Tag: egypt

WSJ: Egypt addressed arms smuggling issue with Bashir

U.S., Egypt Push Sudan About Arms – WSJ.com:

“Both the U.S. and Egyptian governments have in recent weeks raised with Sudan’s government their concerns that the African country has become a major facilitator for Gaza-bound weapons being smuggled into Egypt, according to officials briefed on the diplomatic exchanges. Washington sent a formal complaint to Khartoum demanding Sudan’s government ‘cease smuggling arms into Egypt,’ according to a U.S. official. The official wouldn’t provide an exact date.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak raised a similar complaint with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the African strongman’s visit to Cairo this week, according to a diplomat briefed on the meeting. The Egyptians are particularly concerned that Sudan is becoming an arms partner of Iran and aiding Tehran in moving weapons to the militant group Hamas, which is based in the Gaza Strip.”

So that means Egypt acknowledges arms traffic through its territory from Sudan?

Things to remember about the Sudan air strike

One big question about the Sudan air strike story is what exactly happened: we have an attack on a convoy of trucks, but no clear explanation of what was on those trucks, what kind of aircraft carried the attack, the nature of the victims/smugglers or even certainty on who carried out the attack, although it seems more likely that it was Israel rather than the US (or perhaps Israel with US logistical support.) These are the basics, which are still hazy.

But if we accept that an attack took place, and that it was conducted by Israel, we still need to think carefully about the implications of this story prima facie. One important thing is that the story appears to validate accounts by the like of Elliott Abrams that Hamas is arming through the Rafah tunnels with weapons smuggled in from the Horn of Africa, through Sudan, and through Egypt where the trucks would presumably go along the Red Sea coast and enter Sinai.

Remember that the idea of smuggling through Sudan and Egypt was first advanced last February by Abrams, as Jim Lobe noted. Love argued in a follow-up:

The more one looks into it, the more Elliott Abrams’ rendition of how Iran allegedly smuggles weapons to Hamas in Gaza via Somalia and Eritrea just gets weirder and weirder. Remember: he was Bush’s top Middle East adviser from December, 2002, until January 20 and, as such, had access to the most sensitive information available to the U.S. intelligence community. Yet he seems to be lending himself to an extraordinarily crude Israeli disinformation campaign in which Somalia, which is some 1500 miles from Gaza, is depicted as a key trans-shipment point for the alleged supply of weapons from Iran to Hamas.

Yet among some this is fast becoming gospel. The Cable reports:

“A Washington think tank expert on the Middle East said, ‘The Israelis have been complaining about this supply route for a long time. This gives credence to Israeli reports that Iran is trans-shipping weapons through Sudan and Egypt to Hamas. It would be impolitic for the Israelis to do this in Egypt. This is something the Egyptians have worried about: what happens if there is some sort of attack on Israel from Egyptian soil: what kind of action would Israel take?’

He speculated that the Israeli warplanes took off from the southern Israeli air base at Ovda, flew through the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba, down the Red Sea in between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and across and over into Sudanese air space. They reportedly struck the targeted convoy northwest of the city of Port Sudan, killing some 39 members of the 17-vehicle convoy.

Responding to the media reports Thursday, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert didn’t try to dispel the impression that Israel had carried out the operation. ‘We operate everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure — in close places, in places further away, everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure, we hit them and we hit them in a way that increases deterrence,’ Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz cited him.”

Following this Somalia-Sudan-Egypt route, they would encounter multiple checkpoints and be going through governorates controlled directly by the Egyptian military. Needless to say, the idea that Iran is supplying Hamas long-range rockets and other sophisticated equipment through Egypt (which has bad relations with Iran and Hamas) suggests that either:

1. These trucks, like other types of human or drug traffic coming from Sudan, are not being caught and there is a severe security hole in Egypt’s traffic-control policies;

2. The trucks are getting through by corruption and bribery of officials they encounter, or benefit from the protection of someone up high, although these people may think the trucks contain something else entirely, like drugs;

3. The Egyptian regime, or some officials within it, are somehow complicit with the trafficking and arming of Hamas.

All of these, and especially the latter, are pretty hard to swallow. Which takes us back to a key issue: what was really on those trucks? There is plenty of weapons smuggling taking place in Sudan, for sure, but can a major operation like this have taken place overland going through Egypt, which is obviously concerned about both arms-dealing on its territory and arming Hamas (after all recently they’ve stopped millions of dollars, and hundred of sheep, from being smuggled!) Does this appear more logical than, say, smuggling by sea as has been recently alleged over the Cyprus ship? What if the trucks that were destroyed are not in fact destined for Gaza, and the attack itself is part of a disinformation campaign aimed at sending a message to Iran? Or that at least the importance of the trucks and their content has been exaggerated?

Too much of this story has not been verified. It may very well all turn out to make sense, but right now I would treat it with great caution until we have more information.

On al-Shorouk

Jack Shenker has a timely article on al-Shorouk newspaper for The Arab Press Network, in which he interviews me:

“Although this has attracted criticism from opposition activists, some commentators see it as an important step towards the independent media in Egypt gaining the maturity, and thus credibility, it requires to thrive. ‘Ibrahim El-Moalem [El-Shorouk’s publisher], is not known as an opposition figure, or as someone who takes courageous stands against the government like Ibrahim Eissa [editor of Al-Dustour]’ observed the Arabist, a prominent Egyptian blogger who has written extensively on the Egyptian media scene. ‘He’s going at it with a more professional point of view and a less lurid tone and I think that’s what’s needed in this market, where the tendency is to provide relentlessly negative coverage of the government.’

If El-Shorouk’s target readership is those still clinging to Al-Ahram, it couldn’t have entered the fray at a better time. Three-quarters of Egyptian media remain under government control, but state newspapers are a sinking ship: publications are believed to be collectively in debt to the tune of LE 5-6 billion ($887m to $1.06bn), and morale is at rock bottom in the underpaid, overstaffed newsrooms (Al-Ahram alone employs 1400 journalists) where the standard of stories is often low. El-Shorouk has the money behind it to snap up the best columnists and has even struck syndication deals with international papers like the New York Times enabling it translate and publish some of their content, a move which some believe could transform it into a genuine challenger to the pan-Arab dailies like Al-Quds Al-Arabi and Asharq al-Awsat, both currently published from London.

It remains to be seen though whether this attempt to expand the independent media market in a fresh direction will be enough to bring El-Shorouk long-term stability. For Hamdy Hassan, a media expert at the Al-Ahram institute, the problem with the new paper is not what it has done, but rather what it has failed to do. ‘At a time when the average newspaper reader is getting older, what we needed was a really new outlook, a new language for editing that would bring more young people to the medium,’ argues Dr Hassan. ‘I expected El-Shorouk to provide all of that and prove competitive, but I’m afraid it hasn’t. In other parts of the world the newspaper industry is innovating – audience research projects in America, new tabloid and hybrid formats in Britain – but El-Shorouk has proved to be essentially a copy of what is already on offer, and as a business model that will never be successful.’

With a relative dearth of objective research into readership habits, it’s hard to pinpoint how and why Egypt’s newspaper readers make their daily purchasing choices. The Arabist believes that the ultimate triumph or failure of El-Shorouk will depend on its ability to pull out the big scoops. ‘No one thought Al-Masry Al-Yom would last when it first launched, but it made its name by breaking stories no-one else had, especially around the time of parliamentary elections,’ he says. ‘We’re not in an election period now but we do now have a 24 hour news cycle, where unlike before the independent press can break scandals and force the government to respond the same day. If El-Shorouk can become a part of that process then it will flourish; consistent, solid reporting will always create its own market.'”

Note the interview was given when I was still unsure about the Sudan attack story (it had been published that morning). And Jack, I’m not Egyptian!

I’d like to add my own notes on al-Shorouk, out of interest for those who follow media development (where I have a little experience). Al-Shorouk took months of development amidst uncertainty about its editorial team and direction. It is probably still trying to find its voice and hit cruising speed, which should take one to two years (it is now less than two years old.) It is entering the market at a time when advertising revenue is, according to an industry figure I spoke to, down 40%. It has reportedly given high salaries in an industry that, in cases like al-Dustour and Sawt al-Umma (both run by Ibrahim Eissa and his proteges and owned by publisher Essam Fahmi, who honed down the model of sales-driven weeklies over the last decade) often follows the sweatshop model. A lot of investment has gone into it, and it will be interesting to see whether how long it takes to recoup that investment with this business model and the context of a financial crisis, especially when the market is full of parasitical newspapers. For one rival I spoke to, al-Shorouk is bound to fail editorially (no sense of mission – yet) and commercially (too much initial investment into marketing, salaries not commensurate with market, etc.) I am not entirely convinced: if al-Shorouk hits its stride, gets combination of big name commentary and solid reporting, it may succeed beyond current market leader (along with al-Ahram) Masri al-Youm. But I think it will need those few big stories that make its name, and the Sudan attack one could be one of those. As I told Jack, even in a market that has parasitical newspapers (i.e. that sell a couple of thousand of copies only), if you build a reputable news-driven product, they (the readers) will come.

Reuters confirms Sudan air strike

Reuters is now independently confirming the Sudan air strike story:

Aircraft destroyed suspected Sudan arms convoy – officials | Reuters:

“KHARTOUM, March 26 (Reuters) – Unidentified aircraft attacked a convoy of suspected arms smugglers as it drove through Sudan toward Egypt in January, killing almost everyone in the convoy, two senior Sudanese politicians said on Thursday.

The politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters the strike took place in a remote area in east Sudan but did not say who carried it out.

Media reports in Egypt and the United States have suggested U.S. or Israeli aircraft may have carried out the strike. Sudan’s foreign minister Deng Alor told reporters in Cairo on Wednesday he had no information on any attack.

Any public confirmation of a foreign attack would have a major impact in Sudan, where relations with the West are already tense following the International Criminal Court’s decision this month to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of Darfur war crimes.

Egyptian independent newspaper Al-Shorouk quoted ‘knowledgeable Sudanese sources’ this week as saying aircraft from the United States were involved in the strike, which it said killed 39 people.

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum on Thursday declined to comment. Sudan remains on a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, but the State Department has said that Sudan is cooperating with efforts against militant groups.

U.S.-based CBS News, however, reported on its website on Wednesday that its security correspondent had been briefed that Israeli aircraft had carried out an attack in eastern Sudan, targeting an arms delivery to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

A senior Israeli defence official on Thursday described the report as nonsense.
“

Previously discussed here and here.

Update: Haaretz provides analysis, taking as assumption that it was an Israeli strike. Watch out for this issue being raised in a few hours at the State Dept. Daily Press Briefing – although I suspect we’ll hear more about this from off-the-record sources in the next few days.

CBS says Israel, not US, behind Sudan strike

More on that alleged air strike in Sudan targeting weapons shipments to Gaza:

– The Sudan Tribune said yesterday it was the US, but today that it’s Israel based on a report by the American TV network CBS.

– Haaretz carries the CBS story and says it’s part of the MOU on arms smuggling inked between the US and Israel at the end of Operation Cast Lead. The Haaretz article adds:

Meanwhile, in May, an international conference is scheduled to take place in Ottawa, the third of its kind since the end of Operation Cast Lead, which will discuss how to prevent arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

In addition to host Canada, Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, the U.S. and Israel will also take part.

Immediately after the conference a “war game” is scheduled to take place in Washington, with the participation of security officials and diplomats from the countries involved. The “war game” will practice a scenario of foiling arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

The most recent conference took place in London a week ago and the countries cooperating in blocking the arms smuggling from Iran formulated a joint plan of operations. The plan includes the signing of a series of bilateral agreements with countries situated along the path of the smugglers, as well as countries whose commercial fleets carry cargo from Iran elsewhere.

One interesting thing in the Sudan Tribune article is that it said something about the planes coming from Djibouti. That would put the French on the suspect list too!

At least it now appears that an air strike did happen (although casualty reports are around 40, not 300) – and confirms the reports from intelligence circles that the smuggling route for Hamas’ weapons is indeed from or through Sudan, through Egypt (a whole other story: how do they keep under the radar, especially in Sinai?), possibly originating from the horn of Africa.

al-Shorouk’s story on secret Sudan raids

The relatively new Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk has been making some news yesterday, reporting that the US air force had been engaged in a series of attacks against convoys of trucks carrying arms in Eastern Sudan. The destination of the trucks, apparently, was Gaza via Sinai. Needless to say this is a huge story, not only because it would appear to confirm allegations that Hamas is obtaining Iranian-purchased arms via Sudan (and probably originally Djibouti) and that they are being smuggled through Sinai and the Rafah tunnels. It followed up on the story today alleging that US Air Force raids had claimed 300 lives.

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

I’ve been talking about this with a few people who closely follow the news yesterday and we’re all rather skeptical at this point. Some of the Egyptian press (not necessarily al-Shorouk though, as far as I know) has a bad reputation for pulling things out of thin air or basing them on unreliable disinformation websites like Debka. This would be a huge, world scoop if it turns out to be true, involving so many of the region’s hottest issues: arms trade, illegal US operations, Hamas’ supply line, Iran, Sudan and its recently indicted president. The story also assumes that a convoy of trucks carrying weapons (presumably the Grad rockets Hamas is launching against Israel) are able to make their way through Egypt, which seems impossible without the cooperation of the government or serious wasta up high. (That being said, drugs use the same route, and small arms did come from Sudan during the Islamist insurrection of the 1980s and 1990s.)

So basically, either al-Shorouk got it wrong, or it has revealed the first secret military actions of the Obama administration to control the arms smuggling to Gaza issue – as the Bush administration had promised Israel in the MOU it signed in mid-January. I’m a skeptic, but I’ll be watching how this develops.

The curse of the voodoo SMS

Ya lahwy:

CAIRO (AFP) — The Egyptian government has sought to dispel rumours that a mobile phone text message “from unknown foreign quarters” is spreading around the country and killing those who receive it.

The extraordinary move by Egypt’s health and interior ministries follows press reports that an SMS containing a special combination of numbers killed a man in the town of Mallawi south of Cairo.

“He died vomiting blood,followed by stroke, shortly after he received a message from an unknownphone number,” the Egyptian Gazette reported on Wednesday.

“The number begins with the symbol (+) and ends with (111),” it said.

An “official security source” was quoted by the official MENA news agency as denying that those who receive the SMS “get splitting headaches followed by brain haemorrhage that leads to death.”

A statement from the health ministry quoted health officials in several regions as saying that they had “received no cases with such symptoms”

“These rumours contradict all scientific facts,” the statement said.

Egypt’s interior ministry has detained three workers at an oil company for allegedly starting the rumours “and they are now being interrogated,” MENA said.

via AFP: Egypt tries to hang up on killer SMS rumours.

Obama

Is is just me, or is it still surprising to see an American president that is articulate and can handle a press conference with grace and intelligence? Maybe I don’t watch TV news often enough, but I am still taken aback every time I see Obama by how well he wears his title. Unlike his predecessor, and in many respects better than Clinton.

I like this:

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama continues to face fallout from the outrage over bonuses paid to executives at AIG, which is 80% owned by the government and has received billions in federal bailout money. Asked why he did not go public with his outrage as soon as he learned of the retention bonuses at AIG, the president snapped, “I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

The president hit on a new theme for his administration: Persistence. He said the election of a conservative government in Israel, with a prime minister skeptical of a Palestinian state made the prospects for peace “not easier than it was.”

But, he said, as with his domestic efforts, he will soldier on.

“That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I’m going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come, as long as I am in this office,” he concluded. “I’m a big believer in persistence.”

(That’s probably how he got Michelle to date him.)

And I say this as I disagree with some of the stuff he’s done (on the economy) and wish he would get his act together and set up a Middle East foreign policy team and plan already! It would be particularly interesting to get confirmation that Hosni Mubarak will be making his first trip stateside in five years in May, as much of the Egyptian press has assumed with the recent Gamal Mubarak and Omar Suleiman visits to DC. Will Obama make Mubarak persona non grata? Will he force issues on the agenda that will make Mubarak not want to come (his original problem with Bush). Will there be any new policy departure on the question of democracy promotion in Egypt, which in 2004-2005 was arguably the flagship for the policy in the Arab world?

Update: Muhammad Salah discusses this in al-Hayat.

Stacher on the Brothers and the Wars

Friend of the blog and academic Joshua Stacher, who focuses on authoritarianism, Islamist movements and other fun things (and thus knows a lot about Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brothers) has a new piece out in Middle East Report. It’s about the Brothers’ behavior during the Gaza war, and more widely the diverse theories about the divisions that may or may not exist within the group. He argues that the havioc wrought on the region by the Bush administration, and its encouragement of Israeli adventurism such as Operation Cast Lead, has weakened the credibility of “pragmatists” among the Brothers who sought a less confrontational approach with the West than is the usual staple of the movement, which after all was founded as an anti-colonial project:

The Gaza war was an enabler of the anti-engagement trend among the Brothers. It bolstered the credibility of the group’s more conservative leaders when they lobby the base that the pragmatic wing’s participatory spirit has led the Brothers to a dead end, where they are just as powerless to affect Egyptian foreign policy as they were when underground. Instead of contesting the regime in the widest domain possible, the conservatives argue that the Brothers should prioritize peaceful “resistance” to the US-Israeli military order, in solidarity with those who have taken up arms against it.

He also criticizes the generational approach to explaining rifts among the Brothers, taking to task Egyptian analyst Khalil al-Anani who developed in his book “The Muslim Brothers: Gerontocracy Racing Against Time” (loose translation of the Arabic al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun: Shukhukha Tussari3 al-Zaman) a theory of four generations fighting it out. (Personally I think al-Anani deserves more credit – his view is more nuanced than this.)

Instead, Josh says a division according to political orientation, notably pragamatist politicians vs. conservative ideologues, may be more useful. I like his take on the General Guide being a CEO rather than an eminence grise and emphasis on consensus that has kept the group together. He also looks at another rift, that of “peasants vs. city slickers” that helps explain different attitudes and the conservative bent of the mostly Delta-based bulk of the movement, as well as possible class explanations for the divisions, since many of the leaders are after all middle-class professionals.

I have differences with Josh over his analysis – for instance, it’s not clear to me that Essam al-Erian is perennially losing entry into the Guidance Council because he is too “moderate” rather than because he has annoyed many with his dilettantism and frequent media appearances claiming to represent the MB on controversial issues. But this piece shows how complex a movement the Egyptian Muslim Brothers are, and that no single framework of analysis is in itself convincing: the MB is a big tent no less diverse than, say, the Republican Party (and no less likely to shift ideologically over time, as the Republicans have from the party of Lincoln into the current morass). Most importantly, it is another important reminder of the crucial importance regional developments can have in the internal developments of political movements and the role they play within their societies. In this turbulent Middle East of ours, it is good to be reminded that things change – sometimes very fast.