The West’s culpability in North Africa and the Middle East
▻http://africasacountry.com/2017/06/the-wests-collusion-with-north-africas-autocrats
There seems to be no limit to Europe’s and USA’s willingness to accept and even support autocrats in North Africa and the Middle East. Consider the case of Egypt, Africa’s third most populous country. Since Egypt’s military seized power in a coup and thus ended a brief experiment with real democratization in July 2013, the…
The Armed Forces and Egypt’s land | Mada Masr
▻http://www.madamasr.com/sections/economy/armed-forces-and-egypts-land
In February, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a decree to direct the Armed Forces Land Projects Agency (AFLPA) to oversee construction of two of Egypt’s mega-projects to be built on 16,000 acres under military control: the new capital city and Sheikh Zeyad’s new urban community. The decree granted AFLPA the power to form joint ventures.
The move is indicative of the political direction increasingly taken by Egypt’s authorities to expand the Armed Forces’ involvement in the economy. This military involvement does not only take the form of oversight and contractual management, but increasingly is articulated through the formation of joint venture investments wherein the military allocates desert land under its control – land whose value is expected to appreciate markedly – to companies affiliated with the Armed Forces, as a capital investment.
Does allowing the AFLPA to form joint ventures signal a major transformation in the military’s role in Egypt’s economy?
First, it establishes a legal framework to allow the Armed Forces to use desert land as an investment. Egyptian jurisprudence’s historical attention to national defense has led to the consolidation of desert lands under the control of the Armed Forces. Most desert land fell under the control of the Armed Forces in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, desert land had little economic value, as Egypt’s population was concentrated in the Nile Valley and the Delta – a situation that has completely changed over the last three decades. Economic and population growth have become increasingly dependent on expansion into Egypt’s once uninhabitable deserts. Expansion has taken the form of land reclamation and housing projects, new industrial cities and tourist attractions. The development of each of these initiatives is contingent upon access to affordable desert land, which the government has been able to provide using the compensatory framework of the original desert land law: the Armed Forces is paid for the utility costs incurred during its relocation. However, in reality, the state and the military, often indivisible, have used desert land to acquire economic gains, either through the outright sale of land or through the recent practice of using land as a capital investment in urban development companies.
Second, the recent presidential decree changes the way in which the Armed Forces use desert land. Access to desert land has allowed the NSPO to transform Egypt’s transportation infrastructure through the construction of roads, overpasses and tunnels. However, now – as evinced by the government’s projects in the administrative capital and the Suez Canal channel, as well as in affordable housing – the Armed Forces have pivoted and will commence a foray into urban and industrial projects as well as logistical services. The move may augur AFLPA’s more frequent use of its land possessions as capital investments in joint ventures with Arab and international investors.
Il y a qqs mois sur le même sujet : Barayez A.-F., 2016, « This Land is their Land »: Egypt’s Military and the Economy, in Jadaliyya, < ▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/23671/« this-land-is-their-land »_egypt’s-military-and-the >
“This Land is their Land” : Egypt’s Military and the Economy
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/23671/%E2%80%9Cthis-land-is-their-land%E2%80%9D_egypt%E2%80%99s-military-and-th
Cet article extrêmement documenté est remarquable sur la réalité et la nature du pouvoir économique et politique des militaires en Egypte
@alaingresh
contrary to popular thinking, the army’s share in Egypt’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is relatively small. Though limited, hard data shows that it is present in many sectors but does not occupy a commanding position in any, and indeed has no presence in a range of crucial economic sectors. There is little empirical evidence that the private sector has been crowded out by the military at all, with the possible exception of government contracts for new mega-projects in the post-June 2013 period.
The Egyptian military’s economic model is based on rent extraction. Through its broad legal and effective control of public assets, namely public lands that constitute around 94 per cent of Egypt’s total surface area, the military translates its regulatory mandate into an economic return. The military also wields considerable, if less formal influence through the large number of former officers who hold high level posts in the civil service, particularly in public land management. Public land is crucial for economic growth and for the development of essential sectors, including urban development, manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture—which, together, constitute the bulk of Egypt’s economy. More than any other factor, the chokehold on land use is costly for the economy. The complexity and opacity of the regulatory environment affecting access to it moreover adds to the inefficiency of the private sector. This results in significant opportunity costs for potential growth and urban expansion—in an overcrowded country that needs to expand settlement into the vast tracts of desert land to the east and west of the densely populated Nile Valley.
en complément, cet auteur avait déjà écrit un petit article faisant un tour d’horizon moins précis mais utile sur cette question, avec notamment un point sur la question électrique.
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/22023/more-than-money-on-their-minds_the-generals-and-th
#énergie #électricité
Egypte/atteinte aux droits : Un élargissement des pouvoirs des tribunaux militaires sans précédent - Communiqué Human Rights Watch
▻http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/17/egypt-unprecedented-expansion-military-courts
An October 27 decree by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt vastly extended the reach of the country’s military courts and risks militarizing the prosecution of protesters and other government opponents.
The new law, decreed by al-Sisi in the absence of a parliament, places all “public and vital facilities” under military jurisdiction for the next two years and directs state prosecutors to refer any crimes at those places to their military counterparts, paving the way for further military trials of civilians. Egypt’s military courts, which lack even the shaky due process guarantees provided by regular courts, have tried more than 11,000 civilians since the 2011 uprising.
“This law represents another nail in the coffin of justice in Egypt,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “Its absurdly broad provisions mean that many more civilians who engage in protests can now expect to face trial before uniformed judges subject to the orders of their military superiors.”
On November 16, a Cairo criminal court referred five al-Azhar University students to military court on charges related to repeated protests that have broken out at the university against al-Sisi’s government. The students are charged with joining a terrorist organization, displaying force, threatening to use violence, possession of Molotov cocktails, and vandalism, according to the Aswat Masriya news service. The criminal court reportedly ruled that it lacked jurisdiction in the case.
Al-Sisi issued the decree three days after an attack in the Sinai Peninsula killed dozens of soldiers, the deadliest strike yet in an insurgency that has grown since the army ousted Egypt’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsy, in July 2013.
The new decree, Law 136 of 2014 for the Securing and Protection of Public and Vital Facilities, states that the armed forces “shall offer assistance to the police and fully coordinate with them in securing and protecting public and vital facilities,” including electricity stations, gas pipelines, oil wells, railroads, road networks, bridges, and any similar state-owned property.
Military judges have presided over trials of civilians in Egypt for decades, despite efforts by activists and some politicians to eliminate the practice. In the months following the 2011 uprising, for example, Egypt’s military courts tried almost 12,000 civilians on an array of regular criminal charges. But the new law greatly expands the jurisdiction of military courts, giving them their widest legal authority since the birth of Egypt’s modern republic in 1952. Before al-Sisi’s decree, Egypt’s constitution and code of military justice theoretically limited military prosecutions to cases that directly involved the armed forces or their property, though the country’s 31-year state of emergency, which expired in 2012, allowed the president to refer civilians to military courts.
Egypt’s military appears intent on interpreting the new law broadly. Interviewed on the CBC television channel on November 1, General Medhat Ghozy, who heads the Military Judiciary Authority, said that military jurisdiction now extends over any building or property that provides a “general service” or is state owned.
“If there’s a public facility, or a vital one, when it’s assaulted, who’s the attacker?” Ghozy said. “[It doesn’t matter] if it’s a woman, or a man, or a teacher, or a student, or a teenager, or a child … the law is a general, abstract rule. We can’t say now: these are universities, these are factories, these are electricity stations.”
Since al-Sisi – a former defense minister and army chief – oversaw the forcible removal and imprisonment of Morsy in the wake of mass protests in July 2013, military courts have tried at least 140 civilians, according to the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, including three children and four journalists. Most of the accused have faced charges of assaulting military personnel or equipment.
On October 21, a military court imposed death sentences for seven men and life sentences for two others for their involvement in three violent incidents in March 2014 that left nine soldiers dead. Authorities alleged that the men belonged to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, Egypt’s most prominent insurgent group. On November 10, the group pledged allegiance to the Syria-based organization Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
Police claim to have arrested the nine men in a March 19 raid on an abandoned warehouse in the Qalyubia governorate, north of Cairo, and to have found evidence of explosives and weapons used in the lethal attacks on soldiers earlier that month. But the trial, conducted before a panel of generals at the Hikestep military base northeast of Cairo, lacked basic due process guarantees, putting its fairness in question.
Ahmed Helmy, a lawyer for four of the men, told Human Rights Watch that families of three defendants first sought his help in January, two months before the police say they arrested the men, suggesting that the authorities’ account of the raid was inaccurate.
“These three defendants simply disappeared separately in November and December 2013, months before the events they are charged with – they were kept in Azouli prison,” Helmy said, referring to a secret military facility inside al-Galaa army base in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, which the authorities have used to hold up to hundreds of civilian detainees, according to human rights groups and media reports. “We filed a complaint to the public prosecutor but the authorities kept denying that the three guys were in custody.”
Helmy said that the authorities would not allow him to visit his clients in custody before the trial and that he first met them at the initial court hearing in June.
A brother of Hani Amer, one of the defendants, told Human Rights Watch that Amer disappeared on December 16, 2013, after visiting the district director’s office in Ismailia to obtain a permit for his information technology company. The brother said that witnesses told the family that men in civilian clothes had detained Amer and his business partner, Ahmed Suleiman, as well as the district director. The director, whom authorities released hours later, eventually told the family that police had taken Amer to the Galaa base.
Amer later told his brother that authorities had moved him in March from Azouli prison to the high-security Scorpion facility inside Tora Prison in Cairo. When his brother visited him there on August 10, Amer showed no obvious signs of injury, although Suleiman, the business partner, had told the brother that Amer’s shoulders had been dislocated by torture when he was held in Azouli prison months earlier.
Another defendant appeared at the military trial in a wheelchair. His father told Human Rights Watch that his son had disappeared on March 16 or 17, 2014, following which the father filed complaints with the Interior Ministry without success. Later, he said, a man who refused to disclose his identify visited the father’s home and told him that authorities were holding his son in Tora Prison.
When the father eventually obtained permission to visit his son, for only a few minutes, he found his son using crutches.
“He said that they tortured him,” the father said. “His left knee was completely destroyed and his left femur bone was broken. I asked him directly, ‘Did you meet with a prosecutor?’ He said he couldn’t know because he was blindfold during most of the interrogations. All the confessions were dictated by officers under torture.”
Helmy, the lawyer, told Human Rights Watch that even though the men can appeal their sentences, the authorities have made the defendants wear the orange jumpsuits worn by prisoners who have received final verdicts, apparently to “pressure them psychologically.” He has tried to convince the men to lodge appeals, but so far they have declined.
The father of the other said he had also urged his son to appeal, but that his son responded: “You don’t hire a room from someone who stole your house.”
The nine men also face trial before a regular criminal court as part of a group of more than 200 defendants accused of belonging to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis.
Egypt’s military courts operate under the authority of the Defense Ministry, not the civilian judicial authorities. They typically deny defendants rights accorded by civilian courts, including the right to be informed of the charges against them, and the rights to access a lawyer and to be brought promptly before a judge following arrest.
In April, a military court sentenced a social media manager for the online news website Rassd to one year in prison for helping to leak a tape of remarks by al-Sisi during his time as defense minister. The court acquitted one Rassd employee and sentenced two others who remain at large and an army conscript to three-year prison terms. In May and September, military courts handed down one-year sentences against 10 defendants – mostly Muslim Brotherhood members or allied politicians – for attempting to cross into Sudan illegally. In Suez, a military court has repeatedly postponed the trial of 20 civilians arrested in August 2013 and charged with attacking government buildings.
The use of military courts to try civilians violates the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt’s parliament ratified in 1984. The African human rights commission Principles and Guideline on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance explicitly forbid military trials of civilians in all circumstances.
Al-Sisi’s law closely resembles a pair of decrees that Justice Minister Adel Abdel Hamid and Egypt’s then-ruling military council issued in June 2012, just before Morsy’s election and immediately after the country’s long-running state of emergency expired. Abdel Hamid’s decree empowered military police and intelligence officers to arrest civilians, while the military council’s decree empowered the president to call in soldiers “to share in law enforcement duties and the protection of public institutions.”
Article 204 of Egypt’s constitution, drafted and approved by popular referendum in January during the interim government that followed Morsy’s removal, specifies a range of crimes for which civilians can be tried in military courts, including assaults on military personnel or equipment, or crimes that involve military factories, funds, secrets, or documents. It is largely the same as Article 198 of the previous constitution, passed during the Morsy administration, which also allowed military courts to put civilians on trial over the protest of activists and some politicians.
“This new decree is pernicious and contrary to basic standards of justice,” Whitson said. “Egypt’s authorities should annul all the military court verdicts against civilians handed down since the new government took power, and President al-Sisi needs to act quickly to amend his decree.”
Egypte : Projet de loi pour interdire de diffuser des infos en lien avec l’armée, 6 mois à 5 ans de prison et amendes pour ceux qui le feraient - Al-Masry Al-Youm
The State Council’s legislative department received Wednesday a draft law submitted by the Cabinet that would ban news related to the military.
The council is supposed to review the constitutionality of the law.
One article in the draft stipulates the need for prior permission from the Armed Forces’ general command before reporting or broadcasting news about its formations, movements and equipment.
It imposes a jail term from six months to five years and a fine of LE100-500 for violators.
The draft law states that this information is vital to state security, therefore requiring entire secrecy so as not prevent them being leaked to entities that would use them against the country.
Egypt’s military has been struggling against a series of bloody attacks against its troops since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsy. Authorities accuse Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood of standing behind the attacks. The MB says it is a peaceful organization.
Criticisms of the army have become more sensitive under incumbet president and former defense minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, in many cases drawing accusations of treason by highly-chauvisinstic, pro-regime media.
Press freedoms advocates are wary that freedom of opinion woudl witness a decline under Sisi’s government as a number of media hosts were banned, with a number of newspapers annoucing intentions to cease any reports critical of the military.
Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s Sinai campaign: Egypt’s military is targeting civilians and militants in a brutal crackdown.
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/10/abdel_fattah_al_sisi_s_sinai_campaign_egypt_s_military_is_targeting_civilians
NORTH SINAI, Egypt—The black, charcoaled remains of a cow’s dead body lies in a sandy field behind a shelled-out mansion. Washed-out blood stains the walls of an unpainted grey room where sons say their 80-year-old mother was killed by army tank fire. Bullet holes pockmark the house. A 9-year-old girl’s cheek is marked by a pink incision where a rock hit her face as her home was strafed by helicopter fire. A child’s sandal and burned Quran were among the rubble of a mosque that locals say was destroyed by ground and air military troops. I watched as an IED exploded under an armored personnel carrier as it turned a corner. Black smoke filled the air, and an olive tree was uprooted. Later, two soldiers were reported injured.
These are some of the casualties of the Egyptian army’s war on “terrorists” in the villages and towns that dot the north of the Sinai Peninsula close to the borders of Gaza and Israel.
In September, the military stepped up a two-month campaign to rid the area of militants by “taking action against terrorists, instead of merely reacting to terrorist attacks,” said army spokesman Ahmed Ali.
Egyptian security forces have been coming under increased attack after army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi ousted President Mohamed Morsi in early July. Al-Qaida-inspired militants in Sinai have killed more than 100 members of the security forces since then, according to the Egyptian military.
Egypt’s military and its Christian citizens |
comment l’armée manipule la question copte
Timothy E. Kaldas
Mada Masr
25th of August
▻http://www.madamasr.com/content/egypt%E2%80%99s-military-and-its-christian-citizens
The state’s cynical use of Christian suffering to justify its violent behavior and strengthen its political position in relation to its opponents is disturbing and reprehensible. There is no doubt that Muslim Brotherhood leaders have used sectarian language in their statements and incited hatred towards the Christians in Egypt. I also do not doubt that the Brotherhood’s incitement has led to the sectarian attacks on Christians and churches we have seen since Mohamed Morsi was removed from office. Those who engaged in such incitement and those who perpetrated those attacks should be punished forcefully. That said, they are not the only guilty party.
Last week Minya was alight with sectarian attacks on churches and Christian schools. The latest reports suggest that only one church has been spared attack thus far. Reports also indicate the security forces, be they police or military, have been no where to be seen. This is not due to them being unaware of the attacks. Human Rights Watch investigators who visited Minya heard from residents that they often plead with police to intervene, only to be rebuffed. One priest was told by the police that they had “no orders” to intervene.
Egypt erupts as security forces attack Morsi supporters - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypt-erupts-as-security-forces-attack-morsi-supporters/2013/08/14/f230a080-04fa-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html
Clair
BEFORE THE July 3 coup in Egypt, the #Obama administration privately warned the armed forces against ousting the government of Mohamed Morsi, pointing to U.S. legislation that requires the cutoff of aid to any country where the army plays a “decisive role” in removing an elected government. Yet when the generals ignored the American warnings, the White House responded by electing to disregard the law itself. After a prolonged and embarassing delay, the State Department announced that it had chosen not to determine whether a coup had taken place, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry declared that Egypt’s military was “restoring democracy.”
Because of those decisions, the Obama administration is complicit in the new and horrifyingly bloody crackdown launched Wednesday by the de facto regime against tens of thousands of protesters who had camped in two Cairo squares. More than 150 people were reported killed, including many women and children. Chaos erupted around Egypt as angry mobs stormed Christian churches, which went largely unprotected by security forces. The military imposed a state of emergency, essentially returning Egypt to the autocratic status quo that existed before the 2011 revolution.
Egypt’s Assault on Protesters Kills Scores - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/world/middleeast/egypt.html?pagewanted=2
As for the American threats to cut off aid or block international loans, Professor Shahin said, no Egyptians — generals, liberals, Islamists or scholars — ever took them seriously. “In the end, the West will back the winning side,” he said. “That is how dictators think, and to a certain extent it is true.”
La partie gagnante, tant qu’elle est gentille avec Israël et obéit au « consensus de Washington. »
Sisi’s Islamist Agenda for Egypt |
Foreign Affairs
Robert Springborg
Paradoxe, selon l’auteur, Sissi en se débarrassant des Frères musulmans préparerait un régime sur le modèle pakistanais islamo-militaire
▻http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139605/robert-springborg/sisis-islamist-agenda-for-egypt#cid=soc-twitter-at-snapshot-sisi_s_i
Sisi’s speech was only the latest suggestion that he will not be content to simply serve as the leader of Egypt’s military. Although he has vowed to lead Egypt through a democratic transition, there are plenty of indications that he is less than enthusiastic about democracy and that he intends to hold on to political power himself. But that’s not to say that he envisions a return to the secular authoritarianism of Egypt’s recent past. Given the details of Sisi’s biography and the content of his only published work, a thesis he wrote in 2006 while studying at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, it seems possible that he might have something altogether different in mind: a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism. To judge from the ideas about governance that he put forward in his thesis, Sisi might see himself less as a custodian of Egypt’s democratic future than as an Egyptian version of Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, the Pakistani general who seized power in 1977 and set about to “Islamicize” state and society in Pakistan.
Last summer, when Morsi tapped Sisi to replace Minister of Defense Muhammad Tantawi, Morsi clearly believed that he had chosen someone who was willing to subordinate himself to an elected government. Foreign observers also interpreted Sisi’s promotion as a signal that the military would finally be professionalized, beginning with a reduction of its role in politics and then, possibly, the economy. Sisi’s initial moves as defense minister reinforced this optimism. He immediately removed scores of older officers closely associated with his corrupt and unpopular predecessor. And he implicitly criticized the military’s involvement in politics after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, warning that such “dangerous” interventions could turn Egypt into Afghanistan or Somalia and would not recur.
Une autre curiosité,
The Coming Rapprochement Between Iran and the Brotherhood- ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/07/alliance-muslim-brotherhood-iran-shiite-sunni.html
Washington Islamist Strategy in Crisis as Morsi Toppled. Egypt Protest directed against US | Global Research
▻http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-islamist-strategy-in-crisis-as-morsi-toppled/5341595
The swift action by Egypt’s military to arrest Mohamed Morsi and key leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood organization on July 3 marks a major setback for Washington’s “Arab Spring” strategy of using political Islam to spread chaos from China through Russia across the energy-rich Middle East. Morsi rejected the Defense Minister‘s demand that he quit to avert a bloodbath. He said he stood by his “constitutional dignity” and demanded the army’s withdrawal of its ultimatum. It may become the major turning point of America’s decline as world Sole Superpower when future generations of historians view events.
Intéressant. Qui plus est j’aime assez Engdahl - dont le bouquin sur le pétrole fourmille de faits et d’hypothèses intéressantes. Cependant sa thèse selon laquelle tout cela s’est fait contre les USA ne me convainc pas. Engdahl qui s’est pas mal documenté sur les « révolutions démocratiques » (révolutions colorées à l’Est puis révoltes arabes en 2011) et leurs liens avec les fondations US de promotion de la démocratie, ne semble pas attentif aux composantes du mouvement Tamarrod (Kifaya, mouvement du 6 avril, Front National du Salut d’al-Baradeï). Par contre on peut peut-être faire l’hypothèse de lignes contradictoires au sein de l’administration US (ce ne serait pas la première fois ces derniers temps...).
Depuis fin janvier, l’armée égyptienne a fait passer 12000 civils devant des tribunaux militaires, soit plus que le nombre de civils jugés par des tribunaux militaires pendant les 30 ans du règne de Hosni Moubarak :
►http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/10/egypt-retry-or-free-12000-after-unfair-military-trials
Since it took over patrolling the streets from the police on January 28, 2011, Egypt’s military has arrested almost 12,000 civilians and brought them before military tribunals, Human Rights Watch said today. This is more than the total number of civilians who faced military trials during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak and undermines Egypt’s move from dictatorship to democratic rule, Human Rights Watch said.