Egypt Sacks Senior Anti-Corruption Official and Dozens of Judges

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fired the country’s top anti-corruption official yesterday. Though Sisi did not give a formal reason for his firing, Hesham Geneina, the country’s senior auditor, was under review for comments made to media in December that corruption cost Egypt $76 billion over the past four years, a figure the State Security Prosecution’s office says is exaggerated.

Also yesterday, Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council forced 32 judges into retirement, in addition to 15 others who were retired last week, for refusing to recognize the legality of the military’s ouster of Mohamed Morsi in 2013. The judges have been suspended for the past year pending review by the Supreme Judicial Council. The decision drew immediate criticism from the International Commission for Jurists, which has called for the judges to be reinstated and said the move sends a “chilling message to others who might challenge the ongoing crackdown on fundamental rights and freedoms in Egypt.”

Egyptian Hijacker Arrested in Cyprus

Cypriot authorities say they have arrested Seif Eldin Mustafa, who earlier today hijacked and diverted a flight from Alexandria, Egypt, to Larnaca, Cyprus. Mustafa claimed to have a bomb and reportedly demanded that he be able to reach his ex-wife, who lives in Cyprus, though Egypt’s civil aviation minister said that Mustafa had “no real, tangible demands.” Authorities from both countries stressed that the incident was not an act of terrorism. Mustafa initially released many of the hostages, though a few remained aboard the plane, but Cypriot authorities say all are now safe.

Headlines

• Assad regime forces have encountered heavy fighting from the Islamic State while trying to capture the town of Al-Qaryatayn, pushing southwest from their recent victory in Palmyra.

• The Islamic State is planning attacks against Jewish schools in Turkey, according to six militants arrested in Gaziantep last week; Israel has issued a travel advisory for the country and the Turkish government has increased security at synagogues and Jewish schools.

• China has appointed Xie Xiaoyan, a former ambassador to Iran, as its special envoy for Syria; it is the first time China has appointed someone to the role and will assist peace talks set to resume next month, said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

• The Islamic State has struggled to find jihadis receptive to its message in Yemen, where people find the group too brutal and its leadership too foreign and disconnected, though al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has thrived during the country’s ongoing civil war, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Firefighters in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, have extinguished a multi-story fire in a luxury highrise that injured five people; it is at least the fourth major highrise fire in three years in the UAE, which authorities attribute to a flammable decorative cladding used on many buildings.

Arguments and Analysis

“Are CIA-backed Syrian Rebels Really Fighting Pentagon-backed Syrian Rebels?” (Sam Heller, War on the Rocks)

“This is complicated, but bear with me. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not a monolithic force. Like nearly every other faction in Syria, they’re spread across an archipelago of enclaves nationwide. The SDF units clashing with Syrian rebels reportedly supported by the CIA are not supported by the Pentagon —they’re from a different enclave. The U.S. military is exclusively supporting the SDF in northeastern Syria on the other side of the Euphrates River. The Pentagon-backed SDF east of the Euphrates is fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State, not rebels with or without U.S. backing.”

“Why it’s wrong to say that the Arab uprisings failed” (Marc Lynch, Monkey Cage)

“Conventional wisdom holds that the Arab uprisings that began in Tunisia in December 2010 failed. It’s hard to argue with such a harsh verdict. Most Arab regimes managed to survive their popular challenges through some combination of cooptation, coercion and modest reform. Egypt’s transition ended in an even harsher military regime. Yemen and Libya collapsed into state failure and regionalized wars, while Syria degenerated into a horrific war. But simply dismissing the uprisings as a failure does not capture how fully they have transformed every dimension of the region’s politics. Today’s authoritarians are more repressive because they are less stable, more frightened and ever more incapable of sustaining their domination. With oil prices collapsing and popular discontent again spiking, it is obvious that the generational challenge of the Arab uprising is continuing to unfold. ‘Success or failure’ is not a helpful way to understand these ongoing societal and political processes.”

-J. Dana Stuster

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