which it said it would follow a new course after the emergence of new realities on the ground.

“We have made several internal revisions, especially of the mistakes we made during the revolution and our rule,” the Brotherhood said in the statement. “We also made revisions of the mistakes our allies and our competitors committed.” The new realities include the June 17 death of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood senior member who became Egypt’s president in mid-2012, but was ousted only a year later.

They also include the almost total destruction of the Brotherhood’s organizational structure in Egypt, following six years of a heavy-handed crackdown by the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt designated the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist” group in late 2014, and dissolved its Freedom and Justice Party.

A judiciary committee confiscated the funds and the assets of the Brotherhood last year, along with the funds of dozens of Brotherhood leaders and businessmen, depriving the Islamist group and its militias of the chance to bankroll their violent operations in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s declaration of a new strategy is viewed in Cairo as an attempt by the Islamist organization to return to the political stage after it lost its popularity in the streets because of its successive failures and the violence its members perpetrated after Morsi’s 2013 ouster.

“This is the new mechanism of the group to return to the political limelight,” said Amr Farouk, a political Islam specialist. “The group has lost almost everything in the past six years, which is why it is trying a new start.” In its statement, the Brotherhood is clear in its desire to make this new start. It alluded to its plan to avoid competing over power and start campaigning, together with other political forces, for the rights of the Egyptian public. “We believe that defending national issues and the general rights of the Egyptian people is far more important now,” the Brotherhood said in the statement.

It said it would support all political forces whose goals go hand in hand with it. This is exactly the source of fear in Cairo these days, one that puts political planners and strategists on alert. The fear is that the Brotherhood will team up with Egypt’s disgruntled opposition to pose serious competition to Sisi’s government.

Sisi took the reins of power in mid-2014, a time of deep political rifts and serious security and economic problems. The whole of Egypt was polarized, the economy was suffering acute crises, and the security situation was deteriorating as Brotherhood affiliates staged unrelenting attacks against state institutions, policemen and churches, and a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fought the Egyptian army in Sinai.

Six years later, Egypt is politically stable, its economy is picking up and security conditions are improving rapidly. Nevertheless, the opposition complains about the lack of political freedoms, amid fears from a return to the one-man-rule that prevailed under the Hosni Mubarak autocracy (between 1981 and 2011). Sisi’s economic reforms are also proving heavy on the pockets of millions of Egyptians, because they have included massive subsidy cuts and a liberalization of the Egyptian pound against foreign currencies.

The social grievances emanating from the reforms and the lack of freedoms, observers say, can give the opposition an opportunity, despite Sisi’s sweeping popularity at present.

“This is especially so with the Brotherhood having a knack for distributing political roles on the different political forces,” said Abdel Gelil al-Sharnoubi, a former longtime member of the Brotherhood. “The Brotherhood wants to return to the political stage and is ready to do anything to reach this goal, including by collaborating with other political forces.”

L'articolo Morsi’s Death Raises Questions on Brotherhood’s Prospects in Egypt proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) – Egypt marked the anniversary of its people’s June 30 uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood.

But as Egypt memorialized the event, which has had far-reaching effects on its political, economic and ideological course, the Brotherhood, which was once the most vibrant Islamist organization in the world, was almost crushed.

Addressing the nation on the uprising anniversary, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his administration had moved a long way in destroying the organization.

“We have obliterated the infrastructure of the terrorist organization,” Sisi said in a televised address on June 30.

In the six years since the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, the movement had moved from the top to the bottom of political power, not only in Egypt, but also everywhere else.

The Brotherhood started in 1928 as a charity educational organization that won the hearts of millions of Egyptians over the following decades.

It fell afoul of Egypt’s successive regimes, but was tolerated most of the time, sometimes used by these regimes to crush the leftists and other times to tip the balance of the ruling elite against the liberals.

When its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, a physics professor who used to head the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, won the 2012 presidential elections, the first following the 2011 revolution against longstanding president Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood had an unprecedented chance to prove its rhetoric about reform, justice and development more than just a set of empty slogans.

The organization lost almost all its popularity in a matter of one year only, having failed to deliver on its promises or improve the living conditions of the vast majority of the public.

“It had also radicalized society, which portended a disastrous future if the people had not moved against it,” said veteran writer Sakina Fouad. “The people had quickly realized that this movement was not fit to rule them another year.”

The people’s uprising against the Brotherhood on June 30, 2013, got backing from the army. But this opened the door for massive violence by Brotherhood members and sympathizers who attacked state institutions, burned down dozens of churches and killed dozens of policemen.

The Brotherhood’s removal from power in Egypt was the beginning of the end for the regional Islamist revival which started with the Arab Spring revolutions that swept through most of the Arab world in 2011.

In Egypt, the authorities started a very fierce campaign against the Islamist movement, labeling it a “terrorist organization” in late 2014 and disbanding its party.

Egyptian authorities also confiscated billions of dollars in Brotherhood funds, laid control on hundreds of Brotherhood institutions and froze the assets and the money of dozens of Brotherhood businessmen, affiliates and figures.

These measures deprived the organization of important financing channels and made it less capable of bankrolling its violent activities against Egyptian state institutions.

The security establishment also cracked down on Brotherhood-affiliated militias that killed a huge number of policemen in the past six years in lone-wolf attacks nationwide.

The capabilities of most of these militias have been reduced to nothing now, even as some of them maintain sleeper cells that are ready to act at any time.

Brotherhood leaders are also either in Egyptian jails, or living in Turkey and Qatar, two main state sponsors of political Islam and Islamist movements.

At the political level, the Brotherhood’s condition cannot be worse. Morsi died in court on June 17, bringing to an end Brotherhood calls for his return to power.

The organization’s affiliates inside Egypt have either broken ranks with it or are afraid to openly express their political loyalties.

The Brotherhood’s leadership outside Egypt has turned into a mere media phenomenon that keeps inciting the public against Sisi’s regime, but with little effect.

“This movement was a major stumbling block on Egypt’s road to progress,” said Egyptian political thinker Makram Mohamed Ahmed. “It is good only at exploiting the Islamic religion in achieving political gains that have nothing to do with Islam.”

L'articolo Brotherhood A Mere Shadow of its Former Self, 6 Years After Egypt Uprising proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) A recent bombing outside the Grand Egyptian Museum, a gigantic museum now being constructed only meters away from the Giza Pyramids Plateau, is focusing minds in Cairo on the ability of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement to use its sleeper cells in wreaking havoc on Egypt’s security and threatening the populous country’s economy.

The bombing took place on May 19 as a tourist bus, heading to the Pyramids, crossed the area. Seventeen people, including seven South African tourists and ten Egyptian citizens, were injured in the bombing which was carried out by a roadside bomb.

“The bombing carried the hallmarks of the Muslim Brotherhood,” said retired police general Mamdouh al-Kidwani. “It shows that the group continues to maintain some sleeper cells that are ready to act at any time when given orders.”

The Brotherhood, once Egypt’s most vibrant Islamist organization, received a deadly blow in July 2013 when its senior member Mohamed Morsi, who became Egypt’s president in mid-2012, was ousted in an army-backed popular uprising in mid-2013.

However, angry Brotherhood followers staged numerous attacks on state facilities and the churches, burning down dozens of churches, after accusing Egypt’s Christian minority (around 12% of the population) of backing the anti-Morsi uprising.

Brotherhood militias also killed a large number of policemen and staged numerous bomb attacks, some of which claimed the lives of ordinary people on the streets.

This violence instigated a heavy-handed crackdown on the group, its party and its followers. The Muslim Brotherhood’s party was disbanded, its funds were confiscated, and a large number of its members, sympathizers and leaders were put in jail, including Morsi himself and the group’s supreme guide.

This crackdown reduced the operational capabilities of the Brotherhood to almost nothing, which is why security is returning to the streets in Egypt.

Nevertheless, the latest bus bomb attack attests to a possible resurgence of Brotherhood violence, security analysts said.

The bombing comes at a time the tourism sector is picking up after almost two years of recession. The recession was induced by the bombing over Sinai of a Russian passenger plane in late 2016, which left all 224 passengers and crew members dead.

The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The same bombing precipitated a large number of countries to suspend flights to Sharm el-sheikh, Egypt’s prime Red Sea resort which enjoys huge international fame.

The Brotherhood wants to bring the tourism sector back to square one, security analysts said.

“Striking at the tourism sector will cause major harm to the national economy,” said independent security analyst Mohamed Nour Eddine. “This sector is always the main victim of terrorist attacks.”

The tourism sector gives Egypt a sizeable portion of its foreign currency revenues and employs close to five million Egyptians.

The Brotherhood last struck the tourism sector in December 2018 when some of its members planted a bomb on the side of a road in Giza province.

The bomb was remotely detonated the minute a tourist bus travelling to the Pyramids passed. Three Vietnamese tourists and an Egyptian guide were killed and 12 other people were injured as a result.

Despite efforts made by the security establishment to stave off the Brotherhood danger and prevent the Islamist organization from staging further attacks, this establishment faces challenges, security analysts said. One of the challenges is that security agencies do not have enough information about the Brotherhood sleeper cells or their members because most of the members of these cells do not have a criminal or a terrorist record.

The other challenge, security analysts added, is that few civilians are ready to share information about Brotherhood operatives for fear of retaliation from the terrorist organization.

“Most importantly still is that the Brotherhood has its regional state sponsors,” Kidwani said. “These state sponsors keep providing the organization with financial and logistical support with the aim of undermining security in Egypt.”

L'articolo Egypt Tourist Bus Attack Focuses Minds on Brotherhood Cells proviene da InsideOver.

Turkey has recently sent a drill ship (Fatih, “conqueror”), after announcing its willingness to conduct exploratory natural gas drilling, in an area of the Eastern Mediterranean that Cyprus considers to be part of its Exclusive Economic Zone. According to Cyprus News Agency, Nicosia directly issued a warning, demanding Fatih to immediately cease its actions, defining them “illegal operations violating the international law and maritime safety procedures” which constitute “serious criminal offences under the laws of the Republic of Cyprus”, and receiving the full support of all the highest representatives of the EU. Cyprus President, Nicos Anastasiades, compared Ankara’s behaviour to a “second invasion”, after a Turkish occupation of the northern part of the island triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup, in 1974.

Referring to this accusation, the spokesman of Turkey’s ruling AKP party, Omer Celik, called on Cyprus to “remember 1974”, since the Turkish invasion was aimed at “protecting the lives, rights and interests of Turkish Cypriots”, as reported by Kathimerini. Celik also condemned Greek and Cypriot leaders for “signing deals with countries that have problems with Turkey”, probably alluding to Israel and Egypt.

Turkey has consistently challenged the Greek Cypriot administration’s policy over drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean, considering it as “unilateral”. Ankara insists the exploration is part of its and Turkish Cypriots’ “legitimate rights” over hydrocarbon reserves in the East Mediterranean, as confirmed both by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. Çavuşoğlu said Ankara would send a second drillship (Yavuz) to the Eastern Mediterranean to look for oil and gas. This stance has been bolstered by Turkish vice president, Fuat Oktay. In order to support its posture on this issue, Ankara conducted its biggest ever military exercise (“Blue Homeland”, Feb. 27-March 8) in the Aegean and East Mediterranean, involving frigates, destroyers and fighter jets.

The area has never been officially demarcated, as Turkey (the only member state of the United Nations) does not recognise Cyprus, even if Nicosia has notified the United Nations on the limits of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in line with the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Cypriot EEZ has been delimited by bilateral agreements with Israel, Lebanon and Egypt. But instead, Turkey claims there is no Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone, and moreover it argues that a part of this area belongs to its continental shelf. Ankara has never signed the UNCLOS because of the Aegean dispute with Greece and because Turkey objects to certain UNCLOS articles.

The dispute started in late 2011, after the discovery of energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean has generated another point of contention between Turkey and Cyprus (and, by extension, Greece). Cypriot Foreign Minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, visited both Greece and Israel to request support for the drilling program.

The Cyprus-Turkey tension is part of a broader competition for the exploitation of new gas discoveries in Eastern Mediterranean, in countries that were previously thought to have no such natural resources. Such a geopolitical contention involves Greece, Cyprus and Egypt on one side, and Turkey on the other side, and has drawn the interest of international oil companies (ENI, ExxonMobil).

In January 2019, a meeting of energy ministers of Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories has been announced, aimed at expanding cooperation between natural gas producers and consumers in the region, creating a powerful global energy player and potentially providing Europe with an alternative supply of gas. The forum – Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) – headquartered in Cairo, is also planned to ease exploitation of Eastern Mediterranean gas reserves to further economic development in the region. The EMGF has excluded the other Eastern Mediterranean gas players, notably Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. As a countermeasure, Turkish energy experts relaunched the idea of establishing a north-eastern Mediterranean gas forum with Northern Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria.

Greece, Cyprus and Egypt are also boosting their multilateral cooperation and share their vision of Turkey as a threat. If the Greek(and Cypriot)–Turkish dispute dates back to several decades ago, the resumption of the Turkish–Egyptian hostility traces back to the military coup against the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, in 2013. It allowed the rise to power of the current President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who adopted an anti-Muslim Brotherhood stance, while Erdoğan’s Turkey is considered to be the main international sponsor – together with Qatar – of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the light of this framework, and because of the increasing militarization of Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey-Cyprus competition for gas could escalate out of control.

L'articolo Turkey-Cyprus Drilling Issue is Escalating Tension in the Mediterranean proviene da InsideOver.

(Cairo) Egypt has made yet another positive gesture toward Hamas, the movement that rules the Palestinian Gaza Strip, by releasing four members of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, almost three years after they were kidnapped in Sinai.

The four Qassam Brigades members were travelling to Cairo from Gaza, together with 50 other Gaza residents, when their bus was stopped by masked militants.The militants then drove the four men away, even as the bus was guarded by Egyptian police. This was why Hamas accused Egyptian authorities of being behind the kidnap of the four men, even as Egypt denied these charges.

On February 28, however, Egypt released the four men, along with four other Palestinians who were in Egyptian custody. The release of these eight Palestinians came shortly after of a visit to Cairo by the head of the Hamas Politburo Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh described the release of the four men as an expression of “deep relations” between his movement and Egypt.

Nonetheless, the release of the four Qassam Brigades’ members sticks out as an inconsistent development in relations between Cairo and the Gaza-ruling movement. These relations have worsened dramatically in the past five years, against the background of the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt after an army-backed popular uprising in mid-2013.

Hamas, an political party which is ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, objected to Morsi’s downfall. The knock on effect sparked a series of protests in Gaza, during which Hamas officials denounced the Egyptian army for backing the people’s movement against the Islamist president. Cairo, meanwhile, has accused Hamas of playing a role in backing a branch of the Islamic State (IS) in Sinai. The Palestinian movement also accused Egypt of contributing to the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel since 2007 by continually sealing off the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only gateway into the outside world on the border with Sinai.

Nevertheless, the release of the four Qassam Brigades’ members attests to new understandings between Hamas and Cairo, analysts said. “A new chapter will likely start in relations between the two sides,” said Palestinian thinker Abdel Qadir Yassin.

Egypt, which has started an all-out campaign in Sinai to totally eradicate the IS branch in the territory, wants to secure cooperation with Hamas in this regard. Cairo is badly in need of cooperation with Hamas in order to finishing off the IS branch in Sinai in the light of Egyptian intelligence which suggests that IS militants have been receivinge an endless supply of arms and militants from Gaza, where the Salafist Jihadists sympathize with the radical group which has been fighting the Egyptian army since 2014.

IS militants have also reportedly managed to sneak into Gaza to hide and for medical treatment, by making their way through a network of smuggling tunnels between the Palestinian coastal enclave and Sinai. Egypt has destroyed a huge number of these tunnels in the past few years. The tunnel demolition is part of the Egyptian military campaign against IS, which also includes the total closure of all entry and exit points to and from North Sinai where the IS militants are mostly concentrated.

Yassin has stated that cooperation from Hamas in the past two years has helped the Egyptian army capture the radical militants in a small area of North Sinai. “This cooperation helped the Egyptian army tighten the noose around the militants,” he said.

Egypt also wants Hamas to move forward along the road to reconciliation with its rival faction, Fatah, which rules the West Bank, in preparation for resuming peace talks with Israel. Cairo had been the scene of several rounds of talks between the two rival Palestinian factions, but these talks have produced few tangible results. Still the underlying significance of the release of the four Qassam Brigades’ members is that Egypt will stop using the stick and start using the carrots in relations with Hamas in its bid to secure further cooperation from the Palestinian movement. This is why on the 4th of March Haniyeh said that relations with Egypt had started assuming a “strategic” nature. He added at a press briefing in Gaza that Egyptian authorities had promised to lead a new effort to commit Israel to agreeing to new understandings with Hamas.

L'articolo Egypt May be Opening New Chapter with Hamas proviene da InsideOver.