By John Galt
September 15, 2011 – 18:00 ET
The United States has elected to neglect, ignore, and bypass the fruits of the ignorant, rookie laden Hillary Clinton State Department by turning the other cheek as a new arm of Al Qaeda found the freedom to expand into the most dangerous region in the world. The emergence of a jihad movement in the Egyptian Sinai region illustrated their recklessness with the attack last month on the Israeli border but the danger expands far beyond that immediate border region. To understand this threat and the inherent risk created by allowing any terrorists of this ilk to exist there, one only needs to look at the borders surrounding the Sinai peninsula:
The circled regions on the map represent strategic points that create not only regional unrest but quite possibly impact international trade and inflame the entire world.
First the border region along Southern Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are not just tense due to domestic unrest and demands for re-militarizing the borders with Israel, but allow the flow of supplies and terrorists in both directions. The House of Saud has enough issues with the Shi’ite movements in the Eastern portions of their nation, the Yemeni revolution, and the border states agitation created by Iran but to add an anti-Israeli pro-jihad movement in that region of the nation only weakens the political standing of the King and allows popular unrest to demand Saudi Arabia take a harder line towards Israel. This is a new source of tension the Kingdom can not afford economically or as a geopolitical hotspot as Israel is the counterbalance to Iranian hegemony in the area.
Second, the Suez Canal is an easy target if the Egyptian military begins to offer sympathetic cover for Al Qaeda in the region, much like the ISI does in Pakistan. This instability could be used to blackmail European nations into supporting stronger sanctions against Israel and force them to approve or push harder for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capitol.
Lastly, the Gaza region might be “secured” at the moment after a huge inflow of weapons and supplies were provided to the Hamas movement in the months following the “Arab Spring” revolution. At this moment, there is no major recruitment drive among the young in Egypt, however those well-educated citizens that were tortured, spied upon, or imprisoned by the Mubarak regime has provided plenty of fresh blood for the movement. This has created the perfect storm of inherent instability along with popular sympathy within the indigenous population to create a fantastic opportunity for recruiting college educated unemployed youths for training and militarization. This gives them the advantage of having the ability to infiltrate the United States and European nations as many of these former students have extensive connections in those nations and a prime opportunity to extend or create new logistics networks and political support groups within the West. As the economic situation stagnates, look for recruitment efforts and results to improve dramatically.
The story behind the information that I have postulated above was first release by Reuters this morning, with this particular link from Al-Masyr Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper online which has started to lean away from the military council and more towards a pro-Muslim Brotherhood leaning in recent months. I would suggest everyone click on the headline below to read the story in full and understand that this is indeed a brilliant stroke of strategy which has flummoxed our leadership once again and opened the door to radicalization of much of this region.
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