An update on my post earlier this week about Student Rights/Henry Jackson Society’s’ "Challenging Extremists" report. The link to the report is below. I haven’t read the report yet: Rupert Sutton & Hannah Stuart, Student Rights – Challenging Extremists: Practical frameworks for our universities (pdf)
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Independent, Israel hints it may be behind ‘Flame’ super-virus targeting Iran, 29 May 2012 "A top Israeli minister yesterday fed speculation that the Jewish state could be responsible for a powerful new virus said to have been used in a fresh attack on computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East."
This was also useful:
Telegraph, Flame virus most powerful espionage tool ever, UN warns "
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Telegraph, Flame virus ‘has infected 189 systems in Iran’, 29 May 2012 "The most sophisticated computer virus the world has ever seen has infected 189 systems in Iran as part of its intelligence gathering functions, experts said"
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The kidnapping of two US tourists from near Dahab on the “Sinai riviera” is only the most recent in a long string of tourist kidnappings in Sinai, mostly aimed at forcing the Egyptian government to release prisoners or to concede other demands. Though CNN has confirmed through an interview with one of them that the two tourists were still in custody despite Egyptian claims they had been released, they probably will be released safely, as was the case with two other Americans in February. But the US media has paid little attention to the continuing wave of abductions of tourists, most of them not from the US.
Since the withdrawal of police during the Egyptian revolution, Sinai has increasingly become a Wild West no-man’s-land where increasingly radical Islamist and jihadi groups are operating freely in some cases operating from a core of former prisoners who escaped during the revolution and have been operating in Sinai, drawing recruits from long-disgruntled local Bedouin tribes who have long felt neglected by Cairo. Not all these incidents, however, involve radical groups; some are simply tribal vendettas, and the current case is reportedly aimed at freeing a tribesman arrested for drug offenses.
The fact that Sinai is the crucial buffer between Egypt and Israel and that incidents along the border, including rocket attacks inside Israel, have occurred has raised the danger of a major confrontation with Israel. Under the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Egypt is limited in how many military troops it can deploy, but there has been cooperation in the past on security in Sinai, though Israel has also warned that it will protect its border security unilaterally if necessary.
The security of Sinai is, along with the economic crisis, sure to be high on the agenda of Egypt’s incoming President.
Egypt’s State of Emergency, in continuous force for nearly 31 years, will end at midnight tonight, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has announced, SCAF has also “reassured” the country that it will maintain security until the handover of power June 30.
The State of Emergency, which has been in force since the assassination of Anwar Sadat, has provided the legal justification for a wide range of measures, including trying civilians in military courts.
Though most headlines are emphasizing that the Emergency lasted 31 years, in fact Egypt was also under a State of Emergency from the June 1967 War until after the original Camp David accords. That was lifted in 1980, but some 18 months later Sadat was assassinated in October 1981. So except for that 18-month period, Egypt has been under an Emergency for 45 years.
“…The emergence of a de facto sanctuary in northern Lebanon for the Free Syrian Army poses a particular challenge for the government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Instructing the Lebanese army to seal off the border would be bitterly divisive domestically, but failure to act decisively could lead, sooner or later, to direct Syrian intervention.The signs are there. The Lebanese authorities have already received several warnings from Syria demanding an end to the flow of rebels and weapons across their common border. Journalists with access to decision-makers in Damascus relay the message that the Mikati government’s policy of “warding off evil” — i.e. formal neutrality — is no longer tolerable, …….Rifaat Ali Eid is the head of the pro-Syrian Arab Democratic Party and a leading political figure in the small Alawi community in Tripoli, which has come under attack from armed Sunni militants, reportedly backed by fugitive Syrian rebels. He has given the clearest signal yet of the Syrian government’s possible intentions: “If Lebanon enters the unknown,” he predicted in mid-May, “an Arab army will intervene … the UN will request the Syrian army to enter north Lebanon to resolve the situation there, because it is the most knowledgeable and capable Arab army in this regard.”
Eid is a marginal figure in Lebanese politics, but Syria’s intervention in Lebanon in 1976 followed the same sequence: private warnings delivered by former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Left; public hints of Syrian intentions issued by Palestinian and Lebanese parties and media affiliated to the Syrian regime; and the claim that Syria was responding to an appeal for protection from Christian leaders. When these warnings failed [to produce the desired outcome], a Syrian armored brigade entered Lebanon and stopped just across the border. It was the forerunner of a major Syrian force deployment, which entered Lebanon two months later.
There are several obstacles to a significant Syrian intervention in Lebanon in 2012….. However, the Syrian regime may regard a brief, more limited “mopping up” operation in the border zone as a dual deterrent. This kind of operation could serve both to underscore to the Lebanese the potential costs of granting sanctuary to Syrian rebels, as well as to demonstrate the regime’s determination and capacity to act, thus discouraging other neighboring countries from allowing similar sanctuaries on their soil. A limited cross-border operation in northern Lebanon would act as a “dress rehearsal” for the wider armed conflict that may develop if the Syrian crisis degenerates into full civil war, or the Friends of Syria gear up for their own military intervention.
There would be other advantages to a cross-border intervention from the Syrian regime’s perspective. The United States would no doubt condemn an incursion into Lebanon, but its stance would be complicated by its own concern, shared by other Western governments, about the possible emergence of al-Qaeda-style jihadism in Tripoli. Its inclination to assist the Lebanese Army might similarly be tempered by a reluctance to get overly involved with a government in which Hezbollah is represented. Russia is likely to regard a limited Syrian operation as a legitimate act of self-defense, despite recent statements by its foreign minister holding the Assad regime primarily responsible for the bloodshed in Syria.
The reactions of Syria’s other neighbors would be no less complex. Turkey would certainly protest a Syrian incursion into Lebanon; but it has repeatedly sent its own military into northern Iraq in pursuit of guerrillas from the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), and may yet claim the right to act similarly against them in northern Syria, where their presence has increased. Iraq, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League’s council of foreign ministers, has its own problems with Sunni militants and is reported to have exchanged information with Syrian intelligence over the infiltration of jihadists from its territory into Syria. Jordan, whose king was the first Arab leader to call on Assad to step down last year, has tightened controls over the smuggling of arms destined for Syrian rebels across its border, and has seen its trade with Syria actually increase since the economic embargo was declared last November….”
I’ve decided to remove the tweet, like, g+ and what not buttons from the blog. To make things load faster, and because I came across this. (I am highly impressionable.) One day I might disable comments on the shorter posts too, when the Arabist redesign comes along (maybe this summer), and replace them with email.
Complain if you want.
Learn To Read And Write Arabic
Find out all about the revolutionary secret technique for learning to read and write Arabic. Read the article here.
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