The Unrest in Egypt Thread 2013

Muslim Brotherhood rejects Transition Plan

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday rejected a new timetable announced by the military-backed interim leadership that sets a fast track for amending the Islamist-drafted constitution and holding new parliamentary and presidential elections by early next year.

The quick issuing of the transition plan showed how Egypt's new leadership is shrugging off Islamists' vows to reverse the military's ousting of President Mohammed Morsi and wants to quickly entrench a post-Morsi political system.

Egypt's military also likely aims to show the United States and other Western nations that the country is moving quickly back to an elected civilian leadership. Washington has expressed concern over the removal of Egypt's first freely elected president, and if the U.S. government determines that the army's move qualifies as a coup it would have to cut off more than a $1 billion in aid to Egypt, mostly to the military. The Obama administration has said doing so would not be in U.S. interests.

Egypt's political divide was only further enflamed Monday by one of the worst single incidents of bloodshed in 2 ½ years of turmoil: Security forces killed more than 50 pro-Morsi protesters in clashes at a sit-in by Islamists. The military accused armed Islamists of sparking the fighting, but Morsi supporters said troop opened fire on them without provocation after dawn prayers.

Since then, the military and allied media have depicted the campaign to restore Morsi as increasingly violent and infused with armed extremists. Islamists, in turn, have talked of the military aiming to crush them after what they say was a coup to wreck democracy.

Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood figure and deputy head of its Freedom and Justice Party, rejected the transition timetable, saying it takes the country "back to zero."

"The cowards are not sleeping, but Egypt will not surrender. The people created their constitution with their votes," he wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the constitution that Islamists pushed to finalization and then was passed in a national referendum during Morsi's year in office.

He said the military and its allies were targeting "not just the president but the nation's identity, the rights and freedoms of the people and the democratic system enshrined in the constitution."

The constitution passed under Morsi - and suspended since his fall - was written by an assembly created by the first post-Mubarak parliament, elected in 2011-2012. But the panel was deeply controversial.

Reflecting the parliament, the constituent assembly had a strong Islamist majority. Most non-Islamists eventually abandoned the assembly, complaining that the Brotherhood and its allies were imposing their will. Courts were considering whether to dissolve the panel but Morsi unilaterally decreed that they could not while his allies rushed to finalize the draft.

The final version had a strong Islamist flavor, deepening requirements for laws to abide by Shariah. The document passed in a referendum with around 60 percent of the vote - but only around 30 percent of voters casting ballots.

Under the timetable issued Monday by interim president Adly Mansour, two appointed panels would be created.

One, made up of judges, would come up with amendments. The other, larger body consisting of representatives of society and political movements would debate the amendments and approve them.

The new constitution would be put to a referendum within 4 ½ months from now.

Elections for a new parliament would be held within two months of that. Once the new parliament convenes, it would have a week to set a date for presidential elections.


Source : Sapa-AP /sdv
Date : 09 Jul 2013 15:20
 
When i see zimbabwe as a member, somalia and sudan i can't take the AU seriously. I just picked the worst countries in my opinion but 80% of the countries are a fk up. What does this AU organization actually do other than let African presidents ruin country after country. I don't mean black presidents, African as in Africa so every government is African. They sit back while somalia has no official government, they sit back when there was/is genocide in darfur .

I can understand why the AU is upset, it might make the people of africa rise up because majority of the presidents don't run the countries well and have never followed through on anything. Not all of them but the AU is worried that the people of africa start grasping the presidents are there for the people. Most don't care. So could we see a democracy revolution i wonder? I guess that is what they are worried about.
 
Who says President Obama isn't a unifier?

Last week, this newspaper's Edmund Sanders reported from Cairo "As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is to blame." Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the coalition arrayed against it believe that the United States is against them. And, amazingly, both sides have a point.

Obama supported Hosni Mubarak, our geriatric dictator-client, right up until the moment Mubarak needed us most. But when events, or just the news cycle, made that support difficult, Obama abandoned a longtime ally and supported the forces of democracy. Then, just as many had warned, the Muslim Brotherhood rode democracy into power, putting Morsi in charge.

TIMELINE: Revolution in Egypt

Recognizing the demands of the moment, Obama then supported Morsi. As did his ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, who reportedly stiff-armed democratic and human rights activists. Indeed, Patterson scolded protesters for naively thinking demonstrations were superior to elections. The administration's support for democracy's verdict lasted right up until the moment Morsi needed Obama's support the most. Then, Morsi too was gone, and so was America's defense of democratic norms.

One has to wonder what the next Islamist movement will say when America counsels it to put down its weapons and take up the ballot instead.

The most plausible interpretation of Obama's zigzagging approach to foreign policy is that he is simply "winging it," as Robert W. Merry, editor of the National Interest, writes.

It is difficult to find much, if any, intellectual coherence to the president's foreign policy. He fought for a surge of troops in Afghanistan but then refused to rally public support for the war he escalated. Worse, he later rendered the surge moot by announcing to our enemies that we'd soon bug out, no matter what.

During Iran's Green Revolution, he stood pat as the mullahs crushed a democracy movement seeking to overthrow a regime hostile to U.S. interests. In Libya, he intervened to oust a dictator who had become a de facto ally, insisting he couldn't stand by as innocents were slaughtered. In Syria, a vassal of Iran, he has stood by as innocents were slaughtered.

Again, the winging-it theory of Obama's behavior has a lot going for it. My only objection is that it strikes me as indistinguishable from so-called realism.

While Obama usually likes to triangulate himself between realism and idealism, "realist" is the label his biggest fans in the foreign policy establishment use most. "Obama is a realist, by temperament, learning and instinct," Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek in 2009. "More than any president since Richard Nixon, he has focused on defining American interests carefully, providing the resources to achieve them, and keeping his eyes on the prize." More recently, Harvard's realist guru, Stephen Walt, saluted Obama's "buck-passing" as a feature rather than a bug of his realist foreign policy.

Among the many problems with realism is the fact that it sits on a tower of questions. Realists say we should do only what is in our national interest rather than pursue ideological goals. But what is our national interest? Nearly every so-called realist position is in fact ideological from someone else's perspective. And pretty much every ideological position can be defended in terms of the national interest. The realist's answer to this pickle is to be so smart that you can always know what's in the national interest at every moment.

Except nobody is that smart. During a crisis, the temptation is always to sacrifice the idealistic to the demands of the moment, i.e. to be a buck-passer. Why create problems by supporting this dissident or condemning that stolen election? Why make a ruckus about freedom of the press or the rule of law? Why honor this inconvenient treaty when we have so much to gain from trade with our ally's enemies? Save the idealism for later.

That's the process that kept Mubarak in power for 30 years. It's also the process that, over time, leads to everyone hating you, because no one trusts you. Just ask the Egyptians.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...bama-foreign-policy-20130709,0,6365991.column
 
Muslim Brotherhood Spurns Cabinet Offer

The Muslim Brotherhood movement of Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi will spurn an offer to join a new interim government, a spokesman for the Islamist group said on Wednesday.

"We do not deal with putchists. We reject all that comes from this coup," said Tareq al-Morsi, amid reports the movement is to be offered positions in the transitional cabinet.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 10 Jul 2013 08:54
 
These guys are upset at the "coup" ... but they are not upset that Morsi tried to sieze powers for himself that were also unconstitutional? :D
 
No obama did not support morsi, he threatened to pull aid and all sorts of things. He had to put up with a democratically elected president. There is no regime change possible when there is democracy involved. The US could do nothing about the MB gaining power and i highly doubt morsi was supported, accepted yes but not supported. The military control egypt essentially, as long as you keep the military on your side the president is not an issue. Obama must have been happy to see the 20 million people protesting morsi, if he was involved or whatever this was the perfect time to remove someone. Regime change was handed on a platter to whoever is involved. I could say it is the americans but i am thinking more along the lines of saudi arabia who fund the army as well.

Personally i think a US/saudi or whoever controls the Egyptian military just saw a huge opportunity to get rid of morsi and took it. I cannot believe for one second that obama supported the MB or morsi. Muburak even though he was a saudi/western puppet perhaps he at least ran the country as a secular one and egypt was better off with him in power. Hope the morsi supporters can relax and understand morsi was changing egypt into a country where shariah law would be enforced and the country was going backwards not forward. 20 million protestors, must be a record. Can't recall any uprising with 20 million people on the streets.
 
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New PM Struggles to form Cabinet

Egypt's new leadership was seeking to push forward with forming a new government on Thursday as police sought to arrest the leader of the Islamist movement defiantly backing ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood has spurned an offer from interim premier Hazem al-Beblawi to join the new government, and called for a mass rally on Friday against what it called "a bloody military coup."

After a year in power through Morsi, the Brotherhood is now in tatters, with much of its leadership detained, on the run or keeping a low profile following the Islamist president's overthrow last week in a popular military coup.

Police were searching for the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie, after a warrant was issued for his arrest on Wednesday, in connection with deadly violence in Cairo.

Badie and other senior Brotherhood leaders are wanted on suspicion of inciting clashes an army building on Monday which killed 53 people, mostly Morsi partisans, judicial sources said.

Morsi himself is currently being held in a "safe place, for his safety," foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty told reporters Wednesday, adding: "He is not charged with anything up till now," he said.

Military and judicial sources have said the ousted leader may face charges eventually.

His overthrow by the military last week, after nationwide protests demanding his resignation, has plunged Egypt into a vortex of violence.

In the restive Sinai peninsula, gunmen opened fire on the car of a senior military commander leading to clashes between security forces and "terrorist elements" which left one girl dead, the army said in a statement.

Brotherhood spokesman Ahmed Aref, whose movement has been accused of stoking unrest after Morsi's ouster, denounced the attack and called for "peaceful" opposition to the coup, in statement on Facebook.

The army later withdrew the statement from its official Facebook page, without providing an explanation.

Witnesses had contested its account, telling AFP the girl was killed after soldiers opened fire on the car she was in when her father refused to stop at a checkpoint.

Thousands of Morsi supporters joined those camped out at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo's Nasr City, vowing to leave only when Morsi, the country's first freely elected president, is reinstated.

"We are gathering here for Morsi. I voted for him and I want to know where he is," said protester Mohammed, 47.

"We will stay here either until the president's return or martyrdom," he said.

According to the health ministry, 53 people died and 480 were wounded in Monday's clashes in Cairo.

The Brotherhood accuses the army of "massacring" its supporters, and the army says soldiers came under attack by "terrorists" and armed protesters.

The public prosecutor pressed charges on Wednesday against 200 of the 650 people it detained during the violence.

Beblawi, a liberal former finance minister, began the talks on his cabinet line-up on Wednesday, is ready to offer the Brotherhood ministerial posts, the state-run MENA news agency quoted an aide as saying.

But the Islamists swiftly spurned the overture. "We do not deal with putschists. We reject all that comes from this coup," Brotherhood spokesman Tareq al-Morsi told AFP.

Last week Badie gave a fiery speech in which he vowed that Brotherhood activists would throng the streets in their millions until Morsi's presidency was restored.

Interim president Adly Mansour has set a timetable for elections by early next year, while appointing Beblawi as premier and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president for foreign affairs.

Opponents and supporters of Morsi alike have criticised the interim charter issued by Mansour to replace the Islamist-drafted constitution, which he suspended, and steer a transition the army has itself acknowledged will be "difficult."

An official with one of the parties in the National Salvation Front (NSF), the main coalition formerly led by ElBaradei, criticised Mansour's 33-article declaration for according extensive powers to the interim president.

Many within the coalition are wary of repeating the mistakes of the last military-led transition, between Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011 and Morsi's election in June 2012.

Human rights groups condemned the use of "excessive" force against Brotherhood supporters on Monday, and called for an independent investigation.

The United States, which provides $1.5 billion in mainly military aid to Egypt, said it was "cautiously encouraged" by the timetable proposed for a new presidential election.

Kuwait pledged $4 billion in assistance to Egypt on Wednesday, bringing the combined total pledged by Gulf Arab states since the coup to $12 billion.


Source : Sapa-AFP /gm
Date : 11 Jul 2013 07:17
 
US to deliver Fighter Jets to Egypt

The U.S. is moving ahead with plans to deliver four F-16s to Egypt despite the ongoing debate about the military's overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and whether it legally constitutes a coup that could shut off aid to the country.

Defense officials say senior administration leaders discussed the delivery and decided to let it continue. The fighters are part of a $1.3 billion package approved in 2010 that included 20 F-16s and some M1A1 Abrams tank kits. About half of the aid package has been dispersed, officials said.

Eight of the F-16s were delivered in January, the next four are expected to be delivered in the coming weeks and the final eight will be sent later this year.

News of the impending weapons delivery to the Egyptian military came as the administration continued to make the case that it is staying neutral in the crisis.

The White House and State Department reiterated the view Wednesday that it would not be in the United States' national security interests to interrupt U.S. aid to Egypt, including to the armed forces, as would be required by law if Morsi's ouster is determined to have been a coup.

"We do not believe it is in the best interests of the United States to make immediate changes to our assistance programs," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters, adding that the administration is going to take its time to make any determinations about the removal of Morsi from power.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Jen Psaki noted that aid to Egypt "has been around for quite some time and has a range of reasons as to why we do it."

The comments come after a week of violence and widespread demonstrations and as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other U.S. leaders make repeated calls to their counterparts in Egypt urging an end to the violence and a quick transition to a civilian government. Hagel has spoken to Egypt's defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, eight times in the last nine days, with one phone call lasting as long as 45 minutes.

U.S. officials have expressed satisfaction with the military-backed interim government's plans to restore democratically elected civilian leaders.

Islamist members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement have denounced the ouster and have demanded Morsi's release from detention and reinstatement.

The Islamists have accused Egyptian troops of gunning down protesters, while the military blamed armed backers of Morsi for attempting to storm a military building.

---

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Josh Lederman contributed to this report.


Source : Sapa-AP /gm
Date : 11 Jul 2013 01:17
 
Well just like russia did with syria, orders placed should be delivered. Regardless

American aid is not that much, the saudi's and qatar are going to inject 8 billion into egypt.
 
Report: Egypt army kills dozens of Hamas men

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4403706,00.html


Not to be unexpected after Israel allowed the Egyptian military to move additional forces to the Sinai and the fact that Hamas is a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood anyhow.
Report: Egypt army kills dozens of Hamas men
Egyptian security official says military forces have killed, arrested 200 gunmen in Sinai Peninsula, including dozens of members of Islamist organization, which he accuses of 'flaring up the situation in Sinai after Morsi's ouster'
Roi Kais
Published: 07.11.13, 10:05 / Israel News


After the overthrow of Egypt 's Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas appears to be the next target: An Egyptian military source told the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper on Thursday morning that security forces had killed and arrested some 200 gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula.

He said 32 Hamas members were killed and 45 activists were detained. "Hamas is flaring up the situation in Sinai after (former Egyptian President) Mohamed Morsi's ouster," he explained.

"We have detected movements of Hamas activists cooperating with jihadists in Sinai. We killed and arrested some of them," the source said, admitting that the army was finding it difficult to gain control of the situation.

"They enter Sinai through the tunnels to carry out attacks, along with others, and then return to Gaza through the tunnels. They take advantage of the surface and hide in the mountains."

Stability in Sinai has been shaken since the 2011 revolution and has recently deteriorated once again. On Saturday, shortly after Morsi was toppled, dozens of radical terror activists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement left the Gaza Strip and headed for Sinai in a bid to fight the Egyptian army. Since then, the terror activists have participated in violent clashes in El-Arish and have even attacked some Egyptian army posts.

The Egyptian military spokesman said Wednesday that gunmen in northern Sinai had tried to assassinate the commander of the Second Field Army, General Ahmed Wasfy, in the in Sheikh Zuwaid area. A girl passing by was killed in an exchange of fire between the gunmen and the convoy guarding the senior officer. Waspy told local media that he was not hurt.

Earlier this month, before the military coup, the Egyptian army moved forces in the Sinai area in coordination with Israel, in order to operate against terrorist cells in the area.

The British Times reported Thursday morning that the Egyptian army would ask Israel for approval to launch a large counterterrorist offensive against Islamic extremists in Sinai, suspending the peace treaty between the two countries. Coordination with Israel is needed as the peninsula is a demilitarized area according to the peace accord.

According to the report, jihadist groups have exploited the political crisis in Cairo by attacking Egyptian and Israeli targets in Sinai over recent days. As part of the Egyptian operation, thousands of troops will be sent into the region to crush the threat from terrorists, including al-Qaeda affiliates.

Fighting gunmen in Sinai is in the interest of both Israel and Egypt, especially in light of the increased attacks in the area. On Sunday, armed men launched a series of attacks on security checkpoints in the northern Sinai towns of Sheikh Zuweid and El-Arish close to the Egyptian border with Israel and the Gaza Strip, and one soldier was killed.


Last Saturday, gunmen shot dead a Coptic Christian priest in northern Sinai. The shooting in the coastal city was one of several attacks believed to be by Islamist insurgents that included firing at four military checkpoints in the region.

Saturday's attacks on checkpoints took place in al-Mahajer and al-Safaa in Rafah, as well as Sheikh Zuwaid and al-Kharouba. The violence followed attacks in which five police officers were killed in El-Arish.
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Good news. Kill the feckers. Looks to me I may get to like the new regime in Egypt.

PS: Waiting for Killa to propagate more BS.
 
I wonder if there will be any fallout following the suspension of the camp David treaty?
 
Fudzy said:
I wonder if there will be any fallout following the suspension of the camp David treaty?
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I hope there would be. It's about time the pecking order get restored in the Middle East.

The Palestinians are a cancer in this world. Therefore they are and would forever be the Arab outcasts.
 
Seriously said:
I hope there would be. It's about time the pecking order get restored in the Middle East.

The Palestinians are a cancer in this world. Therefore they are and would forever be the Arab outcasts.
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That's a bit of an unfair statement to make. Have you ever visited the occupied states?
 
Fudzy said:
That's a bit of an unfair statement to make. Have you ever visited the occupied states?
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NO! Does it matter. Go check the history where they come from. Why is it that they attack the hands that feed them even in peace times? Attacking Israel is one thing even tho Israel have good reason to fence them in but why Egypt? Who's next?
 
Seriously said:
NO! Does it matter. Go check the history where they come from. Why is it that they attack the hands that feed them even in peace times? Attacking Israel is one thing even tho Israel have good reason to fence them in but why Egypt? Who's next?
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You should check the history, read up on who was involved in the six day war.
 
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