08/06/12 – Adam Morrow – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website where I keep all the archives of the interviews from this show.
Actually, dissentradio.com/LRN for the full show archives, if you're into that kind of thing.
Anyway, ScottHorton.org.
Next guest on the show is Adam Mora from Interpress Service reporting from Cairo, Egypt.
Welcome back.
How are you doing?
Good, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us on the show again today.
Sure.
Good.
Yeah.
16 Egyptian police, several militants killed in Sinai attack.
What happened?
What's going on?
OK.
Well, as usual, when anything happens in the Sinai Peninsula, you know, the precise details are still sort of coming into us.
You know, it's Sinai is different from the rest of Egypt.
It has a whole different security system, according to the Camp David peace agreement with Israel.
Egypt is not allowed to deploy its military in certain areas of Sinai Peninsula close to the borders.
So Sinai has always traditionally sort of been its own thing.
It's different from mainland Egypt.
And news from there is always sort of shrouded in conflicting reports and strange circumstances.
And this latest incident is no exception.
So people are still trying to suss out exactly what happened there last night.
What we're hearing, according to initial reports, which I'm sure you're probably seeing in the news media as well, is that around 7 o'clock p.m., which is when the Egyptians who are Muslims were breaking the traditional Ramadan fast, they were attacked by a group of unknown assailants.
Seventeen of them were killed.
And then these same assailants apparently managed to commandeer two army vehicles, one or two of which they then attempted to drive across the Israeli border in, or those vehicles were destroyed by the Israeli military.
So that's what we know now.
That story could change.
Again, there are conflicting reports.
There are certain things that don't really make sense in terms of how a group would have been able to attack a bunch of military guys when the security is so tight in the border area.
So that's the official story that we have right now.
Like I said, that narrative might change as more information comes.
But as it stands right now, that's what we know.
Now, is there much competing speculation about who might have to gain in this situation?
Well, definitely.
That is the number one question.
That's the question that everybody should be asking themselves, is who exactly would benefit.
As is the case when any sort of major terrorist event like this happens, people should immediately ask themselves who the beneficiaries of such an event would be.
And in this case, I mean, you know the current domestic situation in Egypt with the new president trying to get a cabinet together, trying to get a government together under incredible pressure from all of his detractors and his critics.
So the question begs itself, I mean, do Islamist groups, be they the Muslim Brotherhood, be they the Salafists, or be they these harder core groups that are supposed to be existing out there, some of which are said to exist in Sinai, what would they really have to gain from killing 16, or say it looks like the death toll has risen today to 17, but what would they have to gain from attacking a bunch of border guards?
I mean, their motives remain unknown until now.
The one interesting point that people should bear in mind, though, is, and we spoke about this last time, is that Egypt was just on the verge of starting to open the Rafah border crossing to Gaza.
They had already made some tentative steps, as we mentioned last time, they had eased travel restrictions on passengers, they hadn't opened the border up to full commercial traffic yet, but they were certainly taking some tentative steps toward lifting the siege.
And that, of course, now is all going to be put on hold.
The future of the, you know, the whole, the entire future of the border reopening is now sort of been put in limbo because of this new security, this new security challenge.
Are they already saying that?
The politicians there?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, the border has definitely been closed.
The border has been closed for the time being, you know, for, for, you know, for an indefinite period and also the Karim Abu Salem cross, which is another crossing, which is actually a tripartite crossing between Egypt, Israel and, and Gaza has also been shut down.
So right now traffic is all traffic has come to a halt.
So now, instead of just, you know, imagining all the different factions inside Egypt that might want to see the new president weakened by something like this happening on his watch, whatever.
Now we have to add the Israelis to the list too, as, as possible.
Well bear in mind also that the new president Mohammed Morsi has issued, issued a 100 day plan in which he sort of promised the electorate that he would solve a number of serious chronic issues from which Egypt has been suffering.
One of which is the lack of domestic security, because if you remember at the height of last year's uprising, police were withdrawn nationwide and they were replaced with military, military units, which have been largely unable to, I mean, I personally think the reports about rising crime and that sort of thing are a bit overblown.
But at the same time, there's, there's no doubt that, that there is definitely a security vacuum and that's, that's, that's certainly the case in the Sinai Peninsula, which has always suffered from, like I said, which has always sort of been its own, its own entity in terms of security.
So he's under a lot of pressure to deliver.
He's under pressure, a lot of under, under a lot of pressure to deliver on these promises, one of which is the restoration of security.
And now, of course, this, this represents a huge blow to that, to, you know, to his efforts to try to, to try to get things under control.
There's also the issue of the Camp David Peace Agreement.
This has also come to the fore as well, because as you know, again, we've talked about this in the past.
Under the terms of the Camp David Peace Treaty, Egypt is very sorely limited in terms of, in terms of the military deployments it can make in the Sinai Peninsula.
So this has brought this question back to the public debate.
A lot of different groups from across the political spectrum, you know, there's a lot of grandstanding also that's going along now.
All parties and all political figures are sort of lining up to condemn the attack and to talk about avenging the blood of the martyrs and all of this sort of stuff.
And several of them are talking about, about we have to make revisions to the terms of Camp David in order to allow us to deploy militarily.
But again, the terms of Camp David, they can't do that without Israeli permission.
This has always, this has been a long festering issue between the two countries.
But this latest incident is certainly, it's certainly sure to bring the whole issue to the fore.
The Brotherhood has repeatedly said that they would in some time in the future, they might put the, put the peace treaty as it currently stands before some kind of popular referendum.
So we might hear more about that in the future.
But this again, this is still, we're still in the sort of, you know, it just happened less than 24 hours or just about 24 hours ago now.
So things are still uncertain.
Again, you've got a lot of grandstanding.
A lot of people are taking the opportunity to prove their, you know, to prove their patriotic credentials by, by talking about, by talking about revising Camp David.
Yeah, well, I don't know, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing that happen, but I just sure hope they tread carefully.
Uh, yeah, it's a very, it's an extremely touchy issue, issue, it's of extreme sensitivity.
And when, whether the Israelis would allow it, I mean, I, I, I think they did allow Egypt to bolster its security presence in the region in 2007.
That was after Hamas took over the strip, if you recall, took over the strip from, they, they did, the Israelis did give their permission to allow Egypt to, to, to, to send, to deploy an additional 750 border, border guards to the area.
But that was, but that was an exception.
I think that was the only time they sort of allowed such an exception.
And again, that was only because Hamas had just taken over the Gaza Strip.
You know, I saw this thing, it was funny, I forgot where it was passing around, but someone asked a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood about Michelle Bachmann's recycled Frank Gaffney accusations that they had infiltrated the government at the highest levels in Washington, D.C.
And his answer was, we can't even infiltrate the Egyptian government, how are we going to take over the American one?
I thought that was pretty funny.
But so then that leads me to a question, actually, which is, you know, what did the, what's your sense of the public opinion of Morsi so far?
I've kind of read quite a few things where people say they just really don't know what to make of the guy or something.
Right, right.
Well, bear in mind also that Morsi's critics from the left and from, from the more liberal camps in Egypt have a much louder voice than do his, than do his supporters, which has always traditionally been the case, mainly because the Brotherhood just simply was, it was a banned organization under Mubarak and wasn't allowed to print any kind of newspaper.
And secondly, because generally here in Egypt, all of the, all of the big media institutions and large sort of media empires that have been, that have been built by, by various people all tend to be of the same political orientation, which is very, very liberal and very anti-Islamist.
I'm sorry, hold, hold it right there.
I'm, of course, ask you a big complicated question right before the break.
It's Adam Morrow from Interpress Service, IPSnews.net.
He's reporting from Cairo.
All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
ScottHorton.org is the website.
Talking with Adam Morrow, reporting from Cairo for InterpressService, IPSnews.net.
And we're talking about this militant raid on the Sinai Peninsula and who knows what to make of it.
And then- Hey, Scott, just, just, just to put things into context a little bit though, I just wanted to say really quickly, we, we've had, you know, Sinai has been the home to, to several you know, quote-unquote terrorist events over the course of the last decade.
If you remember, there was something in 2004, in the summer of 2005, and in the summer of 2006, all three of those summers saw quite serious attacks on tourist resorts.
If you remember that, I think Dahab and, and Sharm, there was something in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Right.
And there might've been something else in, in, in another one of these, you know, one of these tourist spots in, in the, in the peninsula.
Despite the fact that the Mubarak regime rounded up and detained for years, hundreds, if not thousands of, of Bedouin locals, those, those attacks were never solved.
I just wanted to say, also, you had some stuff that's happened since the revolution.
You had a major attack on a police station that happened maybe nine or 10 months ago, and which was widely attributed to, to, you know, these, these militant Islamist groups.
But I just wanted to point out that, that none of these things were ever, were ever solved.
The culprits of these were, I mean, they, they might've been, they might've been Islamist groups, but the point is that the culprits of these things were, were, were never really found.
So, so these things, these things that happen in, in Sinai every now and then have a history of, of sort of never being solved.
You know, the true assailants never, never are really, are ever, ever, ever really brought to brook.
You, you also had the multiple attacks on the, on the pipe carrying natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan.
Now that pipeline has been attacked something like 15 or 16 separate times since last year's revolution, which was about a year and a half ago now.
And the perpetrators of those attacks have also have never been found.
So we're, we're sort of dealing with an area in which, you know, in which conflicting reports and, and, and strange circumstances are, are kind of, you know, are kind of, are, are typical.
Well, you know, when it comes to attacks on the pipeline, one could imagine hundreds of different groups who would like to do something like that if they could get away with it.
Right.
Oh yeah, definitely.
There have even been, when you're talking about the bombing of the resort, that's a altogether different project.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
No, that, that like lots of innocent tourists got killed and stuff, but in those attacks, in terms of the bombings, the, the, the attacks on the pipelines, which would, which would actually stop the halt of natural gas to, to both Egypt and Jordan temporarily.
What was I going to say about those?
Sorry, Scott, it slips my mind exactly what I was, oh yeah, I was going to say that even prominent political personalities in Egypt, I mean, well-known political personalities would actually praise those attacks when they, like you were saying those that, you know, it's easy to imagine just because of the, you know, the, the, the, you know, the animosity towards Israel.
It's easy to imagine lots of different groups having done those.
Right.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, anyway, yeah, I can see what you're saying though.
I mean, it's the Sinai Peninsula is basically just desert, so not a lot of people live there and there's not a lot of centers of any kind of communication or anything that really goes on there.
Right.
It's very sparsely populated.
You've got Sharm el-Sheikh, which is a big, you know, which is a big tourist hub.
You have these international conventions and conferences that happen there on a regular basis.
And then you have a bunch of smaller tourist cities that are, that are, that are devoted largely to, almost exclusively to tourism.
And then besides that, you've got a couple hundred thousand, I imagine, Bedouin tribesmen who live out there who have been largely disconnected.
They are, they've been, they've been historically disenfranchised in terms of politics.
There's been, there was very little development of the peninsula over the, over the 30 years of the Mubarak regime.
And there was actually a lot of, a lot of frustration and anger on the part of the Bedouin out there towards the, towards the central government in Cairo, because, just for those, for those very reasons, because, because of the lack of development, because of the political marginalization.
So and then, and then when, when, when those bombings occurred in 04, 05 and 06, you then had hundreds, possibly thousands of them rounded up, which just threw, threw basically fuel on the fire and just, just increased the tension between, between the tribesmen out there and the central government.
But of course, you have a whole new dynamic now that the revolution has happened, now that you have an Islamist president in the place, a freely elected Islamist president in the place of Mubarak.
I mean, I imagine that the dynamic would, would, would change.
Unfortunately, I don't really know exactly what Morsi's plan is in terms of the Bedouin.
I'm sure he has one.
I'm sure it's part of his political program, is to ease the political marginalization of the Bedouin, make them sort of feel more part of the country.
And to, I know he's promised to increase development and investment in the Sinai Peninsula.
So the dynamic with the tribesmen and the, and the government, I'm sure has, is a whole new dynamic right now, but I, I couldn't really tell you, it's too early to say exactly what it is.
All right.
Now, right before the break, I asked you, so what Egyptians think of their new president?
And so a bit overly broad subject to bring up.
But so you started, I think, with the liberals and leftists and the socialists and the labor union types who made up much of the Tahrir Square protest at the dawn of the Arab Spring here.
They've really, they're really angry and feel like they've been completely frozen out.
Something along those lines?
They're angry.
They're, they're, in my opinion, I think they're hypercritical in the, in the sense that any step that Morsi takes is, is, is, falls under incredible criticism, is, is, you know, is the subject of, becomes immediately becomes the subject of criticism, sort of, sort of no matter what he does.
Like in the case of Gaza, which is what we've been talking about recently, you know, like he's taking these tentative steps towards opening the border and people are already, you know, he's got people on one side saying, oh, look at this, look at this Islamist president.
He's going to open the borders and he's going to make friends with Hamas and he's going to bring in the terrorists and he's going to, he's going to get us into a war with Israel and America.
You have them on one side and then on the other side, you've got people saying, oh, look, he's, he has, he's not doing enough to open the Gaza border.
He should open it immediately.
He promised he would open it and now he's dragging his feet and he's taking these tiny half measures.
So, I mean, he really, he's in a position now where from what I can see is he, he really can't make a single move without, without, uh, without his critics sort of jumping on his back.
I'm very much of the opinion that he should be given a little bit of time at least to, you know, to, to, you know, give the guy a little bit of time to breathe and to, and to maybe implement some of these, some of these promises he's made.
Um, but you know, I heard his speech and he sure sounded like a socialist to me as far as economic policies.
I don't know about, you know, um, personal freedom, social justice thing has always been very, very high on the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.
I mean, that's, that's very much a part.
Although they say they, they, they say they will cleave to the, you know, traditional policies of free trade.
They're also free traders.
There's nothing about them that's socialist or anything.
They're very, they're entirely committed to the notion of free trade, but at the same time, social justice is a big part of their platform.
And I mean something like half of the Egyptian population lives on the poverty line.
So poverty alleviation, uh, the creation of employment opportunities, all of these things I know are very high on their agenda.
How exactly they're going to bring that to pass given, given Egypt's enormous population, we're talking about a population of 80 million plus people.
So when you talk about 50% being on the poverty line, you're talking about 40 million people that have to, you know, that, that, that are in dire need of help.
So he's got a massive, massive, I mean, I, me personally, I can't, I can't think of a, you know, a more unenviable, you know, a less enviable task than to be the president of Egypt and, and, you know, and, and having promised to, to revive, you know, to promised an Egyptian Renaissance within a, within a set period of time after 30 years of a Mubarak era autocracy and neglect.
I mean, this is something that I, I don't think anybody envies his, uh, his situation.
Well, and the military still rules the whole place, no?
And that's the other thing.
And then all the, this whole time while he's trying to do these things, while he's trying to realize these objectives, yes, he's still in this dance with the military, which is desperately trying to hold on to, you know, key, key executive prerogatives, you know, um, trying to maintain control over, over, over who was appointed to sensitive ministries like defense and interior and these, these sort of things.
And in fact, um, Morsi, uh, only just announced his prime minister last week and the new cabinet members of the new government have only just been announced, uh, within the last couple of days.
And very interestingly, he maintained, uh, Hussein Tantawi, who is the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces here, uh, and was the, uh, a defense minister under Mubarak for something for 20, I think 20 years, he maintained him in his position.
So there's, there's obviously some wheeling and dealing and horse trading going on behind the scenes with the, with the military who I think they know that they can't alienate.
They don't want war with the, with the military.
They certainly don't want that.
So I think they're in the process of, you know, very pragmatic sort of, you know, real politic, uh, trying to maintain their gains, trying to consolidate their, their political gains and their electoral gains while simultaneously sort of keeping the military on side, or at least keeping it, you know, uh, uh, preventing, uh, you know, preventing an all out confront confrontation with the military.
Well, what a shame I'm sitting here looking at, um, Egypt opening doors to Gaza slowly.
Your recent piece with Khaled Moussa al-Omrani at IKNews.net.
Yeah, that preceded, yeah, that preceded the, that was, that was a couple of days ago, um, and yeah, all of that stuff has kind of been obsolete now because of the latest, uh, because of the latest attack.
Now, do you think, I mean, I don't know what to make of the, the ruling military council.
Are they just, uh, going to be exactly the same as they ever were loyal allies of Israel and America and, and let this guy Morsi take all the heat and be the front man politician the same way Mubarak did and then, but keep everything the same now?
I'm sort of in the same situation that you are in terms of understanding what's really going on behind closed doors with this military council.
I don't know who they serve.
I have strong suspicions, but they, that they take, I mean, I, I have arguments with other journalists and people about this, about whether they're, I personally don't think they're, they're just, they're just 18 or 19 old guys, you know, trying to figure out what to do next.
You know, desperately trying to sort of forge some kind of policy.
I think they're, I think they're, they're taking orders from, uh, uh, from, uh, from, from Washington.
I mean, with whom they've had an extremely close relationship, you know, the military military to military relationship goes back decades.
Um, so yeah, I, I think they're under, I think they're under instruction to try to maintain as much power as possible.
Um, well, I forgot if it was you or who it was that taught me a year ago or more that, uh, Egypt imports like two thirds of their food supply from the U S which means they're politically, they're not going nowhere.
Yeah.
No, I don't know that the American government will starve them all to death if it comes to it.
I don't care.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I, the, I, I've maintained since the revolution, uh, that, uh, no matter what happens due to Egypt's incredible geopolitical significance, uh, and again, it's, it's just, it's the fact that it's the largest Muslim country, you know, in terms of population, it's the largest Muslim country.
And the fact that it straddles, uh, Africa and the Middle East, uh, the fact that it, uh, it possesses the Suez canal, which is, is, uh, is of vital importance to, you know, to international trade and to, and to, you know, and to military fleets in the, in the, in the area.
Uh, all of that, in addition to the fact that it shares a, a long, long border, uh, with, with Israel, which is probably foremost in the minds of, of the policymakers in Washington, that, uh, that the United States, that the people who are making the decisions in the U S uh, will never ever allow Egypt to simply go its own way.
You know, we'll never allow Egypt to simply hold entirely free democratic elections, choose its leader, and then allow that leader to, to, to make, you know, to, to make policy.
I, I, I, I, you know, this is just a, this is just too, too, too much to believe that they would, that the U S would ever allow Egypt to simply go its own way.
So yeah, they're definitely in there doing whatever they can to continue to influence, uh, influence policy.
That's for sure.
All right.
Thanks very much for your time, Adam.
It's always great to talk to you.
Yeah.
Great Scott.
Look forward to the next time.
Everybody, that's Adam Morrow.
I'm Adam Morrow.
IPSnews.net is the website for interpress service news agency, IPSnews.net.
His most recent was, uh, Egypt opening door doors to Gaza slowly, unfortunately not even that now that there's been this border attack, uh, we're over time.
Thanks everybody for listening.
See you tomorrow.