by Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 15,
No. 16 June 10, 2015
- Egypt has abstained for more than 40 years from projecting its military forces as a component of its foreign policy.
- The Egyptian army lacked experience in fighting against paramilitary armed groups, or fighting inside cities and residential communities.
- Intelligence cooperation between Egypt and Israel was ongoing and enabled a strong challenge to the jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula. For the first time there was a convergence of interests between Israel and Egypt over the situation in the Sinai and in the Gaza Strip.
- After events in Sinai and Libya President Sisi has demonstrated that he advocates the use of force and the projection of force in order to secure vital Egyptian national interests.
- Sisi considers Egypt and its moderate allies to be the victims of a colluded effort from jihadi Islam and as such he advocates a united Arab effort to counter this danger.
Since the death
of its legendary leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, Egypt has been reluctant to
use subversive activities and military force, or even the threat of force, as
part of its foreign policy even though it maintains a credible offensive
military capability. With very few exceptions (participation in the 1990 “Desert
Shield” against Iraq), Egypt has abstained for more than 40 years from
projecting its military forces as a component of its foreign policy.
One of the main
reasons is the fact that the performance of the Egyptian army outside Egypt’s
sovereign borders since the end of the monarchy in Egypt in 1945, has been, to
say the least, problematic: the Egyptian army suffered large losses and painful
defeats during the war against the nascent Israel in 1948 and the Yemen Civil
War in the early 1960s.
As a matter of
fact, neither the Egyptian army nor its Supreme Command (including President
Field-Marshall Abd el-Fattah el-Sisi himself)1 has taken part
in a real war since 1973. Instead, the army has been active in dominating the
Egyptian economy — to such an extent that it is assessed that the Egyptian army
represents 30 percent or more of the economic activities in Egypt. For more
than 40 years, the Egyptian army’s mission as defined by its leaders was
limited to protecting Egypt’s borders from outside threats and to serve as the
guarantor of the regime. It was the Muslim Brotherhood’s mistake to challenge
the Egyptian Army traditional role as the gatekeeper of Egypt that prompted
Sisi to move against President Morsi.
The Egyptian
army lacked experience in fighting against paramilitary armed groups or
fighting inside cities and residential communities.
The Beginning of Change: Dealing Differently with Sinai
and Hamas
Since his very
first days as ruler of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi made it clear that his
intention was to engage his army in combat in Sinai to eradicate the jihadists
in Sinai, which is of crucial importance to the national security of Egypt. He
sought to put an end to terrorist attacks against Egypt and uniform-wearing
Egyptians. He himself survived two assassination attempts, and his interior
minister had been the target of a suicide car bombing. From the very
beginning, Sisi had to deal with two fronts: Sinai (and Hamas in Gaza by
extension) and the chaotic situation in Libya. Sisi was unequivocal: he “meant
business.” Unlike his predecessors who allowed the growth of the jihadi threat
in Sinai, Sisi pushed for a military confrontation to put an end to the ongoing
terrorist attacks against his soldiers and against strategic targets in Sinai
and at a minimum to contain the terrorist threat in Sinai.
In order to do
so, he had to acquire Israel’s acquiescence to a massive redeployment of
Egyptian forces in the Sinai, overruling the terms and conditions set by the
peace treaty between Egypt and Israel signed in 1979. Understandably,
Israel allowed a redeployment of Egyptian forces in the Sinai well beyond what
was agreed upon in the Camp David Accords. Intelligence cooperation between the
two countries was ongoing and enabled a strong challenge to the jihadists in
the Sinai Peninsula. For the first time there was a convergence of
interests between Israel and Egypt over the situation in the Sinai and in the
Gaza Strip.
In a series of
unprecedented steps, Sisi closed almost hermetically the border crossing point
with Gaza, only opening it from time to time for humanitarian reasons. Next,
Egyptian army engineers destroyed almost 2,000 tunnels along the 11-kilometer
border between Gaza and Sinai that served to smuggle goods into Gaza as well as
terrorists, weapons, and Muslim Brotherhood activists.2 Having
put an end to (almost) all tunnels, Sisi created a one-mile no-man’s buffer
zone between Gaza and Sinai.3 To do so, Sisi ordered the
destruction of all houses in the zone and the evacuation of hundreds of families
from the Egyptian town of Rafah (cut in half by the Gaza-Egypt border) which
were re-located to northern Sinai, steps that no Israeli could have even
thought possible to accomplish.
Parallel to
these developments, Sisi reorganized the Sinai Command. Historically, Sinai was
divided between the Second and the Third armies, which carried the burden to
protect Egypt’s eastern borders, including the Suez Canal. It was imperative to
create a new Sinai Command that would be devoted solely to enforce security in
Sinai while eradicating the terrorists. The new command, headed by
Lieutenant-General Rushdi Askar, was given adequate troop and air support;
since its creation the command has launched intensive attacks against the
jihadists (not always with complete success).4
Egypt was very
much aware of the bond between the jihadists in Sinai and Hamas. However,
unlike the Muslim Brothers who were high on the Sisi administration’s enemy
list, Hamas was an item left “on the shelf” to be taken care of at a later
stage. The Egyptian Ministry of Justice and courts decided to designate Hamas
as a collaborator of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas was accused of participating
in terrorist operations against Egyptian targets inside Egypt and Sinai as well
as harboring terrorist groups and Muslim Brotherhood leaders inside the Gaza
Strip. Hamas was designated a terrorist organization, its assets frozen
and activities inside Egypt forbidden. The designation was reversed by an
Egyptian court on June 6, 2015 but so far Egypt’s security policy appears not
to have changed.
On the eve of
Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” against Hamas in July 2014 Egypt was
exasperated by Hamas and its regional sponsors.5 Israel’s
ground invasion of Gaza did not alter President Sisi’s tough approach, even
though he allowed open and harsh criticism of Israel. This tension
between Sisi’s adverse attitude and punitive approach towards Hamas on the one
hand, and his need to satisfy the pro-Palestinian Egyptian public opinion on
the other, has been evident in the gap between Egypt’s policy and its
pronouncements.6
The Libyan Issue
Egypt’s
relations with Libya have been tumultuous in the course of the last 45 years.
At one time they were united in the short-lived model of the Syrian-Egyptian
Union of 1958, and in times of crisis they exchanged fire across the 700-mile
common border. Sadat, who considered for a short time Qaddafi to be an adopted
son, was at times exacerbated not only by his unpredictable behavior, but
mainly by his irrational initiatives such as ordering an Egyptian submarine to
sink the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner. His erratic moods and his violent
unleashed verbal attacks against Egypt and its leaders resulted at the end of
day in creating a situation in which Egyptian leaders ignored Qaddafi. However,
as long as Qaddafi ruled Libya, the border between the two countries was
relatively calm and controlled.
With Qaddafi’s
ousting, Libya entered a chaotic phase which prevails until today. With the
disintegration of the Libyan state and the formation of two distinct and rival
governments in Tobruk and Tripoli, the rise of jihadi organizations, and the
emergence of the Islamic State, the threats on Egypt’s western flank became
concrete. The border is now North Africa’s point of origin for weapons stolen
from Qaddafi’s arsenals, fighters, illegal migrants, and illicit goods flowing
into the Levant, with profoundly destabilizing effects on the Sinai, Gaza, and
Syria.7, 8
Egypt and Libya
have exchanged regular delegations to discuss security cooperation. In July
2014, Libyan intelligence chief Salem Abdel Salam, Foreign Minister Mohamed
Abdulaziz, and then army Chief of Staff Abdessalam Jadallah Al-Salihin met with
their Egyptian counterparts in Cairo to discuss border security coordination
and Libya’s security situation. More recently, the prime ministers of the two
countries met in Washington, D.C. for security discussions. But the
implementation of any agreements has been minor so far.9
Egyptian
government officials have warned Libya about the dangerous implications of its
failure to control the Libyan Islamist groups in the east. Pursuant to his
activist political approach, in the course of 2013 President Sisi decided to
assist General Khalifa Haftar, a former Qaddafi-era officer who had created a
coalition of disaffected military units, tribes in eastern Libya, and federalist
militias to attack Islamist forces in and around the cities of Benghazi and
Darna in late May 2014. Khalifa Haftar had led Libyan forces during a
disastrous war with Chad in the south. After his defeat by Chadian forces in
1987, he was taken captive for almost five years, refusing to return to Libya
out of fear Qaddafi would “punish” him for his defeat. Later, the CIA succeeded
in whisking him out of Chad together with 300 of his men to Virginia where he
underwent special training by the CIA. After living in exile in the U.S. for 20
years, he returned to Libya and led ground forces to help oust Qaddafi in 2011.10
Haftar tried to
align himself early on with Egypt’s military regime, fighting its own Islamists
in Egypt. After Haftar’s campaign began, reports surfaced of more direct
Egyptian military involvement in Libya.
However, a
meaningful obstacle stood in the way of Egypt. Since events in Libya in 2011,
almost 1.8 million Egyptian workers left Libya to return to Egypt. The number
of workers who remain is estimated today to be around 200,000.11
Egyptian workers in Libya have been a source for bilateral tensions and visa
restrictions, and border closings by both sides have become regular
occurrences. Kidnappings of Egyptian migrant workers are commonplace in Libya.
In mid-October 2013 the leader of a Libyan militia abducted several dozen
Egyptian truck drivers and held them hostage in the Libyan town of Ajdabya,
demanding that Egyptian authorities release his relatives who were detained in
Egypt on charges of weapons smuggling. The Egyptian authorities responded by
closing Egypt’s side of the Musaid-Salloum border crossing for a few
days.12
The Beheading of 21 Copts by IS as a Catalyst
Sisi would have
accepted the status quo on the common border with Libya even though it worsened
recently, since his main effort was focused on Egypt’s domestic scene and
Sinai. However, events turned otherwise: On February 15, 2015, an armed group
calling itself the “Tripoli Province of the Islamic State” and claiming
affiliation with Daesh (the Islamic State or IS) in Libya posted a video on the
Internet showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts.
Indications
of the Sisi regime’s support for the Tobruk government and General Haftar
provoked the recurrence of kidnappings and murders of Egyptians in Libya,
especially Copts, whose Egyptian Coptic Church had declared its support for the
Sisi regime.
The Egyptian
press preferred to ignore the fact that the specific group executed at the
hands of the Sirte IS militants was kidnapped two months earlier, but there was
no evidence that the Egyptian authorities exerted real efforts to communicate
with the kidnappers and comply, if at all, to their demands, or even to try to
secure the lives of the kidnapped through official or unofficial channels. The
video’s publication greatly embarrassed the Egyptian regime, both because it
had done so little to secure the release of the kidnapped, and because the
event targeted Egyptian Copts at a time when the Egyptian Church had become the
strongest supporter of the Sisi regime.13
That same evening,
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi delivered an emotional speech in which
he condemned the incident and reserved the right to respond. He also convened
the Supreme Defense Council in a meeting to discuss ways of retaliation. On the
following day, and for the second time since the air intervention in 2014 meant
to assist Haftar forces, four Egyptian Air Force F-16s carried out two
consecutive raids on targets in the city of Darna, justifying the attacks by
claiming Darna was in the hands of IS.
Since then, the
press and social media are packed with reports about Egyptian preparations to
launch a full scale military operation in east Libya. They imply a cynical use
of the massive incident in order to justify such a military intervention in
Libya, with the excuse of resolving the ongoing conflict in its oil-rich
neighbor while in reality Sisi would be intervening in order to allow his local
allies (Khalifa Haftar) to take control of the whole of Cyrenaica, thus
eliminating a potential jihadi threat on Egypt.
President Sisi
has many reasons against intervening militarily in Libya; the most important
one is linked to the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians living and
working in Libya. For these reasons, it appears that a major ground incursion
remains unlikely. On the other hand, Egypt may consider the beheadings as an
opportunity to pursue its regional policy, targeting existing concentrations of
Islamist and Jihadist groups in North Africa without running the risk of being
subjected to international condemnation.
Cairo’s growing
concern over the Libyan situation, the inability of Haftar’s forces to achieve
tangible progress, and the reluctance of Egypt to engage its forces in Libya
raise another possibility: a collective Arab combined and coordinated
intervention.
The Saudi Precedent in Yemen
For the first
time since 1948 the so-called moderate Arab states led by Saudi Arabia have
succeeded in creating a military coalition aimed at an Arab state and not
linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict. While some Arab armies joined the military
coalition in the first Gulf War and of late against IS in Iraq and Syria, that
coalition was led in both cases by the United States and was built around the
American and international forces that took part in both campaigns. The Arab
forces served more as a fig leaf and a justification for the use of force
against an Arab entity.14
In the Yemeni
case, however, moderate Arab countries headed by Saudi Arabia have come to the
conclusion that they must fight for the survival of their own regimes and that
terrorism identified with Sunni jihadists and the extremist ideology of Salafi
Islam is the main factor for instability. Islamic organizations
classified by the different regimes as terrorist groups have become the prime
target of the moderate regimes.
This is the
concept at the core of the pan-Arab force to be created as an intervention
force to back Arab regimes under attack. President Sisi was among the first
leaders to express his readiness to participate in the campaign led by the
Saudis. At the same time, some pointed to Libya as being the next target for an
Arab military intervention.
Similar to the
events in Yemen, an Arab intervention in Libya, which would be preferential
from Sisi’s point of view to acting solo, requires an Arab League resolution
and wide Arab support. After the Yemeni precedent, Sisi can expect total
backing from Saudi Arabia and its allies regarding any future venture in Libya.
Conclusion
President Sisi
has demonstrated since the first days of his tenure that he advocates the use
of force and the projection of force in order to secure vital Egyptian national
interests. Unlike his predecessors, Sisi considers the use of force justified
as long as it serves to fight enemies of the regime internally or externally as
in the Libyan case. Moreover, Sisi considers Egypt and its moderate allies to
be the victims of a colluded effort from jihadi Islam — be it Al-Qaeda inspired
or IS or any other extremist offshoot — and as such he advocates a united Arab
effort to counter this danger. Acting together with other Arab armies provides
the needed legitimacy domestically for such actions against an Arab state or
organization.
Sisi’s effort
to create an Arab intervention force is but another expression of the deep
change that has occurred since the ousting of Mubarak in the Egyptian
leadership perception of Egypt’s strategic positioning in its immediate and
regional environment and vis-a-vis the western powers policing the area.
* * *
Notes
6 ibid.
8 Frederic
Wehrey, David Bishop, Ala’ Alrababa’h, Backdrop to an Intervention: Sources of
Egyptian-Libyan Border Tension , Article August 27, 2014
9 ibid.
12 Wehrey,
op.cit
13 Al
Jazeera Center for Studies , Risks of Egypt’s Military Intervention in Libya,
Monday 23 February 2015
Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah
Source: http://jcpa.org/article/egypts-projection-of-military-power-in-the-middle-east/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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