Situation Report: Marines Ready for Chaos in Egypt; Snowden to Bolivia? Shelley Stoneman leaves the Pentagon; An Army Four-Star in the Pacific; Drone Strikes in Pakistan and a bit more.
July 3, 2013
Situation Report: A weekly digest of national security, defense, and cybersecurity news from Foreign Policy.
Egypt on the Brink, U.S. Marines at the Ready.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy and his political allies remain defiant as the 11:00 AM EST deadline for to meet the demands of millions of Egyptians who want him gone approaches and the risk of a military coup grows. Remember, the Egyptian military has said that it will take over the government and implement a roadmap that involves suspending the constitution and dissolving the Islamist-led parliament.
Morsy’s political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, appears to be readying itself for a fight. There are even reports of Egyptian security forces firing on the houses of Muslim Brotherhood officials.
Here’s what FP’s man in Cairo, David Kenner, reports this morning.
"Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood leader and vice chairman of the movement’s political party, said that wise men should convince the army to back down lest it ‘meet the same fate as the Syrian Baathist army,’ according to the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.
Morsy himself has also showed no signs of backing down. In a speech last night, he harped on the concept of his legitimacy – repeating the word a total of 57 times — which he said was conferred by his democratic election and made it unthinkable for him to step down from power. ‘If the price of preserving legitimacy is my blood, I am prepared to pay it,’ he said.
Other Brotherhood leaders have also made comments seemingly preparing their supporters for violence. Brotherhood leader Mohamed el-Beltagy told a pro-Morsy crowd gathered in Cairo’s Raba’a el-Adaweyya Square on Monday, ‘We swear to God, we won’t allow any coup against legitimacy, except over our dead bodies.’
But even as the Muslim Brotherhood is digging in, the pillars of its support appear to be crumbling all around it. Many state institutions are in open rebellion: The front page of the state newspaper al-Ahram trumpeted that the day would bring Morsy’s ‘dismissal or resignation.’ Even the Twitter account of the Egyptian Cabinet has fallen out of the president’s hands: In a message posted this morning, the account denounced Morsy’s speech, saying that it will lead to civil war’."
Read more here.
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U.S. Marines in Europe Getting Ready for Egyptian Chaos
Some of the 500 Marines belonging to the Corps’ Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response Team have been moved from Moron, Spain to Sigonella, Italy to be closer to Egypt should things go very wrong there, Stars and Stripes reports this morning.
"The reason we are here is to provide a scalable force to respond to unexpected crisis," Maj. Zane Crawford, the task force’s operations officer, said in a USMC release in May. "We can rapidly deploy to support missions, such as embassy reinforcement, tactical recovery of aircraft, and personnel and noncombatant evacuation operations."
Citing unnamed sources, CNN reported last week that the Marines have been told to be ready to be airborne in 60 minutes after deployment orders, but Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, wouldn’t confirm, saying the military doesn’t comment on specific readiness postures."
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo has been closed since Sunday.
Bolivian President’s Plane Forced to Land, Was it Searched for Snowden?
That’s right, the plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to make an emergency landing in Vienna Austria after French and Portuguese authorities refused to allow it to transit their airspace. Morales was returning to Bolivia from Moscow. Bolivian officials are accusing the French, Portuguese, and possibly Italians, of blocking the presidential flight because of suspicions NSA whistleblower is aboard.
Here’s what the New York Times reported on the incident.
"’They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane,’ the Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, told reporters after the plane touched down in Vienna, where Mr. Morales was spending the night…
Rubén Saavedra, the defense minister, who was on the plane with Mr. Morales, accused the Obama administration of being behind the action by France and Portugal, calling it ‘an attitude of sabotage and a plot by the government of the United States…’
‘We were in flight; it was completely unexpected,’ Mr. Saavedra said on the Telesur cable network. ‘The president was very angry.’
Speaking by phone with Telesur, Mr. Saavedra said that Mr. Snowden was not on the plane. Later, Reuters cited an unidentified Austrian Foreign Ministry official as saying the same thing.
Bolivian officials said they were working on a new flight plan to allow Mr. Morales to fly home. But in a possible sign of further suspicion about the passenger manifest, Mr. Saavedra said that Italy had also refused to give permission for the plane to fly over its airspace. Later he said that France and Portugal had reversed course and offered to allow the plane to fly through their airspace after all.
On Monday, Mr. Morales, who was attending an energy conference in Moscow, was asked in an interview on the Russia Today television network if he would consider giving asylum to Mr. Snowden, 30, who has been holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for more than a week, his passport revoked by the United States.
‘Yes, why not?’ Mr. Morales responded. ‘Of course, Bolivia is ready to take in people who denounce – I don’t know if this is espionage or monitoring. We are here’."
It sounds like Snowden might be trying to make like Butch and Sundance and flee to Bolivia.
Adios to Shelly Stoneman. Pentagon folk said good-bye to Stoneman, the Pentagon’s White House liaison, who worked for three SecDefs and played a key role in two transitions. Last night colleagues joined her at Sine’s, the unofficial O-club of the Pentagon, at nearby Pentagon Row, after they paid tribute to her in the office suite of the White House liaison on the third deck earlier in the day. Stoneman is moving on after 14 years in government and the non-profit world. Her last day at the Pentagon is Friday. Seen at Sine’s – Marcel Lettre, Liz King, Wendy Anderson, Robert Rangel, Brian Morrison, Eric Lynn, Bishop Garrison, Valerie Miller, Jacob Freedman, Justo Robles and Andrew Hunter.
Four-Star General in Charge of Army Forces in The Pacific
Gen. Vincent Brooks just replaced Lt. Gen. Francis Wiercinski as the Boss of all U.S. Army troops in nearly all of Asia and the Pacific on Tuesday. This is the first time that U.S. Army Pacific, as it’s known has been led by a four-star officer in about 40 years, a move reflects the growing importance of Asia to the Pentagon.
"With the unpredictability on the Korean peninsula a constant and with the growing importance of strengthening of our diplomatic and economic relationship with China, our military and specifically our Army must continue to take important steps in supporting this strategy," the Associated Press quoted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno as saying during the change of command ceremony for the two generals at Fort Shafter outside Honolulu.
Here’s more from the AP article.
"Returning a four-star general to the post puts the Army on par with the Navy and Air Force, which have long had four-star commanders in the Pacific. It’s also expected to make it easier for the U.S. to develop relationships with top army commanders throughout the region, as Brooks will be on an equal level with them in rank.
‘It may open a few more doors, where peer-to-peer relationship is eased somewhat,’ Brooks told reporters after the ceremony. ‘Rank is important. It matters in protocols around the world and we think that will help to open the door’."
A U.S. Drone Strike Kills 16 in Pakistan
The strike was aimed at a compound run by the Haqqani network in northwest Pakistani province of Waziristan, the New York Times is reporting. At least four rockets were fired into the compound Tuesday night, killing 16 and injured another five, the Times quotes anonymous Pakistani officials as saying.
"The strike was the deadliest since Pakistan’s new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, took power a month ago and demanded an end to the drone attacks" the paper notes. Drone strikes are hugely unpopular in the country and are seen as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Right-wing Islamist political parties and nationalists have made vociferous criticism of the drone strikes a cornerstone of their opposition to American policies.
The chorus of popular criticism has only grown louder in recent years despite muted acknowledgment by some Pakistani officials that drone strikes have taken place with their tacit approval.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly protested the latest strike.
‘These strikes are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ the spokesman said in a statement. ‘Pakistan has repeatedly emphasized the importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes’.
DOD
McClatchy: The NSA might be holding all our data.
Marine Corps Times: Two more women fail to make it through infantry officer school.
Bloomberg: U.S. to attempt first missile intercept since 2008
State Department
FP: Foggy Bottom Spent $630,000 to Buy Millions of Dubious Facebook "Likes."
The Stans
USIP: Does Karzai have anything to gain by negotiating with the Taliban in Doha?
Egypt
FP: Know your Egyptian generals
