Great news indeed! Hope you had a great 4th, Dave. =)

There are now calls from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood for a pop­u­lar upris­ing against the mil­i­tary (and pre­sum­ably also putting the MB back in con­trol) fol­low­ing a ral­ly out­side of the Cairo Repub­li­can Guard head­quar­ters that led to over 50 deaths and hun­dreds injured. The Broth­er­hood is assert­ing that they were peace­ful­ly protest­ing (the head­quar­ters is where they believe Mor­si is being held under house arrest) while the army claims it was com­ing under fire. So while it’s unclear what prompt­ed the shoot­ings, the MB’s calls for an upris­ing make it becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that we’re going to see a lot more events like this in com­ing months

Wash­ing­ton Post
Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood calls for upris­ing after troops shoot pro­test­ers

By William Booth, Michael Birn­baum and Abi­gail Haus­lohn­er, Updat­ed: Mon­day, July 8, 8:05 PM

CAIRO — Egypt lurched into dan­ger­ous new ter­rain Mon­day as an angry and blood­ied Mus­lim Broth­er­hood called for an “upris­ing” against the new order, and the head of Egypt’s top Islam­ic author­i­ty warned that the coun­try was head­ed toward “civ­il war,” after secu­ri­ty forces opened fire on sup­port­ers of oust­ed Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si in the ear­ly morn­ing hours.

In one of the dead­liest days of polit­i­cal vio­lence since Hos­ni Mubarak was over­thrown more than two tumul­tuous years ago, Egypt­ian sol­diers on Mon­day fired on pro­test­ers as they massed in front of the mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, where they believe Mor­si — oust­ed by the mil­i­tary on Wednes­day — is being held under house arrest, accord­ing to wit­ness­es and secu­ri­ty offi­cials.

A Health Min­istry spokes­woman said 51 peo­ple were killed and 435 were wound­ed in the shoot­ings. Mil­i­tary offi­cials said that they respond­ed after being fired upon by pro­test­ers and that one sol­dier was killed and 42 were injured.

Inter­im Pres­i­dent Adly Man­sour issued a decree late Mon­day that set the para­me­ters for a ref­er­en­dum on a revised con­sti­tu­tion with­in about 41 / 2 months, par­lia­men­tary elec­tions with­in about six months and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions after that.

The mea­sures appeared aimed at lend­ing some sta­bil­i­ty to a sit­u­a­tion that threat­ened to spi­ral out of con­trol. But a prime min­is­te­r­i­al appoint­ment that had been expect­ed Mon­day nev­er came, and the day was con­sumed with news of the vio­lence and an imme­di­ate debate about its caus­es and mean­ing. Both the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood plead­ed their cas­es to the Egypt­ian peo­ple, each swear­ing it was the inno­cent vic­tim.

Islamist wit­ness­es, includ­ing many mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, said the shoot­ings start­ed unpro­voked as pro­test­ers were recit­ing dawn prayers in front of Cairo’s Repub­li­can Guard head­quar­ters.

Secu­ri­ty offi­cials said mem­bers of the pro-Mor­si camp attacked first.

“We did not attack pro­test­ers; we were rather defend­ing a mil­i­tary facil­i­ty,” said Ahmed Ali, a spokesman for the mil­i­tary. “They moved on us to pro­voke our sol­diers and cre­ate this vio­lent scene.”

Regard­less of who fired the first shots, the vio­lence shocked Egyp­tians and threw the nation’s shaky post-coup order into fur­ther dis­ar­ray, as impor­tant fac­tions pulled out of the coali­tion that lent broad uni­ty to the effort to oust Mor­si, who led the coun­try for 368 days.

The ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Salafist Nour par­ty, the only Islamist polit­i­cal bloc to sup­port Morsi’s ouster, said it would aban­don nego­ti­a­tions over who should take over as prime min­is­ter to protest what it called a “mas­sacre.”

Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Islam­ic author­i­ty, had expressed sup­port for Morsi’s ouster. But Mon­day, he appeared on state tele­vi­sion and said he would remain in seclu­sion at his home “until every­body takes respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop the blood­shed, to pre­vent the coun­try from being dragged into a civ­il war.”

Anoth­er Islamist, for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Abdel Mon­eim Aboul Fotouh, who had met with Man­sour two days ago, called for him to resign after the vio­lence.

The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s polit­i­cal arm urged “an upris­ing,” using the lan­guage of the Pales­tin­ian strug­gle against Israel.

Dra­mat­ic funer­al march­es were expect­ed by the dozens Tues­day, cre­at­ing more poten­tial flash points for con­flict.

Blood­shed and pan­ic

...

Abdel Naguib Mah­moud, a lawyer from the Nile Delta town of Zagazig, said he and fel­low pro­test­ers had knelt to the pave­ment for the sec­ond time, their backs to the Repub­li­can Guard head­quar­ters, when he heard shouts from the perime­ter that secu­ri­ty forces were encroach­ing.

“So we fin­ished our prayer rapid­ly,” Mah­moud said. He said he heard the boom of tear-gas can­is­ters being fired and the crack­le of gun­fire. Run­ning toward the entrance of the sit-in area, he and sev­er­al friends began to pick up the wound­ed, Mah­moud said. More shots rang out, and the men lay down on the pave­ment.

Mah­moud said he saw forces in mil­i­tary fatigues and police offi­cers dressed in black. Moments lat­er, he said, an offi­cer stood over him and kicked him, telling him to move. When he ran, gun­men opened fire. He said he was hit in the back with bird­shot, and he lift­ed his shirt to reveal a scat­ter­ing of small bloody wounds.

To sup­port their asser­tions that they were defend­ing against an assault, mil­i­tary offi­cials played video footage at a news con­fer­ence that sought to show an increas­ing feroc­i­ty of attack by Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers at the scene.

The footage showed at least one man with a short rifle and anoth­er with a hand­gun fir­ing at sol­diers in the day­light after the ini­tial con­flict start­ed. The mil­i­tary said armed men on motor­cy­cles had start­ed the assault, but it offered no evi­dence to back up the asser­tion.

Indi­vid­u­als in the crowd are shown hurl­ing rocks at the troops and lat­er launch­ing pieces of bro­ken toi­let bowls from rooftops and chuck­ing what appear to be spears.

The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Free­dom and Jus­tice Par­ty issued a state­ment call­ing for an “upris­ing against those who want to steal the rev­o­lu­tion with tanks” and ask­ing the world to pre­vent a “new Syr­ia.”

...

Note that the threat of a “new Syr­ia”, with heav­i­ly-armed Islamist mil­i­tants flood­ing into the coun­try intend­ing to impose a Tal­iban-style state, prob­a­bly should­n’t be under­es­ti­mat­ed:

Wash­ing­ton Post
Islamist groups: Egypt’s crack­down vin­di­cates use of vio­lence as polit­i­cal tool

By Liz Sly, Mon­day, July 8, 6:35 PM E‑mail the writer

BEIRUT — The Egypt­ian army’s esca­lat­ing crack­down on sup­port­ers of the country’s oust­ed Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment is being seized on by many rad­i­cal Islamists as proof that vio­lence, not democ­ra­cy, is the only solu­tion to the region’s prob­lems.

In the days since Egypt’s mil­i­tary top­pled the country’s first freely elect­ed gov­ern­ment, jihadist groups in the region and else­where have rushed to assert the futil­i­ty of elec­tions and West­ern-style democ­ra­cy, in state­ments and in chat forums on jiha­di Web sites.

Among them is Afghanistan’s Tal­iban, which issued a state­ment Mon­day con­demn­ing the coup against Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si after Egypt­ian troops killed at least 51 of his sup­port­ers.

“It has become clear,” said Tal­iban spokesman Muham­mad Yusuf, that “so-called elec­tions, the demands of the peo­ple, and jus­tice, free­dom, secu­ri­ty and peace are mere­ly hol­low chants and slo­gans used by the West and the sec­u­lar­ists to trick the peo­ple,”

Oth­ers had ear­li­er assert­ed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. “When will the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood wake up from their deep slum­ber and real­ize the futil­i­ty of their efforts at insti­tut­ing change?” asked the Soma­li mil­i­tant group al-Shabab, an al-Qae­da affil­i­ate, in a com­ment post­ed on Twit­ter after Morsi’s over­throw last week.

“Change comes by the bul­let alone; NOT the bal­lot,” the group said in anoth­er tweet.

At least two new jiha­di groups have been formed in a bid to counter the chal­lenge to the Broth­er­hood. With­in hours of the shoot­ings Mon­day, a group call­ing itself the Abdul­lah Azzam Brigades of Egypt declared that it had been cre­at­ed to counter the “crim­i­nal­i­ty” under­way in the coun­try.

...

Rita Katz, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the SITE Intel­li­gence Group, which has been mon­i­tor­ing these and numer­ous oth­er respons­es by jiha­di groups to the events in Egypt, said there is no con­fir­ma­tion of the groups’ exis­tence or of any increased jihadist activ­i­ty linked to the tur­moil.

But, she added, “this is a great recruit­ment tool for them. The bot­tom line is that a lot of incite­ment is going on.”

It is also too ear­ly to tell whether the calls will have any effect beyond Egypt’s bor­ders at a time when the war in Syr­ia has already mobi­lized thou­sands of young men across the region to vol­un­teer to fight and extrem­ists in Iraq are in the midst of an inten­si­fied bomb­ing cam­paign that has killed thou­sands in recent months, said Steven Cook, senior fel­low for Mid­dle East stud­ies at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions.

In Syr­ia, gov­ern­ment oppo­nents long ago aban­doned peace­ful demon­stra­tions after troops repeat­ed­ly fired on them, and Islamist groups affil­i­at­ed with al-Qae­da are gain­ing influ­ence as the war drags into a third year with no sign of a res­o­lu­tion.

The biggest effect, Cook said, may be in Egypt, where Islamist extrem­ists affil­i­at­ed with the Gamaa Islamiya fought a low-lev­el insur­gency in the 1990s before agree­ing to lay down their arms in 2003.

Egypt is awash with weapons that have been smug­gled across the bor­der from Libya, and “giv­en the polit­i­cal dynam­ics, you can see the out­lines of how this might emerge,” he said.

@Pterrafractyl–

As sat­is­fy­ing as it was to see the Broth­er­hood turned out of pow­er, I cau­tioned, well, “cau­tion.”

This is why. It is dif­fi­cult to see how this will work out well. Mil­i­tary coups gen­er­al­ly (no pun intend­ed) don’t end hap­pi­ly ever after.

I pre­dict­ed that the Broth­er­hood and oth­er jihadis will become more effec­tive proxy foot sol­diers for the Under­ground Reich.

How that plays into Snow­den’s Ride will be inter­est­ing to watch. I HOPE that NSA REALLY main­tains a vig­il on Deutsch­land.

Stay tuned.

It is also note­wor­thy that the Egypt­ian pop­u­lace, both sec­u­lar­ists and Broth­er­hood, are blam­ing Obama/US.

And, they are PARTIALLY right, in that the GOP/Underground Reich/transnational cor­po­rate ele­ment of U.S. intel­li­gence DID boost the Islamists, as part of the “turn to the Broth­er­hood” that I dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 733–739.

Note that the Syr­i­an blood­bath is putting Oba­ma in what psy­chol­o­gists call a “dou­ble bind” (that civ­il war being and out­growth of the so-called “Arab Spring”). The Beng­hazi affair is also being used by the Naz­i­fied GOP to attack Oba­ma (that also being an out­growth of the “Arab Spring”). The desta­bi­liza­tion of Oba­ma, which I pre­dict­ed at the time, is right on sched­ule.

You doubt­less recall that such an out­come was one of my pre­dict­ed results of this Bush-era covert op.

NEVER for­get all of the cel­e­bra­to­ry tones that our media engaged in at the time.

“Egypt Is Free!” ran a San Jose Mer­cury News head­line after Mubarak’s ouster.

Just goes to show how wrong you can be.

There is an old say­ing: “There is noth­ing like step­ping in a cow-flop to make you real­ize just how nice trip­ping over a stone can be!”

Keep up your mag­nif­i­cent work!

Best,

Dave

The rhetor­i­cal lines in the sand are rapid­ly get­ting drawn and it looks like the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is focused on esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion and prep­ping for a mass show­down with the army at this point:

Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood rejects tran­si­tion plan
Mag­gie Michael, Asso­ci­at­ed Press 9:39 a.m. EDT July 9, 2013

CAIRO (AP) — 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.

...

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% of the vote — but only around 30% 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.

And note that the calls for main­tain­ing the new con­sti­tu­tion is rel­a­tive­ly tame com­pared to the oth­er rhetoric com­ing from the MB’s allies:

9 July 2013 Last updat­ed at 10:03 ET
Is Egypt head­ing for holy war?
By Frank Gard­ner BBC secu­ri­ty cor­re­spon­dent

Even pos­ing that ques­tion will annoy many.

Away from the trou­blespots, life for mil­lions of Egyp­tians con­tin­ues as nor­mal. Egyp­t’s most fun­da­men­tal prob­lems are more eco­nom­ic than polit­i­cal.

But in a week when the polit­i­cal arm of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood called for “an upris­ing by the great peo­ple of Egypt against those try­ing to steal their rev­o­lu­tion with tanks”, when dozens were killed in clash­es between the army and Islamists and when the grand sheikh of al-Azhar warned of a civ­il war, an awk­ward ques­tion hov­ers in the air.

Is Egypt now prone to a new “holy war” fought by Islamists against the author­i­ties?

Extrem­ist minor­i­ty

There are plen­ty of grounds for opti­mism that the Arab world’s most pop­u­lous coun­try should be able to avoid a descent into wide-scale, fanat­i­cal, reli­gious­ly-inspired vio­lence fol­low­ing the oust­ing of Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si last week.

Hav­ing lived there twice, for sev­er­al years, I have expe­ri­enced first-hand how good-natured, gen­er­ous and most­ly tol­er­ant Egyp­tians can be.

There are extrem­ists in their midst but they are in a minor­i­ty. Their views, how­ev­er nois­i­ly they are broad­cast, do not rep­re­sent the bulk of the pop­u­la­tion.

Egypt has also sur­vived worse crises with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry: the assas­si­na­tion of its pres­i­dent by a jihadist cell in 1981 and an Islamist insur­gency that killed more than 700 peo­ple in the late 1990s, cul­mi­nat­ing in the mas­sacre of 58 for­eign tourists at Lux­or in 1997.

But giv­en the unhap­py con­flu­ence of events and trends sur­fac­ing in Egypt this week, it would be unwise to ignore the seeds of a poten­tial holy war now being sown.

Let’s look at the ingre­di­ents:
‘Mar­tyr­dom’, ban­ners and rhetoric

“We will car­ry out explo­sions, we will shoul­der arms, and noth­ing oth­er than death will dis­suade us from restor­ing Pres­i­dent Mor­si to the palace,” the news­pa­per, al-Hay­at, quot­ed a beard­ed man pro­claim­ing at one of the sit-ins by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers.

Small num­bers of young men are start­ing to be seen in the crowd wear­ing the white shrouds of “mar­tyr­dom”, a the­atri­cal show of how far some say they are pre­pared to go to return an elect­ed Islamist pres­i­dent to pow­er.

Since Mr Mor­si’s removal, some inter­net forums have erupt­ed with angry calls for vengeance against Egyp­t’s mil­i­tary, call­ing it “the ene­my of Islam” and declar­ing police and sol­diers to be tar­gets for attack, as they were in south­ern Egypt dur­ing the insur­gency of the 1990s.

For now, these state­ments are most­ly rhetor­i­cal and aspi­ra­tional — although secu­ri­ty forces have often been attacked in the Sinai.

The threat to main­land Egypt only becomes real when such rhetoric inspires peo­ple to trans­late it into vio­lent action.

Avail­able weapons

Secu­ri­ty in Egypt has dete­ri­o­rat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the over­throw of the dic­ta­to­r­i­al Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak in 2011, but com­pared with Syr­ia, Libya, Iraq and Yemen there are still rel­a­tive­ly few firearms in pri­vate hands.

Yet main­land Egypt is sand­wiched between two land mass­es awash with ille­gal weapons: Libya and the Sinai penin­su­la.

The over­throw of Col Muam­mar Gaddafi’s regime next-door in Libya threw open the doors to his armouries, releas­ing a flood of firearms, many of which have end­ed up with jihadist groups oper­at­ing across the Sahara and in east­ern Libya.

A UN report pub­lished in April con­clud­ed that “weapons used dur­ing the Libyan civ­il war against Muam­mar Gaddafi are being fun­nelled at an alarm­ing rate to oth­er coun­tries in the region”.

It said the weapons ranged from small arms to high-pow­ered explo­sives, mines and portable air-defence sys­tems.

The report said this flow of weapons into Egypt was a threat to its inter­nal secu­ri­ty because many were reach­ing anti-gov­ern­ment insur­gents in Sinai.

...

There’s a new report on the grow­ing ten­sions between Mor­si and the mil­i­tary that led to Mor­si’s July 3rd over­throw. It sounds like there was strong dis­agree­ment between the Mor­si gov­ern­ment and the mil­i­tary over the need to crack­down on for­eign Islamist mil­i­tants oper­at­ing inside Egypt:

Source Of Egypt’s Coup: Mor­si Gave Free Hand To Islam­ic Mil­i­tants, Ordered Mil­i­tary To Stop Crack­downs On Jihadis
HAMZA HENDAWI July 19, 2013, 7:08 AM

CAIRO (AP) — The head of Egypt’s mil­i­tary, Gen. Abdel-Fat­tah el-Sis­si, sat with a polite smile in the front row lis­ten­ing to Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si give a 2 1/2‑hour speech defend­ing his year in office. El-Sis­si even clapped light­ly as the audi­ence of Mor­si sup­port­ers broke into cheers.

It was a cal­cu­lat­ing dis­play of cool by an army gen­er­al plot­ting the over­throw of his com­man­der in chief. Just over a week lat­er, el-Sis­si slid in the knife, announc­ing Morsi’s ouster on state TV on July 3 as troops took the Islamist leader into cus­tody.

The move was the cul­mi­na­tion of near­ly a year of acri­mo­nious rela­tions between el-Sis­si and Egypt’s first freely elect­ed — and first civil­ian — pres­i­dent.

A series of inter­views by The Asso­ci­at­ed Press with defense, secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence offi­cials paint a pic­ture of a pres­i­dent who intend­ed to flex his civil­ian author­i­ty as supreme com­man­der of the armed forces, issu­ing orders to el-Sis­si. In turn, the mil­i­tary chief believed Mor­si was lead­ing the coun­try into tur­moil and repeat­ed­ly chal­lenged him, defy­ing his orders in at least two cas­es.

The degree of their dif­fer­ences sug­gests that the mil­i­tary had been plan­ning for months to take greater con­trol of the polit­i­cal reins in Egypt. When an activist group named Tamar­od began a cam­paign to oust Mor­si, build­ing up to protests by mil­lions nation­wide that began June 30, it appears to have pro­vid­ed a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for el-Sis­si to get rid of the pres­i­dent. The mil­i­tary helped Tamar­od from ear­ly on, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with it through third par­ties, accord­ing to the offi­cials.

The rea­son, the offi­cials said, was because of pro­found pol­i­cy dif­fer­ences with Mor­si. El-Sis­si saw him as dan­ger­ous­ly mis­man­ag­ing a wave of protests ear­ly in the year that saw dozens killed by secu­ri­ty forces. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how­ev­er, the mil­i­tary also wor­ried that Mor­si was giv­ing a free hand to Islam­ic mil­i­tants in the Sinai Penin­su­la, order­ing el-Sis­si to stop crack­downs on jihadis who had killed Egypt­ian sol­diers and were esca­lat­ing a cam­paign of vio­lence.

“I don’t want Mus­lims to shed the blood of fel­low Mus­lims,” Mor­si told el-Sis­si in order­ing a halt to a planned offen­sive in Novem­ber, retired army Gen. Sameh Seif el-Yazl told AP. Seif el-Yazl remains close to the mil­i­tary and some­times appears with el-Sis­si at pub­lic events.

And at root, the mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment has his­tor­i­cal­ly had lit­tle tol­er­ance for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Morsi’s Islamist group. The mil­i­tary lead­er­ship has long held the con­vic­tion that the group puts its region­al Islamist ambi­tions above Egypt’s secu­ri­ty inter­ests.

Its alliances with Gaza’s Hamas rulers and oth­er Islamist groups alarmed the mil­i­tary, which believed Gaza mil­i­tants were involved in Sinai vio­lence. The offi­cials said the mil­i­tary lead­er­ship also believed the Broth­er­hood was try­ing to co-opt com­man­ders to turn against el-Sis­si.

The mil­i­tary has been the most pow­er­ful insti­tu­tion in Egypt since offi­cers staged a 1952 coup that top­pled the monar­chy. Except for Mor­si, the mil­i­tary has since giv­en Egypt all of its pres­i­dents and main­tained a pow­er­ful influ­ence over pol­i­cy. Hav­ing a civil­ian leader over the mil­i­tary was entire­ly new for the coun­try.

The Broth­er­hood accus­es el-Sis­si of turn­ing against them and car­ry­ing out a coup to wreck democ­ra­cy. Since being deposed, Mor­si is detained by the mil­i­tary at an undis­closed Defense Min­istry facil­i­ty.

The Broth­er­hood had believed that el-Sis­si was sym­pa­thet­ic with their Islamist agen­da. A senior Broth­er­hood offi­cial told AP that Mor­si installed el-Sis­si, then the head of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, as defense min­is­ter and head of the armed forces in August 2012 in part because he had been the con­tact man between the Broth­er­hood and the mil­i­tary jun­ta that ruled Egypt for near­ly 17 months after the Feb­ru­ary 2011 fall of auto­crat Hos­ni Mubarak.

El-Sis­si spoke of his dif­fer­ences with Mor­si for the first time Sun­day when he addressed mil­i­tary offi­cers in a meet­ing that was par­tial­ly tele­vised.

“I don’t want to count to you the num­ber of times that the armed forces showed its reser­va­tions on many actions and mea­sures that came as a sur­prise,” el-Sis­si said.

Along with the Broth­er­hood offi­cial, eight cur­rent senior offi­cials in the mil­i­tary, mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and Inte­ri­or Min­istry — includ­ing a top army com­man­der and an offi­cer from el-Sissi’s inner cir­cle — spoke to AP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the events between Mor­si and the mil­i­tary.

They recount­ed tense con­ver­sa­tions and meet­ings with a frus­trat­ed Mor­si fre­quent­ly remind­ing the mil­i­tary chief of his rank as supreme com­man­der.

As ear­ly as April, the army drew up a con­tin­gency plan to assert con­trol of the nation by tak­ing charge of secu­ri­ty if street vio­lence esca­lat­ed out of Morsi’s con­trol, the intel­li­gence and defense offi­cials said.

The plan did not entail remov­ing Mor­si. Instead, it was an expan­sion of the role the army took in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, which by that time had seen months of anti-Mor­si protests that evolved into an out­right revolt. More than 40 pro­test­ers had been killed by police there, as Mor­si pub­licly urged secu­ri­ty forces to deal strong­ly with the protests. The mil­i­tary was deployed in the city, large­ly wel­comed by the res­i­dents, who con­tin­ued protests and strikes.

The mil­i­tary offi­cials said Mor­si had ordered the army to get tougher on pro­test­ers, but el-Sis­si refused, telling him, “The peo­ple have demands.”

About this time, in April and May, el-Sissi’s offi­cials met with com­man­ders of the Repub­li­can Guard, the army branch that pro­tects the pres­i­dent. The com­man­ders told them that Morsi’s aides were try­ing to co-opt Guard offi­cers and senior army offi­cers in a move to replace el-Sis­si, accord­ing to the offi­cial in the mil­i­tary chief’s staff.

...

Seif el-Yazl and the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials said secu­ri­ty in the strate­gic Sinai Penin­su­la bor­der­ing Gaza and Israel was at the heart of the dif­fer­ences. The region plunged into law­less­ness after Mubarak’s ouster, with Islam­ic mil­i­tants gain­ing increas­ing pow­er. Soon after Mor­si took office, mil­i­tants killed 16 Egypt­ian sol­diers in a sin­gle attack and small­er-scale shoot­ings on secu­ri­ty forces mount­ed. In May, six police­men and a sol­dier were kid­napped.

Mor­si in each case vowed action, but he and his aides also spoke pub­licly on the need for restraint and dia­logue. At one point, he pub­licly acknowl­edged hold­ing the mil­i­tary back from a raid to pre­vent civil­ian casu­al­ties, and he also spoke of the need not to harm the kid­nap­pers as well as the cap­tives. Morsi’s ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Salafi allies medi­at­ed with mil­i­tant groups to get them to halt vio­lence, although attacks con­tin­ued.

In Novem­ber, Mor­si ordered el-Sis­si to halt a planned Sinai offen­sive a day before it was to be launched, and el-Sis­si com­plied, Self el-Yazl said. In May, the kid­nap­pers released their cap­tives after a week, appar­ent­ly after medi­a­tion. Mor­si vowed pub­licly to track them down, but the mil­i­tary offi­cials said the pres­i­dent ordered el-Sis­si to pull his forces out of the area where they were believed to be. Again, the mil­i­tary com­plied. The kid­nap­pers have not been caught.

The secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence offi­cials said they report­ed to Mor­si about a ris­ing num­ber of for­eign jihadis, includ­ing Pales­tini­ans, enter­ing Sinai. The mil­i­tary iden­ti­fied Gazan mil­i­tants involved in the killing of the 16 sol­diers, but Mor­si reject­ed a request by el-Sis­si that he ask Hamas to hand them over for tri­al, the offi­cials said. Hamas has repeat­ed­ly denied any role in the killings.

Mor­si instead ordered el-Sis­si to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to dis­cuss the issue. El-Sis­si refused, because of the military’s long­time view of Hamas as a threat, said the offi­cials.

The mil­i­tary saw the pol­i­cy of dia­logue as being root­ed in the Brotherhood’s sym­pa­thy to oth­ers in the Islamist move­ment, even ones engaged in vio­lence. Anoth­er inci­dent deep­ened the military’s belief that Mor­si was more inter­est­ed in a region­al Islamist agen­da than what the army saw as Egypt’s inter­ests.

Dur­ing an April vis­it to Sudan, which has an Islamist gov­ern­ment, Mor­si showed flex­i­bil­i­ty over the fate of a bor­der region claimed by both coun­tries. After Morsi’s return, el-Sis­si sent his chief of staff to Khar­toum to “make it crys­tal clear to the Sudanese that the Egypt­ian armed forces will nev­er sur­ren­der” the ter­ri­to­ry, one defense offi­cial said.

With the deeply unfor­tu­nate vio­lent crack­down on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood now offi­cial­ly under­way in Egypt were see­ing the sig­nif­i­cant pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-led show­down in response that could quick­ly esca­late. So one of the big ques­tions going for­ward is if/when we see a mil­i­tary response by the mil­i­tary wings of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its affil­i­ates, espe­cial­ly those already oper­at­ing in the Sinai. Anoth­er big ques­tion is how suc­cess­ful Israel be at avoid­ing entan­gle­ment:

The Atlantic
How the Israeli Drone Strike in the Sinai Might Back­fire
With nation­al­ism in Egypt ris­ing, Jerusalem’s attempts to hunt ter­ror­ists in Egyp­t’s restive penin­su­la might only draw more mil­i­tants.
David Schenker Aug 13 2013, 11:15 AM ET

In April 1982, Israel with­drew the last of its mil­i­tary forces from Egyp­t’s Sinai Penin­su­la. On Fri­day, for the first time in more than 30 years, Israeli mil­i­tary assets report­ed­ly reen­tered Egypt­ian ter­ri­to­ry. On August 9, an Israeli drone oper­at­ing in Sinai air­space with Egypt­ian approval killed five mil­i­tants prepar­ing to launch a rock­et into Israel.

The proac­tive Israeli action may her­ald a pos­i­tive new dynam­ic in Israeli-Egypt­ian rela­tions. But for the Egypt­ian military–which depends on pop­u­lar good­will to gov­ern post-coup Egypt–enhanced secu­ri­ty coor­di­na­tion with Israel might not be polit­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able. Already, this unprece­dent­ed move has pro­voked a back­lash against the gen­er­als.

Ever since the top­pling of Egyp­t’s long­time Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak in 2011, secu­ri­ty in the Sinai–a region long under­served by Cairo–has become pre­car­i­ous. Dur­ing the rev­o­lu­tion, Egypt­ian intel­li­gence, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been respon­si­ble for secur­ing the Sinai, was rout­ed, leav­ing the task to the mil­i­tary — the coun­try’s sole remain­ing, func­tion­ing nation­al insti­tu­tion.

Unen­thu­si­as­tic about and ill-equipped for the mis­sion, the mil­i­tary did lit­tle and secu­ri­ty in the Sinai rapid­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed. In a mat­ter of months, Al-Qae­da and oth­er dan­ger­ous Islamist ele­ments start­ed to take root among the increas­ing­ly rad­i­cal­ized local Bedouins.

Over the past two years, Egypt­ian and for­eign jihadis–as well as Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists enter­ing the Sinai via tun­nels from Gaza– have launched dozens of attacks in the Penin­su­la. While most of the oper­a­tions have tar­get­ed Egypt­ian police and bor­der guards, on occa­sion sol­diers have been killed and kid­napped and tourists abduct­ed. Mil­i­tants have also assault­ed and snatched troops in the Multi­na­tion­al Force Observers or MFO, which are deployed in the Sinai to mon­i­tor the terms of the Israeli-Egypt­ian peace treaty.

More poten­tial­ly desta­bi­liz­ing, these ter­ror­ists have infil­trat­ed Israel–killing six civil­ians and two sol­diers in one August 2011 operation–and fired rock­ets across the bor­der. Fri­day’s drone strike came just one day after an unprece­dent­ed tem­po­rary clo­sure of Israel’s Eilat air­port. At the time, mil­i­tants in the Sinai were believed to be prepar­ing to tar­get Israeli civil­ian air­craft with rock­ets or shoul­der fired mis­siles pro­cured from post-Qaddafi’s Libya.

...

If those reports about shoul­der-fired mis­sile tar­get­ing Israeli civil­ian air trav­el are accu­rate (who knows but it’s cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble) it’s going to be hard to see how Israel can avoid fur­ther cross-bor­der incur­sions. And even if they aren’t accu­rate it’s still hard to see how the Sinai does­n’t become much more dan­ger­ous.

At the same time, any whiff of al-Qae­da affil­i­ates oper­at­ing on behalf of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and/or the Egypt­ian Salafist might com­plete­ly alien­ate any hope by the Islamists of gar­ner­ing the sup­port of a large swath of the sec­u­lar-lean­ing pub­lic dur­ing this peri­od. The sit­u­a­tion simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­pels the more extreme ele­ments on all sides to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion while being filled with all sorts of pun­ish­ing con­se­quences for any side that appears to be doing to be doing the esca­lat­ing. That sort of dynam­ic often exists but it’s much more high-stakes right now. While the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood could take the path of non-vio­lent resis­tance its his­to­ry sug­gests non-vio­lent Mus­lim Broth­er­hood resis­tance cou­pled with par­al­lel vio­lent resis­tance by its mil­i­tary wing and allies. We’ll see. While this was a real­ly dark day for Egypt it might end up being the answer to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s prayers in terms of gar­ner­ing pub­lic sup­port and return­ing to pow­er. But in order for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to suc­cess­ful­ly lever­age this moment they have to avoid a vio­lent response. And they know this. So we should prob­a­bly expect a peri­od of provo­ca­tions on both sides as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-led coali­tion and mil­i­tary both strive to engage in con­flicts that leave the oth­er side look­ing worse. There are a lot of ques­tions about what hap­pens next but the answer inevitably involves some­thing awful.

Plus, there’s the ques­tion of how long some sort of vio­lent or non-vio­lent stand­off can con­tin­ue because Egypt is still about to run out of cash:

Exclu­sive — West warned Egyp­t’s Sisi to the end: don’t do it
Reuters Paul Tay­lor 8/14/2013

PARIS (Reuters) — West­ern allies warned Egyp­t’s mil­i­tary lead­ers right up to the last minute against using force to crush protest sit-ins by sup­port­ers of the oust­ed Islamist pres­i­dent Mohamed Mur­si, argu­ing they could ill afford the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dam­age.

A vio­lent end to a six-week stand­off between Mur­si’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the armed forces that top­pled Egyp­t’s first freely elect­ed pres­i­dent seemed like­ly once the new author­i­ties declared last week that for­eign medi­a­tion had failed.

...

SIGNAL OF DISPLEASURE

The Unit­ed States took the rare step of sig­nal­ing its dis­plea­sure to a strate­gic Mid­dle East ally, which has a peace treaty with Israel, by halt­ing deliv­ery of four F‑16 air­craft under its mil­i­tary aid pro­gram last month.

Wash­ing­ton also enlist­ed key Arab ally and aid donor Sau­di Ara­bia to tell Sisi he need­ed to find a peace­ful, inclu­sive solu­tion “to retain inter­na­tion­al finan­cial and polit­i­cal sup­port”, a per­son involved in the diplo­mat­ic exchanges said.

Flanked by the for­eign min­is­ters of Qatar, a major financier of Mur­si’s gov­ern­ment, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, a sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary takeover, U.S. and EU nego­tia­tors sought to coax both sides into a series of mutu­al con­fi­dence-build­ing mea­sures. They would have begun with pris­on­er releas­es and led to an hon­or­able exit for Mur­si, an amend­ed con­sti­tu­tion and fresh elec­tions next year.

An Egypt­ian mil­i­tary source said the army did not believe the Broth­er­hood would even­tu­al­ly agree to a deal and felt they were only bluff­ing to gain time. “They tell the medi­a­tors one thing and tell their sup­port­ers anoth­er,” he said.

The diplo­mat­ic source said West­ern medi­a­tors tried to per­suade Sisi that Egypt would suf­fer last­ing polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion and eco­nom­ic hard­ship if there was a blood­bath.

Sisi and the hard­line inte­ri­or min­is­ter, Mohamed Ibrahim, were explic­it­ly warned that ElBa­radei would resign if they chose force over nego­ti­a­tion, rob­bing the mil­i­tary of its prin­ci­pal source of lib­er­al, civil­ian respectabil­i­ty, the source said.

“IGNORING REALITY”

ElBa­radei announced his res­ig­na­tion after Wednes­day’s assault, say­ing he believed a peace­ful path could still have been found and the gov­ern­men­t’s crack­down helped extrem­ists.

“The hard­lin­ers have a remark­able abil­i­ty to ignore real­i­ty,” the source said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the diplo­mat­ic exchanges.

The Egypt­ian mil­i­tary source said pub­lic out­rage after crit­i­cal com­ments by vis­it­ing U.S. sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­sey Gra­ham last week and leaked reports of a pos­si­ble deal between the author­i­ties and the Broth­er­hood had put the army in a tough posi­tion.

The medi­a­tors warned that any move to break up the sit-ins would like­ly cause hun­dreds of deaths and dri­ve many con­ser­v­a­tive Salafi Mus­lim activists, ini­tial­ly sup­port­ive of Mur­si’s over­throw, to join forces with the Broth­er­hood in fierce oppo­si­tion to the author­i­ties.

The eco­nom­ic mes­sage was just as stark. The West­ern source said Egypt had been warned that it could not afford to go on spend­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy at a rate of $1.5 bil­lion a month until its reserves were exhaust­ed.

With tourism and invest­ment dec­i­mat­ed by polit­i­cal tur­moil since the over­throw of Mubarak in 2011, for­eign reserves had shrunk by more than half to less than three months’ import cov­er by the time Mur­si was oust­ed on July 3.

Sau­di Ara­bia, the UAE and Kuwait, relieved to see the back of the Broth­er­hood, seen as a threat to their own monar­chies, imme­di­ate­ly promised $12 bil­lion in aid to the new author­i­ties, to help over­come immi­nent fuel and wheat short­ages.

At its cur­rent burn rate, that mon­ey will keep Egypt going for less than a year.

The source said wis­er heads in the gov­ern­ment real­ized Cairo need­ed broad­er inter­na­tion­al sup­port, includ­ing coop­er­a­tion with the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, to revive the econ­o­my, but such argu­ments cut lit­tle ice with the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Here’s a report from a few days ago that sug­gests the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers were bank­ing on a ‘war of attri­tion’ with the mil­i­tary so the torch­ing of a gov­ern­ment build­ing by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood pro­tes­tors today in response to the vio­lent crack­down yes­ter­day might be a sign of things to come:

Glob­al Post
For defi­ant Mor­si sup­port­ers, nego­ti­a­tions with the mil­i­tary a ‘betray­al’

The height­ened rhetoric is rais­ing con­cerns that Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers will ulti­mate­ly be unable to con­trol the rad­i­cal­iz­ing crowds they deployed to pres­sure the new gov­ern­ment.
Louisa Loveluck August 10, 2013 07:07

CAIRO, Egypt — The thou­sands of sup­port­ers of oust­ed Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si camped out at protests across Cairo are becom­ing increas­ing­ly defi­ant as their stand­off with the new mil­i­tary-backed gov­ern­ment inten­si­fies.

Many of the pro­test­ers stag­ing sit-ins at the two sprawl­ing encamp­ments say they are will­ing to die in order to see Mor­si, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader, rein­stat­ed as the country’s legit­i­mate pres­i­dent.

Even as their Islamist rep­re­sen­ta­tives are report­ed to have at least nom­i­nal­ly entered into nego­ti­a­tions with polit­i­cal foes this week, pro-Mor­si demon­stra­tors say either they do not believe their lead­ers would “betray” them by start­ing talks or that they reject any com­pro­mise out­right.

“When we read of these talks, we don’t believe them,” busi­ness­man Essam Sayed said from the pro-Mor­si demon­stra­tion out­side Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adaweya mosque.

“We trust our lead­ers and know they would­n’t com­pro­mise on our demands. They would­n’t sell us out like that,” he said.

The height­ened rhetoric — fol­low­ing the mas­sacres of rough­ly 140 Mor­si sup­port­ers by secu­ri­ty forces in two sep­a­rate inci­dents in July — is rais­ing con­cerns that Broth­er­hood lead­ers will ulti­mate­ly be unable to con­trol the rad­i­cal­iz­ing crowds they deployed to pres­sure the new gov­ern­ment.

Con­tin­ued threats from offi­cials that police are prepar­ing to dis­perse the protests is also con­tribut­ing to fears Egypt will tum­ble fur­ther into a spi­ral of vio­lence.

...

Not only are emo­tions high, but oth­er more con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups have also joined the protests. The Broth­er­hood is an 80-year-old grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion known for its mobi­liza­tion and dis­ci­pline, but wields lit­tle con­trol over the more extrem­ist fringe.

“The Broth­er­hood could prob­a­bly impose dis­ci­pline on its own mem­bers if push came to shove,” Rabo said. “The prob­lem is that they are unlike­ly to make oth­er groups fall in line.”

One of mem­ber of the hard­line al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya move­ment — a for­mer ter­ror­ist group — says he will “hold his ground” at the demon­stra­tion, even if he has to die.

Oth­er pro­test­ers, the major­i­ty of whom do not belong to Islamist groups like al-Gama’a, also men­tion mar­tyr­dom when speak­ing of their polit­i­cal resolve.

“The mil­i­tary have giv­en us no choice but to offer our sons as mar­tyrs for the cause they stole from us,” said Mona Ismail Emad, an engi­neer and Broth­er­hood mem­ber.

Emad’s daugh­ters clam­ber around her as she speaks, play­ful­ly fan­ning their elders with a poster of the oust­ed pres­i­dent.

In a new report, the Brus­sels-based Inter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Group says the Broth­er­hood is “clos­ing ranks [and] bank­ing on a war of attri­tion.”

Nego­ti­a­tions indeed made lit­tle head­way. But if the two sides do reach an agree­ment, the trust that this diverse group of Islamists has put in their lead­ers is like­ly to be deeply dam­aged.

“Even if the Broth­er­hood struck a deal and told us to go home, they couldn’t con­trol what hap­pens here,” Sayed, the pro-Mor­si busi­ness­man, said. “Lots of oth­er par­ties have joined our num­ber and we’ve all agreed on our com­mon goals. Those are the only terms we’ll con­sid­er.”

If the above report is accu­rate it’s hard to see how the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s base is not going to allow its lead­ers to nego­ti­ate with the mil­i­tary at this point. And the mil­i­tary appears unlike­ly to back down any time soon. So the calls for an inter­na­tion­al res­o­lu­tion are like­ly to grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly.