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In this mailing:
by Khaled Abu Toameh
• March 3, 2015 at 5:00 am
The
general feeling in Cairo and other Arab capitals is that the US and the
Western world are not serious when it comes to confronting the threat of
Iran, the Islamic State or other terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Thanks
to President Sisi's new and bold approach, there is a real chance that
Arabs will lead the fight against extremists and terrorists.
This
is a development that should be welcomed and backed by the US and the
rest of the international community.
"The
conference [on Countering Violent Extremism, in Washington] did not give
birth to a global strategy on terror, and served instead to underline
differences between various points of view, especially those of Cairo and
Washington." — Ahmed Eleiba, political analyst.
"The
US still sees political Islam as a present and legitimate player, not a
synonym for extremism. The US Administration also differentiates between
extremist Islamists and moderate Islamists and believes that the
moderates can be effectively integrated in politics as part of an
acceptable political system." — Gamal Abdel Gawad, Professor of
Political Science, American University in Cairo.
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Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, visiting
Riyadh for urgent talks, is greeted by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz,
March 1, 2015. (Image source: Al-Arabiyya video screenshot)
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has launched an initiative
to form a "Joint Arab Force" to counter the rising threat of
radical Islam, especially in wake of the recent atrocity perpetrated by
the Islamic State terrorist group against Egyptian Coptic Christians in
Libya.
However, for such an initiative to succeed, it also needs the
backing of the US, EU and other international parties.
But the general feeling in Cairo and other Arab capitals these days
is that the US and the Western world are not serious when it comes to
confronting the threat of Iran, the Islamic State and other terrorist
groups in the Middle East.
There is especially a growing concern in the Arab world,
particularly the Gulf, about the indifference in Washington and EU
capitals toward the Iranian threat to stability in the Middle East.
As the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram noted this week,
by Burak Bekdil
• March 3, 2015 at 4:00 am
Most
recently, a jihadist from Islamic State [IS] implicated Turkey in
delivering stockpiles of weapons and military hardware to IS fighters in
Syria.
Also
leaked were U.S. transition plans in Syria; Washington had shared these
only with its allies: Turkey, Britain, France and Germany.
The
crates of weapons had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet. One of the
drivers testified that, "We carried similar loads many times
before."
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Turkish security forces inspect a truck that was
smuggling weapons to Syria, Jan. 19, 2014.
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In 2013, Turkey hosted about a dozen conferences on cyber security
and new technologies to counter cyber threats. In a speech at the end of
the year, Colonel Cengiz Özteke, commander of the military General
Staff's division for electronic systems and cyber defense, said that the
Turkish military now considered cyber security as the country's
"fifth force."
The colonel could not know that slightly over a year later, Turkey
would become everyone's joke when the words cyber and security came
together.
On Jan. 19, 2014, the Turkish Gendarmerie command searched three
trucks in southern Turkey, heading for Syria. Accompanying the trucks
were Turkish intelligence officers, and the trucks had a bizarre cargo:
In the first container, 25-30 missiles or rockets and 10-15 crates loaded
with ammunition; in the second, 20-25 missiles or rockets, 20-25 crates
of mortar rounds and anti-aircraft ammunition in five or six sacks. The
crates had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet.
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