Egypt: Independent Player Or American Trojan Horse?
May 5th, 2011
Egypt seems to be making moves to reassert its position as the dominant force it once was in the politics of the Middle East. There are signs of rapprochement with the Palestinians and Iran. All of this which possibly bodes well for Middle East, but not so much for the USA and its dependent state Israel. It is hard to tell if this is a Trojan horse for US policy or a real Egyptian initiative. What is not clear is how much the Egyptians are now in control of their own country.
There are other signs, crackdowns on democracy protesters; that do not seem to be fitting in with the Democratic vision for Egypt that Obama and the American Neo-cons have strategized. Or perhaps this is exactly what they have envisioned. Perhaps we have a CIA and State Department rep standing in the shadows, advising the generals to act with alacrity in their treatment of the protesters, as they seek to root out any sign of Muslim fundamentalism. Is the USA willing to accept a more pan-Muslim political policy on the part of Egypt in exchange for a muzzling of the domestic dissidents? Or has Egypt spun out of the hands of its handlers? Such things happen. When they do, things become interesting again.
Certainly with the Palestinians making a move of unity, this is a smart political move that forces Israel into a defensive posture of looking like the bad guy for withholding the Palestinian funds and claiming that any government that includes Hamas is unacceptable. Wasn't Hamas once upon a time an Israeli asset in their war against Fatah?
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From UPI
Analysis: Hamas history tied to Israel
Published: June 18, 2002 at 8:13 PM
By RICHARD SALE, UPI Terrorism Correspondent
In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.
Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight "Palestinian terror" and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as "the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face."
Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon left something out.
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.
Israel "aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.
According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.
After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many who were living on the edge.
"Social influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.
According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran.
What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon vis-à-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources said.
"Nothing provides the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one administration expert.
A further factor of Hamas' growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of operations to Beirut in the '80s, leaving the Islamic organization to grow in influence in the Occupied Territories "as the court of last resort," he said.
When the intifada began, Israeli leadership was surprised when Islamic groups began to surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but the doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected to suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S. government officials.
But with the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain in strength in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the Israeli occupation.
Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose: "To help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."
In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could only listen to debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous hard-liners," the official said.
In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.
But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named.
"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with," he said.
All of which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials.
"The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy," said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro.
According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, "the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism."
"The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer."
"They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it," he said.
Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth the waters," he said. "An operation like that gives weight to President George Bush's remark about there being a crisis in education."
Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian intelligence to fund Egypt's fundamentalists had also come to grief because of "misreading of the complexities."
An Israeli defense official was asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas said, "I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest."
Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund "Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists," the official said he could confirm only that he believed Segev had served back in 1986.
The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site when asked to comment.
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2002/06/18/Analysis-Hamas-history-tied-to-Israel/UPI-82721024445587/
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From IPS
Egypt's Moves Raising Anxiety in Washington
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, May 4, 2011 (IPS) - With U.S. lawmakers threatening this week to cut aid to Pakistan over its alleged harbouring of the late Osama bin Laden, concern is growing steadily here over the future of ties with another key predominantly Muslim ally heavily dependent on U.S. aid: Egypt.
Washington has supplied an average of two billion dollars a year – about two-thirds of which have gone to the Egyptian military – since Cairo signed the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979.
It has also encouraged other countries and international financial institutions to be generous in dealing with Egypt, whose de facto - if often sour - acquiescence under former President Hosni Mubarak in Israel's more controversial actions against its other neighbours and the Palestinians was considered indispensable to maintaining an acceptable status quo.
But the foreign policy independence displayed by the new regime since Mubarak was swept from power nearly three months ago has elicited nervous reactions from key sectors here, particularly in Congress, where the influence of the so-called "Israel lobby" is especially strong.
The most recent action was Egypt's mediation of the reconciliation agreement signed Wednesday in Cairo by the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, an agreement that has been strongly denounced by leading lawmakers, as well as by the administration of President Barack Obama itself.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and the Committee's ranking Democrat, Howard Berman, have already said that all U.S. aid will be cut off to any government that includes Hamas unless it agrees to renounce violence, recognise Israel's right to exist, and uphold all previous agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
And while Congressional leaders have not yet rallied behind such a far-reaching sanction against Egypt itself, the idea of threatening to slash aid to Egypt's powerful military as leverage to rein in Cairo's newfound independence has been quickly gaining currency in recent weeks on Capitol Hill.
"If Cairo's desire for a more `independent' foreign policy translates into warmer ties with terrorists, America's own long-standing support for the Egyptian military may eventually need to be reconsidered," wrote the neo-conservative Wall Street Journal Tuesday in an editorial that called Egypt's latest moves "an unsettling preview of what could emerge" from the so-called "Arab Spring".
The growing unease began shortly after Mubarak's ouster when Egypt permitted Iranian warships to sail through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, an action which Israel and its supporters here insisted was unprecedented since the 1979 Islamic Revolution when ties between the two Middle Eastern giants were effectively frozen.
But under new foreign minister Nabil Elaraby, Egypt's assertion of independence from both Israel and the United States has gained speed, even as he has repeatedly insisted that Cairo has no intention of renouncing the Camp David Accords.
Early last month, Elaraby announced after a rare meeting with a high- ranking Iranian diplomat that the two countries had "opened a new page".
Since then, Cairo has made clear that it intends to normalise relations with Tehran, a development that would mark a serious setback to U.S. and Israeli efforts to both isolate the Islamic Republic and forge a de facto alliance between Israel, Egypt and the Sunni-led monarchies of Jordan and the Gulf against Iran.
"All the world has diplomatic relations with Iran with the exception of the United States and Israel," Elaraby's spokesperson, Menha Bakhoum, told the New York Times last week. "We look at Iran as a neighbour in the region that we should have normal relations with."
At the same time, the foreign minister confirmed in an interview with al-Jazeera what had been rumoured for weeks - that Egypt would within days open the Rafah border crossing to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, a development that will effectively end a five-year Israeli blockade that Mubarak helped enforce.
Under the new regime, Cairo has also embraced the drive by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to gain recognition of a unified Palestinian state by the U.N. General Assembly in September and has reportedly urged Washington to do the same.
The Obama administration, however, has indicated that it strongly opposes the effort, insisting that such a move will undermine the "peace process", which, in any event, was effectively suspended last September. With Western European powers reportedly leaning in favour of the initiative, it appears unlikely that Washington can stop it.
All of the steps taken by the new regime appear designed to bring Egyptian foreign policy more in line with popular opinion which, according to public opinion polls, particularly since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, have shown significant opposition to U.S. policies in the region and hostility toward Israel, in particular.
In the latest poll released last week by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of respondents said they favoured annulling the Camp David treaty with Israel, although 36 percent said they thought it should be retained.
A plurality of 43 percent said they would prefer a more distant relationship with the U.S. than that in recent years. The same survey showed strong support for the former Arab League chairman and likely presidential candidate, Amr Moussa, who has favoured greater independence from U.S. foreign policy.
With Congress already in a penny-pinching mood on foreign aid, many observers believe cuts in future assistance are inevitable if Egypt's current trajectory continues.
Even before the negotiation of the controversial Palestinian reconciliation accord, lawmakers showed little interest in granting urgent requests by Egypt's new government for 3.3 billion dollars in debt relief that would save the country about 350 million dollars in annual debt payments or even for a proposed 50-million-dollar enterprise fund to attract foreign investment.
"We have to have as full a picture as we possibly can get before we do this, knowing we're in a transition period," the Republican chairwoman of the powerful House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, Texas Rep. Kay Granger, told the Congressional Quarterly.
The publication suggested that it was unlikely that Cairo would even get its usual annual allotment of 250 million dollars in economic aid this year despite a struggling economy - due in part to a drastic decline in tourism - and the risk that economic hardship could radicalise a newly-empowered electorate.
At least one astute observer predicted much will depend on Israel's attitude.
"The reason Egypt has gotten money is because the Israelis and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbied for it," said Dov Zakheim, a former senior Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration, at a conference Tuesday at the Center for the National Interest. "If the Israelis are not enthusiastic, that will just reinforce Congress' reluctance …then you're not going to see much (aid)."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
(END)
http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=55499
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From IPS
EGYPT: After Mubarak, the Military Fist
By Cam McGrath
CAIRO, May 5, 2011 (IPS) - Thousands of Egyptian civilians, including protesters who helped topple the authoritarian regime of president Hosni Mubarak, have been tried in military courts without due process. "The use of military trials on this scale is without precedent," says Adel Ramadan, a rights lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
Court records indicate Egyptian military courts have handed down more than 7,000 sentences since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) removed Mubarak on Feb. 11 and assumed control of the country. Most of the trials have involved defendants accused of looting, arson and "thuggery" under tougher criminal laws passed after Mubarak's ouster. The courts have also sentenced hundreds of protesters critical of the military council's governance and decisions.
"Each case involves anywhere from one to 35 defendants… so we estimate that over 50,000 civilians have been sentenced in the last three months," Ramadan told IPS. "We've never seen anything like this. Even under Mubarak's rule there were only two or three military trials a year. "
International rights groups have condemned the practice of trying civilians before military courts, arguing that such trials are inherently unfair. Defendants are denied access to legal counsel; sentencing is swift and severe.
Ramadan says defence lawyers appointed from a pool of SCAF-approved attorneys may be given as little as five minutes to meet with the accused, review the charges, and present the case before a military judge.
"It's very clear that the lawyers are there just for show," he says. "Some lawyers have insisted they needed more time to read the charges and present a case, but the judge simply removed them and brought in another."
Sentences handed down by military courts – which have included at least three death sentences since February – cannot be appealed. Ramadan finds this particularly worrying given the widening accusations that army officers used torture and intimidation to extract confessions, and may have fabricated evidence against political agitators.
One protester arrested during the military's Mar. 9 clampdown on an anti-government rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square claimed he was tortured and taken along with other detainees to an army camp "where a camera crew filmed us at a table with sticks, knives and Molotov cocktails placed before us, saying we were thugs."
Many Egyptians cheered when the army deployed during mass demonstrations against the Mubarak regime, chanting "The army and the people are one." Yet some now accuse the ruling military council of borrowing chapters from the former dictator's playbook.
"If you protest, they beat you and can accuse you of any crime," says Mohamed Farrag, showing stitches on his forearm he claims he was given after a soldier struck him with a baton.
International rights watchdogs have demanded that the SCAF release all political prisoners and investigate allegations of army torture and abuse. They have also called for the retrial in a civilian court of any person charged with a criminal offence, noting a glaring double standard in treatment.
"Egypt's military leadership has not explained why young protesters are being tried before unfair military courts while former Mubarak officials are being tried for corruption and killing protesters before regular criminal courts," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Journalist Rasha Azab, a former military detainee, has filed a lawsuit challenging the SCAF's administrative decision to try civilians before military courts. The SCAF's defence team described the case as "an attempt by inciters to ruin the relationship between the people and the army." It denied all torture allegations, and asserted that Egyptian military law authorises the trial of civilians in front of military courts.
The law would appear to conflict with international conventions that restrict the jurisdiction of military tribunals to military offences committed by military personnel.
One grassroots campaign aiming to raise awareness of this discrepancy is the "No to Military Tribunals" initiative. Activist Mona Seif says she helped launch the campaign after witnessing the army's brutal crackdown on a peaceful demonstration in Tahrir Square in the early hours of Feb. 26.
Seif and her mother tried to intervene when they saw soldiers drag off and beat a protester, 33-year- old Amr El-Behery. The man was released only to be beaten and arrested again. They later learned that he was put before a military tribunal along with other protesters, and sentenced to five years in prison.
"It was basically a series of injustices," Seif told IPS. "They falsely charged him with assaulting an army officer and breaking curfew, then lied to his lawyers and gave them a wrong date for the trial, so when they came they found he'd already been sentenced. The trial had lasted just a matter of minutes."
Seif views the media's role as paramount to generating public awareness of the military's alleged transgressions and abuses, as well as putting pressure on the SCAF to address them.
"Unfortunately, the only cases in which the army released detainees or promised a retrial are those with media pressure," she says.
The SCAF promised to review the sentencing of four protesters after stories of their trials were made public. It also pledged to investigate whether some female protesters detained by soldiers on Mar. 9 were tortured and subjected to "virginity tests" – but only after the story was picked up by the international press.
Seif says rights groups and media outlets have highlighted the cases of a few high-profile political activists while largely ignoring those of many others – including minors – sentenced without due process. Many of the cases involve crimes allegedly committed during the security vacuum that preceded Mubarak's ouster.
"Part of what we are trying to do in our campaign is to channel people's interest in the few hundred protesters arrested during the army's crackdown into the tens of thousands of regular citizens arrested for other issues," she says.
http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=55500
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