Courcy’s Intelligence Brief
Mursi turns to former militants
On 27 August, Israeli chief of staff Benny Gantz received the latest intelligence assessment from Military Intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi in which he warned that Israel is facing a less stable, more Islamist environment than in the past, and one which is “more susceptible to violence”. The report said: “It will be an environment that deals with a series of crises, regional and internal, which raises the level of sensitivity of all players, and which could lead, without prior planning, to an eruption.”
The warning that Israel faces a “more Islamist” environment can only have been reinforced by the news that Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi has turned to former Islamic militants to help negotiations with jihadists in the Sinai.
A delegation is being led by former jihadist leader Magdi Salem, who served 18 years in prison in Egypt for his membership of the Vanguards of Conquest – a group which attempted to assassinate the Egyptian prime minister and other officials in the 1990s. Other members of the negotiating team include the Salafist lawyer Nizar Ghorab.
The talks began over the weekend of 25/26 August and have reportedly focused on an agreement that Egyptian security forces would not attack the Sinai jihadists in return for a pledge from the jihadists not to launch any more attacks like the 5 August assault in which 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed, and the handing over of some weapons. Egypt will reopen the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip, but the underground network of tunnels used for smuggling will be destroyed.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the talks is that Egyptian military sources in the Sinai say that they had no warning about what was to happen, a point which suggests a continuing and substantial rift between President Mursi and the security establishment.
In a clear dig at the military, Safwat Abdel-Ghani, a former jihadist involved in setting up the initiative, has acknowledged that the purpose of the dialogue is to “prevent escalation or expansion of the conflict as used to happen in the past”. Mursi’s new military chief of staff, Sedki Sobhi, has pledged: “The armed forces will not permit any criminal hideouts in the land of Sinai...”