11/17/14 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest is a friend, Adam Morrow.
Typically, while he's a journalist in Cairo, Egypt, when he writes, it's for IPSnews.net most of the time, I think.
Welcome back to the show, Adam.
How are you doing?
Good.
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
Very happy to have you back on the show.
And just wondering, hoping I could get an update from you about what all is going on in Egypt these days.
I guess the biggest headline over here is that there's a group in Sinai that has supposedly declared their loyalty to the caliphate.
What do you know about that?
Anything?
Must be big headlines there.
Yeah.
Terrorism.
Terrorism is the big word of the day right now.
I guess it was about three weeks ago.
There was the largest ever attack or the deadliest attack on security personnel since Morsi's ouster about a year and a half ago.
Happened in Sinai, not too far away from Rafah, which is the border of Gaza.
And I think 31 or 32 Egyptian soldiers were killed and an equal number were badly injured.
And it was perpetrated by unknown militants.
As usual, it's extremely difficult to sort of get to the bottom of what's going on because the only information comes through the filter of the government.
But of course, in line with what the government has done in the past, they were quick to point the finger at Hamas and Gaza-based militants.
So they've stepped up a lot of the border security.
They closed the border completely and very little is going, as usual, very little is going through the border at this point.
Now, why is Sinai so much different than the rest of, you know, whenever you talk about it, it's like a kind of a separate entire, I mean, obviously, it's, you know, if you look at it geographically, it is separate.
But why is it so different, I mean, than the way the rest of Egypt is living right now?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
And there's always been a differentiation between mainland Egypt and Sinai.
There's always sort of a security element that was slightly different.
It's like our Puerto Rico or something.
Well, I mean, it is part of Egypt.
I mean, it's not a separate political entity from Egypt or anything like that.
But something to bear in mind also was the fact that it was captured.
It was captured by Israel in 1967 and only went back to Egyptian, only went back to Egypt again in 79, 80, 81.
So it's like the early 80s, I think, or the mid-80s, I think it was all finally handed back.
So in that regard.
But it never was settled by Israeli Jews, though, right?
It was still the local inhabitants kept the land all that time or not?
Some settlements went up and were subsequently dismantled when it was handed back.
But for the most part, it's, yeah, it's inhabited by Bedouin tribesmen.
And that's another thing that makes it different is the fact that it's a tribal, it's extremely tribal as opposed to mainland Egypt, which is more settled because of the Nile and because of the cities.
It seems like you always seem to refer to it like it's mostly kind of a news black hole as well.
Like no one really knows what the hell's going on in Sinai.
Yeah, that's and that's never been more the case until recently, the last year when like journalists can't get access to it and that sort of thing.
And you pretty much have to just try to take the government's word for it for whatever they say is going on out there.
Jazeera has managed to get in and managed to get some footage out.
I mean, I don't know if you're following how closely you're following it, but they're doing major, major demolitions on the border.
They're basically creating a buffer zone between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza.
They're creating a buffer zone, which has entailed the destruction of a lot of like a lot of local homes and that sort of thing.
It's quite a big deal.
OK, now explain that for a second now about that's the southern border of the of the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip there in the Rafah border crossing.
And so but it's it's the southern border of Gaza is not controlled by Israel's control by Egypt.
And now.
So.
So tell us about the demolitions.
What all have they destroyed there?
Well, I couldn't give you exact statistics, but numbers are definitely lots of money.
I'm hearing something like dozens, maybe hundreds of homes are being destroyed.
Again, it's very, very difficult to to get an exact number on it.
But like all the neighborhoods around there, basically.
And then the excuses.
People are.
Yeah.
People are being forced to leave the area.
Like I can't remember like a 500 meter.
It might be more than that.
It might be a one meter or more, a one kilometer or more buffer zone.
Now, so this is huge, right?
Because I think, you know, it's basically been Adam, right?
That it's you know, it's a siege, but there's a little bit of of porousness to the Egyptian side of the border so that the siege is not total.
And, you know, people can still do some trading.
But this is an attempt to really completely eliminate that, to get rid of of any any structure where a tunnel could come up underneath the roof where no one could see it.
Anywhere around there.
Right, right.
This is all sort of stuff that Mubarak always wanted to do, but didn't have the popular backing to sort of get away with because of the you know, because because the Egyptians in general were still very powerful, very sympathetic with the Palestinians and with Gaza.
This is something he always wanted to do, but sort of ran into a lot of a lot of resistance for.
And now Sisi, because of after the coup and everything else, sort of with the momentum that he's got and sort of the anti-brotherhood slash anti-Hamas, you know, sentiment that the media has managed to push out.
He's now taking advantage of the of the atmosphere to like really go in there and to final once and for all to like really, really make sure that that that border is completely sealed.
But that that that siege has become airtight, which is really unfortunate because there's nothing really linking.
I mean, nobody's been produced.
Nobody's been presented with any real real evidence.
But the Hamas or anybody from Gaza was behind this.
You know, this is just this is typical, though.
This is like you'll have you'll have these explosions.
They'll go off and finally and a bunch of military personnel will get killed.
And the media is usually spearheaded by the media who are who will quote these unnamed security sources will immediately start pointing the finger at Gaza, a finger at Gaza without any without any evidence.
And they'll start taking these draconian security measures and start close.
They'll close the border and they'll know they'll start destroying tunnels.
They'll start.
And now they're they're actually making a buffer zone between them without ever really presenting any evidence.
And again, Hamas stresses again and again and again that they didn't do.
They weren't responsible for this and that they have.
And it's not within their interest to, you know, to do it, which is the case.
I mean, it's totally against their interest because, I mean, they want the border to be open.
They want they want relations with Egypt to be good.
They're desperate to have good relations with Egypt.
So they're sort of stuck in this.
But I mean, to no avail, you know, their their objections, you know, their their protestations are to no avail.
And Egypt just keeps going.
And like you said, basically cements the siege, basically completes the siege.
Well, and I mean, who knows the future and exactly how the Israelis are counting the calories these days.
But I mean, this could really hit the people of Gaza hard.
Do you have any kind of ballpark?
Have you heard any sort of numbers of how many millions of dollars worth of food and vital goods cross that border through those tunnels or or, you know, were able to up until very recently here?
There were starting to come in in dribs and drabs.
The thing they need more than anything is cement so they can rebuild the destroyed territory, which has been destroyed now two times.
But from what I can tell right now, I mean, nothing's going through, you know, the Egyptian, the Egyptian, the Raha borders is closed.
And it's what's interesting to note is that in the ceasefire, the ceasefire deal that was signed on August 26th, the conclusion of this last devastating onslaught that Israel launched on Gaza.
If you'll notice, the if you'll notice, the agreement was to open Gaza's borders with Israel, not either.
Well, that wasn't even one of the one of those stipulations in the ceasefire was to open Rafah.
Because I think I kind of get the impression that Hamas and whoever's running the show in Gaza have sort of given up on the idea of ever opening.
They sort of get they know that under current circumstances, under the current regime in Egypt, they're never going to, you know, they're never going to get any sympathy.
So I think they've sort of given up on even even trying to have that one opened.
It's bad.
It's grim.
The Israelis haven't opened up, haven't complied yet and haven't opened up any of their borders.
So it's sort of still a status quo.
It's sort of gone back to the status quo despite the ceasefire.
Right.
Yeah.
And of course, the the status quo was bad enough, but at least there was some kind of look in the other way and trade allowed through there.
And so you could see why, you know, it's not good enough at all.
Not by a quarter, but might as well, you know, settle.
It's better than nothing.
And then now they take it all away.
Now it's nothing, you know, because they're going to go ahead and pull those flat, put a parking lot over anywhere where a tunnel could could possibly open up.
And some goods could be traded through there.
That's madness.
I don't know if HRW or Amnesty are even reporting on this at all.
I guess they don't care about things like that.
Anyway, hang tight.
It's the great Adam Morrow on the phone live from Cairo, Egypt.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm on the phone with Adam Morrow.
He lives in Cairo.
And, you know, I've been interviewing Adam since 2011 when the Arab Spring started.
And he was writing for Interpress Service then.
And I've been interviewing him this whole time.
In short recap, they deposed the American backed fascist sock puppet dictator.
And they held some democratic elections.
And the Muslim Brotherhood won majorities in the parliament and the presidency.
And so the Americans and the Israelis in league with the Saudis and the military canceled the elections.
And they overthrew the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, put them all in jail, murdered more than a thousand of their supporters in the street.
And the next Mubarak, the next mustache in line, as Greg Palast would say, climbed up to the top.
Field Marshal al-Sisi.
And he's the new fascist military dictator of Egypt under American, Israeli and Saudi auspices there.
And so that gets us pretty much caught up to current day here in the fall of 2014 now.
And so I'm interested to know about how the Muslim Brotherhood is being treated.
We talked about how some trade across the Rafah crossing there, the black market trade was tolerated anyway.
Same thing with the Muslim Brotherhood.
They were illegal, but they were tolerated under Mubarak.
Now they're illegal and no longer tolerated in any sense.
Is that correct?
Yeah, yeah, they've been completely banned.
I think they were declared basically in December, last December, almost a year ago, you had another one of these attacks on a police station with 14 or 15 guys getting killed, I think.
And then that attack was subsequently, the responsibility for it was subsequently adopted by a group called Ansar Bayt al-Muqtas, which is the one that has since declared its allegiance to ISIS, supposedly.
They came out and basically claimed responsibility for it.
And then even though this other shadowy group claimed responsibility for the attack, the government still nevertheless declared the Muslim Brotherhood, blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and declared them a terrorist organization.
Following suit, I think Saudi Arabia had preceded them in that.
I think Saudi Arabia had done that shortly before or did it shortly afterwards.
And ever since, the Brotherhood has been completely prescribed.
And members are liable to go to jail, I guess.
A lot of them went to Turkey, which remains an ally, which had been, if you remember, had been an ally of the Morsi government.
Also, a lot of them have since gone to Istanbul.
And a lot of them have gone to Qatar.
Qatar was also a big supporter of Morsi, if you remember.
And it's interesting because you know that under pressure from the Saudis, the British government recently commissioned a report to look into the Brotherhood and determine whether or not it was actually a terrorist organization or not.
And I think the findings, I think they recently sort of finally issued their findings, which were subject to tremendous political pressure.
But I think they finally came out and said, look, we have no evidence that this group is terrorist.
Their activities have been peaceful and entirely political for the past several decades.
They do charity work and that sort of thing and social stuff.
But aside from that, they couldn't come up with any evidence to the chagrin of Saudi, which is very much trying to villainize them and make them.
And basically what the effort right now is to try to tie them with ISIS.
We talked about this last time a little bit.
The idea now is to basically group all of these so-called Islamist groups under the same umbrella so that even if you've got legitimate ones that are entirely political like the Muslim Brotherhood, you can just, all of those are sort of being lumped into this one master Islamist conspiracy.
Just as Netanyahu does when he talks about Hamas, right?
Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Iran.
Exactly.
Oh, exactly.
Iran is ISIS and ISIS is the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Hezbollah and al-Qaeda and they're all sort of part of this same global conspiracy.
Even though everything you just said, those groups all hate each other's guts.
But anyway.
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
I mean, it makes it completely illogical.
We saw the same sort of crazy stuff in the 18 days of the uprising in 2011 when the regime was struggling, the Mubarak regime was struggling to sort of stay in power.
The public media was pushing out, the state media was pushing out all this stuff about how it was this one global conspiracy involving Iran and Hezbollah and al-Qaeda and Hamas and the United States and Turkey and Qatar.
I mean, virtually everybody is out to get Egypt under this sort of interesting worldview that the media adopts here.
Well now, so here's the thing.
And this is something that we were just talking about with Eric Margulies about the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
And that is that they're old.
And so they're out of the fight.
And so, you know, it's a whole new generation now.
Hell, skip a few.
These guys are all 20-year-olds that are making their own decisions now.
And in either of these countries now, the Brotherhood would be much more marginal groups.
And it seems like along the lines of my half-joking theory that Bush and Obama both work for bin Laden and that they actually have the secret mission of accomplishing all of his goals, they're doing exactly what Zawahiri said that they would do.
In fact, I had missed this, only found it recently, where Zawahiri in the summer of 2011, I think it was the summer of 2011, right after Morsi was elected, Zawahiri put out a podcast saying, you just watch, he's going to be deposed.
They're going to cancel the results of the elections.
The Americans and the Israelis will never let Islamists be elected to power there.
Just watch, just like I always said.
And then that's exactly what happened.
And it seemed like, you know, their whole plan was just proving him right, which brings up the question, this is why he split from the Muslim Brotherhood himself, because they're a do-nothing organization when he wants a war.
And I just wonder how many 20-year-olds in Egypt are going to start agreeing with him here pretty quick, if they haven't already.
It's a self-fulfilling thing.
You can imagine if you are of an Islamist frame of mind to see what happened with the revolution and then to see the Muslim Brotherhood successfully manage to capture half of parliament and the presidency and the Shura Council and get to successfully pass a constitution and a referendum, to see all of these gains after 30, 40, 50 years of persecution, to see all those incredible gains just sort of undone overnight in a very undemocratic fashion.
I mean, you can imagine.
And then to see all of their friends either killed or locked up, and their sisters imprisoned and, you know, really nasty shit that you're hearing coming out of Egyptian prisons now, the nastiest stuff you can possibly imagine.
You can imagine what the young person would conclude in terms of democracy and how useful the ballot box is at the end of the day, because there was already this sense that Islamists weren't allowed to win at the ballot box.
Even before the coup, there was already this sort of history of democratically elected Islamist governments being overthrown.
Like you had the whole Algeria thing, which led to 10 years of horrible slaughter.
And then you had Hamas sweeping legislative elections in 2006.
And what's interesting, and I think a lot of people have overlooked this, is what's kind of interesting is a comparison between what happened in Gaza in 2007 with Hamas winning their election one year earlier and what just happened in Egypt recently.
Because a similar sort of thing, albeit unsuccessful, happened in Gaza exactly one year after Hamas won the election.
There was also a coup attempt, or there was an abortive coup attempt.
There was about to be a coup attempt by Dehlan and his men and Fatah.
And Hamas actually found out about it before it happened and staged a counter-coup.
And that's what happened in 2007, and that's why they ended up in possession of the entire Gaza Strip, because they got wind of this looming push that was about to be hatched against them.
So it's very similar to what happened in Egypt.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to weather the storm, whereas Hamas was ready for it in 2007.
Hamas was ready, and they militarily drove Fatah out of the Strip, and they've maintained control of it ever since.
Yeah, and that one sounds crazy, but everybody can read David Rose and Vanity Fair.
The Gaza bombshell, all about that.
Elliot Abrams arranged the whole thing.
And as you're saying, after winning the election, they still were being conciliatory and had a coalition government with Fatah.
They hadn't seized control of the entire Gaza Strip until this Elliot Abrams plot blew up in everybody's face.
Right, right.
It's good that you point that out, because what I've noticed is a lot of people who cover the Middle East and a lot of people who sort of should know about that, their understanding of exactly what happened in 2007 in Gaza is very, people, it sort of happened, and there's not a lot of, you know, people don't really understand exactly what happened there.
But I think it's interesting in retrospect to see how similar what happened was in Egypt, where you had the Islamists basically win an election, and then exactly one year later, there's sort of this counter-push to try to dislodge them, which in the case of Egypt was successful, as you know.
The same thing happened in Tunisia, I think, to a certain degree.
There was a big, big push to get Nahda, to knock Nahda out of the equation.
And I think it failed only because Nahda was so conciliatory, was much more conciliatory than the Brotherhood was here, and bent over backwards, from what I understand.
So the Americans didn't have to kill him.
They just pushed him.
That's nice.
I'm sorry.
We're out of time.
Thanks so much, Adam.
You're great, man.
Hey, thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Hope to see you soon.
Yeah, yeah.
That's Adam Morrow, y'all, live from Cairo, Egypt.
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