Assessing Egyptian Public Support for Security Crackdown in the Sinai

Assessing Egyptian Public Support for Security Crackdown in the Sinai
Author: United States United States Army War College
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2015-03-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781511487849

Egypt has a serious security threat emanating from the Sinai Peninsula. Over the past several years, but especially since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi in early-July 2013, the level of terrorist activity and violence against Egyp-tian security forces has escalated to high-levels. The violence threatens Egypt's stability and its ability to get its troubled economy to rebound, particularly over such important economic engines as tourism and for-eign investment. Newly elected Egyptian President (and former Field Marshal) Abdel Fatah al-Sissi stated in his inaugural speech that, as president, stamp-ing out terrorism is his first priority.1 For the United States, the security problem in the Sinai has important ramifications as well. It threatens the stability of the most populous country in the Middle East region-a linchpin state in the area; it threatens the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; it has the potential of a spill-over effect to threaten the vital Suez Canal waterway, upon which U.S. military ships (as well as merchant ships) pass from the Mediterranean to eastern Africa, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf.2

Assessing Egyptian Public Support for Security Crackdowns in the Sinai

Assessing Egyptian Public Support for Security Crackdowns in the Sinai
Author: Gregory Aftandilian
Publisher: Department of the Army
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2015-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781584876632

This monograph examines the terrorist groups in Egypt emanating from the Sinai and assesses the level of Egyptian public support for the government's security crackdown. These terrorist groups have not only targeted Egyptian security personnel and foreign tourists in the Sinai Peninsula but have attacked government installations and personnel in the Egyptian mainland. Because most Egyptians desire stability, want terrorism to end, and want their moribund economy to grow, and because they have few family ties to the Bedouin inhabitants of the Sinai, they have given the government wide berth to carry out a heavy-handed crackdown there. However, some of Egypt's draconian security policies (such as punishing whole Bedouin villages) can be counterproductive, often making more terrorist recruits out of disaffected Bedouin youth than would otherwise be the case. The monograph recommends enhanced U.S. counterterrorism assistance to the Egyptian military, with specialized courses for Egyptian military officers attending professional military education institutions in the United States and the training of whole Egyptian counterterrorism units either in the United States or in a friendly Arab country. The monograph also recommends the resumption of a U.S.-Egyptian strategic dialogue, to include U.S. Army officers and their Egyptian counterparts, where effective counterterrorism policies can be discussed frankly in a closed-door setting. In addition, the monograph advocates for new and enhanced social and economic policies in the Sinai that would aim to dissuade Bedouin youth from assisting and joining the terrorist groups. These policies would involve recruiting properly vetted Bedouin youth into the local police forces, and a major jobs training program, with U.S. financial and administrative support, for these youth to prepare them for eventual employment in tourism and other legitimate economic sectors. Audience: This text may appeal to policymakers, peace advocates, diplomacy negotiators, military officers, especially Army officers and soldiers, and other strategic personnel that may be influential with counterterrorism discussions to combat the Egyptian government against the Sinai terrorist organizations. This text may provide helpful background guidance to students in graduate international relations, military science, and national security degree programs for Arab country terrorist discussions within classes and possibly as a research paper topic. Related products: Can Egypt Lead the Arab World Again?: Assessing Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Policy can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01253-9 Egypt resources collection can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/international-foreign-affairs/middle-east/egypt

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States
Author: Clarence J. Bouchat
Publisher: Army War College Press
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The political economy problems of Nigeria, the root cause for ethnic, religious, political and economic strife, can be in part addressed indirectly through focused contributions by the U.S. military, especially if regionally aligned units are more thoroughly employed.

Street Gangs

Street Gangs
Author: Max G. Manwaring
Publisher:
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2005
Genre: Electronic government information
ISBN:

The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786252961

Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Armed groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency

Armed groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Author:
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 506
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780160866999

Product Description: Discussion of armed groups which are considered to include classic insurgents, terrorists, guerrillas, militias, police agencies, criminal organizations, war-lords, privatized military organizations, mercenaries, pirates, drug cartels, apocalyptic religious extremists, orchestrated rioters and mobs, and tribal factions. To study armed groups use of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, theology, and economics are traditional areas of research. The book also delves into matters of ethics, technology, intelligence, education, the law, diplomacy, military science, and even mythology. The book is divided into five sections: History and armed groups, Present context and environment, Religion and inspiration, thinking differently about armed groups, the shpae of things to come.

Sinai

Sinai
Author: Nicolas Pelham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2012
Genre: Egypt
ISBN: 9781862032729

This report examines the attempts by the governments of Egypt, Israel and Gaza to protect what they view as their vital security and commercial interests, alternately perceiving Sinai as both a buffer against external predators and a weak unstable territory ripe for expanding their respective spheres of influence. Without a new political contract balancing the new power and trade relationships in the peninsula, Sinai's continued fragility could render it a proxy battleground for the surrounding powers. The report assesses the potential scenarios if deep-seated tensions remain unaddressed. The report concludes with a series of recommendations designed to forestall spiraling instability, not least by upholding the rights and aspirations of Sinai's indigenous people, and enhanced security coordination between the governments of Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip.

War, Will, and Warlords

War, Will, and Warlords
Author:
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 292
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780160915574

Compares the reasons for and the responses to the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan since October 2001. Also examines the lack of security and the support of insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1970s that explain the rise of the Pakistan-supported Taliban. Explores the border tribal areas between the two countries and how they influence regional stability and U.S. security. Explains the implications of what happened during this 10-year period to provide candid insights on the prospects and risks associated with bringing a durable stability to this area of the world.

Counter-terrorism and civil society

Counter-terrorism and civil society
Author: Scott N. Romaniuk
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526157918

This book examines the intersection between national and international counter-terrorism policies and civil society in numerous national and regional contexts. The 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001 led to new waves of scholarship on the proliferation of terrorism and efforts to combat international terrorist groups, organizations, and networks. Civil society organisations have been accused of serving as ideological grounds for the recruitment of potential terrorists and a channel for terrorist financing. Consequently, states around the world have established new ranges of counter-terrorism measures that target the operations of civil society organisations exclusively. Security practices by states have become a common trend and have assisted in the establishment of ‘best practices’ among non-liberal democratic or authoritarian states, and are deeply entrenched in their security infrastructures. In developing or newly democratized states - those deemed democratically weak or fragile - these exceptional securities measures are used as a cover for repressing opposition groups, considered by these states as threats to their national security and political power apparatuses. This timely volume provides a detailed examination of the interplay of counter-terrorism and civil society, offering a critical discussion of the enforcement of global security measures by governments around the world.