Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Israeli worries over military ties with Egypt.  Although the new regime in Cairo is less hostile to Israel than the ousted regime of President Muhammad Mursi, Israel is concerned that changes in top-level military personnel has damaged military cooperation.  The changes have severed personal ties between top-level Israeli officials and their counterparts in Egypt and as a result relations have become much more formalised and bureaucratic. 

As an example, the new director of Egyptian intelligence, General Muhammad Tuhami, is not at all well known to the Israelis.  Another loss has been Nadir al-Assar, who was in charge of Israeli and Palestinian affairs.  He has been replaced by another Egyptian official, Wahil al-Safdi, who is little known to the Israelis.

*** Protecting Chinese abroad.  The question of the safety of Chinese nationals overseas has been moving rapidly up the agenda for China’s policymakers since the events in Libya in 2011.  The issue was on China’s radar again last week after the 8 August terrorist attack in Kabul in which three Chinese citizens were killed.  Other recent incidents include the murder of four Chinese on 24 June in Papua New Guinea and the killing of two Chinese mountaineers in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir by terrorists on 23 June.

China’s foreign ministry says that it is now handling about 100 consular protection cases every day as a consequence of more than 83m Chinese travelling overseas in 2012.  In addition there are more than 20,000 Chinese enterprises operating overseas and 2m Chinese students enrolled in foreign colleges or schools.

*** Senkaku intrusion ‘longest yet’.  The intrusion last Wednesday/Thursday (7-8 August) by Chinese ships into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands (claimed by China as the Diaoyu) was the longest intrusion yet, with the Chinese ships remaining in Japanese territorial waters for over 28 hours.  There was a further incursion by four Chinese coastguard ships on 10 August, and on 11 August the Japanese coastguard reported seeing three more Chinese ships sailing around the islands.  According to the Japanese coastguard, this was the 26th straight day that Chinese vessels had been spotted in Japan’s territorial waters.

When the Japanese coastguard made its usual protests at the latest intrusion, one of the Chinese vessels responded by radio saying that the sea areas within 12 nautical miles of the islands are Chinese waters.