The attack in Egypt and the parasol geopolitics

(To Denise Serangelo)
13/07/15

July, month of holidays and relaxation. For some admirers of vacation information between a gossip magazine and a kitchen magazine, you can also take a look at the newspapers that for the first few days have been writing: Italy under attack!

Incredulous, some, they are confronted with their umbrella neighbor - "but did you know anything about it?".

They don't even waste time understanding where Egypt is and what its most recent history is. It is enough to know that the Egyptians are Muslims, they occupy a part of land overlooking the Mediterranean to be sure that the fault lies with the Caliphate. Thus began an adventurous analysis of the events that took place.

Analysis at times ambiguous at times lacunosa, refers to different historical moments, subjects far from each other and characters who have crossed the international scene a few decades ago.

Here it is that the Italian, according to him well informed, opens the observatory of international geopolitics under the umbrella, advances hypotheses and finds solutions, all between a beer and a pass of sunscreen.

We would have done it so easily and we would have saved five years of graduation and a few papers.

Egypt is a country torn apart by an inclusive Arab spring and empowering voids that destabilize the entire Egyptian society from the 2011.

Even after the election of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as President of the Republic in May 2014, the Egyptian transition can not be completely closed because, following the dismissals of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 remains a significant security problem, real and perceived.

Currently the main threat is Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis -ABM - responsible for almost all the attacks carried out throughout the country for several years now. This cell operates on several fronts involving the Sinai Peninsula in its entirety, the Egyptian mainland and the western provinces near the Libyan border.

ABM is a radical Islamist organization with a Salafi matrix that refers to the Qaedist ideology but which is not officially linked to Al-Qaeda through a direct affiliation as in the case of AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ed).

The group, however, has significant links with the Syrian sections more or less directly affiliated with the hard core of Al-Qaeda and with the Islamist movements active in Libya. Among the numerous acronyms affiliated to the Egyptian group we find the black flag of the IS that has already largely imposed itself with beheadings and emulations in the Sinai area.

The synergy between the two terrorist cells is inevitable and they complement each other thanks to joint interests.

ABM before the 2013 - that is before the Golpe - founded its paramilitary actions especially with kidnappings of soldiers, on the launch of rockets to Israel and on the attacks on economic infrastructures - among all the Arab Gas Pipeline, the sinaitic gas pipeline that supplies natural gas Jordan liquid.

The coup of July 2013 marks an important watershed, not only because, given the destabilization, it is possible to take advantage of the situation but above all for the new presence on the scene of the Al-Bhagdadi Caliphate.

The modus operandi of the jihadist cell is marked by an increase in the quality of the attacks.

This means objectives more related to political or power symbols, buildings that represent a system that must collapse to make way for the top of terror.

Despite the counterterrorism campaigns against ABM militiamen and other jihadist acronyms, the results are contained, but at least we can rejoice that the results are there!

Given the geographical proximity to countries already seriously affected by the jihadist phenomenon, Al-Sisi in order to prevent the repetition of this scenario in Egypt decided to offer its support to the Libyan government gathered in Tobruk by sending a specialized anti-terrorism unit of trainers and military advisers.

In the face of the efforts made by the Egyptian government, however, the number of radical cells continues to grow, particularly in the Sinai: a phenomenon driven above all by Islamist dissent against the civil-military establishment.

A paradox that has manifested itself in all its evidence with the non-active participation of Egypt in the Arab-Western coalition against ISIS, fearing that its military initiative may encourage retaliation by radical groups and, at the same time time, to foster a new recruitment pool from which to tap into the jihadist battle against the central government.

If the United States pushes for greater involvement of Egypt in the anti-IS front, conversely al-Sisi is limited to a form of "external support" aware of the risks of increasing instability that spans all of North Africa and the Middle East.

The main concern is that Egypt could become a focal point for terrorist operations towards the major crisis scenarios in the Mediterranean region.

So Egypt is therefore a little more than a group of angry Muslims facing the Mediterranean, Egypt risks being the last great giant to fall into the hands of terrorism.

President Al-Sisi, unlike what can be said under the umbrella, is strongly deployed against domestic and international terrorism that is tearing his region, sometimes at the cost of seeming totally uncompromising.

Unfortunately, some air raids and some stricter laws are not enough to stem a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.

Egypt has to consider the big waves of tourism that have always distinguished it as a resource that should not be attacked, the country must be divided between the fight against terrorism and its daily life.

Those who find solutions under the summer grill or write them in 140 characters on social networks diminish the problem, reducing it to a banal lack of firm will on the part of the Egyptian central government.

The first July last with the approval of the anti-terrorism law that grants more power to the judges involved in this fight and that allows a longer period of detention for the suspected affiliates, the country has sided in the front line emphasizing the importance of the "punch of iron". Praiseworthy but dangerous.

The next day, in fact - 2 July - the retaliations did not take long, a sign that the terrorists are not enthusiastic about the directional choice made by the new Egyptian government. A jihadist group affiliated with the Islamic State simultaneously attacked several Egyptian army checkpoints near Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah, in the northeast of the country. The militants, according to witnesses, attacked the Sheikh Zuweid police station with mortar shells and weapons of war, while several car bombs hit five nearby checkpoints. The Cairo army responded with a series of raids by F-16 aircraft and Apache helicopters, bombing militia positions in the northeast of Sinai province.

The bombings, according to sources, continued until the early hours of dawn.

A blow to the anvil - the terrorists - and a hundred to the hammer.

All this is very interesting is outlines a strategic situation oriented to the fight against terrorism, but then how does the attack of the 12 July in Cairo take place in this scenario and why Italy is presumably involved?

It would be good to start by admitting - at the cost of appearing against the current - that Italy is not at war.

Our government has always been on the side of the Egyptian government in the fight against terrorism, which we have already said is not welcome to the terrorist cells of the region.

At the 6.30 (local time) a car bomb with 450 kilograms of charge was blown up near the Italian consulate.

Immediately the most obvious hypothesis has been imposed, Italy is the goal. However, already a few hours after the fact and despite the claims - unreliable - the marginal attention to our country could be clear.

It 's known that the reflections after an attack are always due and dutiful, but sometimes (to tell the truth almost always) non-professionals prefer alarmism to a healthy analysis of facts and circumstances.

Let's start from the first hypothesis: warning to Italy. A plausible assumption but leaves us with serious doubts about its reliability.

What really does not fit in this hypothesis is the modus operandi not attributable to the caliphate. For a year now, the Al-Bhagdadi caliphate has accustomed us to clear and unannounced attacks, often carefully explained (see the Jordanian pilot burned alive and not beheaded because of the Muslim faith). 

A warning is not really in its nature as we have already pointed out for the attacks in France, the IS acts in a precise and ruthless way with surgical aims.

The weighting of pros and cons is the fundamental focus of the attack.

As already highlighted in several cases, the modalities of this attack are ill-suited to the habits of ISIS.

An attack planned by the strategists of the Caliphate would have taken place in the hour of maximum crowding of the offices and not at their closure. The car bomb would not have been exploded near the building, but inside the door thanks to a kamikaze in charge of triggering the detonator before crashing into the entrance. There would be no lack of military (or presumed ones) charged with eliminating the survivors who emerged from the rubble.

Sceneries already presented as effective and established and which have no reason to be modified in Egypt.

The claim distributed via twitter and signed with the unpublished initials of "Organization of Islamic State-Egypt" increases doubts about the real nature of the attack.

The IS cell in Egypt has flanked since its origins to the aforementioned ABM, which today was renamed as "EI Wilayat del Sinai", or from the Sinai group - or Province of Sinai - after joining the Caliphate.

But if the IS is not guilty of this attack and only gets a profitable advertising then it is questionable who is behind it.

The answer is to be found in the internal events of Egypt and its complex geopolitics.

On the Egyptian scene we have so far neglected the presence of the radical Islamic movement of the Muslim Brotherhood founded in Egypt in 1928.

The group was originally led by a young tutor, a fervent religious with exceptional speech: Hassan al Banna. His speeches targeted the decadence of the customs of Egyptian society and preached the return to the purity of ancient Islam. Egypt in those years lived in a state of almost absolute poverty and Hassan al Banna promised to modernize the country and free it from British control. The organization quickly grew to become a very popular political entity, espoused the cause of the struggling classes and played a prominent role in the Egyptian nationalist movement. Rooting in society was favored by the rapid spread of Islamization centers, which also dealt with providing economic assistance and education to the most disadvantaged people.

In the 1954 - after the death of the founding leader - the new Egyptian president Nasser after tolerating the Muslim Brotherhood, he considered them responsible for a murder attempt he had escaped and began to arrest, torture and deport his members. To survive, the Brotherhood expatriated its most important leaders.

Currently under the Al-Sisi government the Brotherhood has undergone further harsh repression, the intrasigent line of the presidency has obviously made it objects of violent demonstrations.

The 30 Jun 2015 car bomb - similar to that used at the consulate - was used to kill Attorney General Hisham Barakat who instituted the trial against former president Mohammed Morsi and hundreds of militants of the brotherhood.

The similarity between the two car bombs would make credible the hypothesis that it was the Muslim Brotherhood that carried out the attack.

A few moments before the explosion, the car passed with the judge Ahmed al Fuddaly, president of the supreme court and very close to the president Al-Sisi. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has in fact launched a real manhunt (or magistrate) calling on the jihadists to fight against those governmental subjects - magistrates and law enforcement - who are working against the anti-Islamic Al-Sisi.

There is a less reassuring and even less probable hypothesis, which sees our country really involved.

The attack in Cairo anticipates the signing of the peace and conciliation agreement proposed for Libya by the UN, an agreement signed by Bernardino Leon and the Libyan government of Tobruk. Left out of this agreement is the Islamist coalition controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood who hold power in the area of ​​Tripoli. Italy, given its involvement in the events of Libya has stated on several occasions that this agreement is a great step forward for the stabilization of the country and why not for a future operation of military mold.

It seems clear that the matter is much more complex than it seems.

The alarming bewildering and to say the least out of place and of these periods leaves basiti.

Not being able to look at the day of his nose and his beliefs is only likely to feed counterproductive terror.

The headlines that praised a war still to be started and that seems already consummated, the written analyzes spizzicando visceral fears are the greatest form of terrorism, a decidedly avoidable terrorism.

A healthy culture and a truthful dialogue on the conditions of our troubled foreign and international politics would be desirable for the future even if in the end the doubt arises spontaneously.

Under the umbrella then what about talking?