Egypt : The Military Crackdown and the Threat of ISIS.

The fate of the three al-Jazeera journalists jailed in Egypt is bound up in Egypt's attempt to clamp down on the Doha based new station because it is seen as favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood backed by Qatar after 2011 in rivalry with Saudi Arabia which supports the military state.

Washington, in turn, remains a stalwart ally of Saudi Arabia in its attempt to create a wall of Sunni Arab states in the Middle East to deter Iranian influence in the region. This is a goal broadly shared by the US which in 2013 accounted still for 17.2 % of its total crude oil imports.

General Sisi's crushing of dissent and imprisonment of political opponents is the unfortunate cost to be paid for 'stability' in Egypt as it faces the increased threat of radical Sunni jihadist violence from those angry about the coup against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

More ominously, an insurgency on the Sinai Peninsula has attracted radicalised jihadists from Syria fighting for groups such as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and heeding the call from Al Qaeda and ISIS to go and take the battle to Egypt, the homeland of Al Qaida's leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

But the attempt by Sisi's regime to yoke Al Qaida together with the Muslim Brotherhood is as much about shoring up its own domestic legitimacy as it is about pleasing its Saudi sponsors who after the coup offered $5billion in aid to help support Egypt's tanking economy.

When President Morsi was in power, Saudi Arabia feared the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood could embolden Islamists at home. But it has been in competition with Qatar both in Egypt and in Syria where both powers have vied for political control over the anti-Assad Sunni militias.

The geopolitical energy dimension to this struggle for regional influence is that while both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have a joint interest in overthrowing Assad, to prevent an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, they are at variance on Qatari attempts to build a gas pipeline from the Gulf which could circumvent Saudi Arabia.

Yet in competing for influence in Syria by backing the most effective Sunni jihadists on the ground and fracturing the unity of the Free Syrian Army, by 2013 Saudi Arabia and Qatar had enabled Al Qaida affiliated groups and ISIS to gain a strong foothold and for blowback into Egypt.

There are already jihadist organisations with connections to ISIS operating on the Sinai Peninsula which is said to be 'fertile ground' for the group to expand. Israeli-Egyptian cooperation to crush the jihadist insurgency in Sinai has resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties and surging support for the jihadists.

Washington's decision to release a $650m aid package to Egypt and continued military assistance, including Apache helicopters, is connected to the need to keep in check the threat of jihadist blowback caused by Syrian and Libyan conflicts and the military's coup and cack handed crackdown on Sinai.

Scores of civilans have continued to get killed in the cross fire in Sinai in villages said to be contain jihadist groups and Muslim Brotherhood supporters along with the use of torture centres, mass arrests and arbitrary imprisonment in a region where the government has made it difficult for journalist to enter.

Washington may not like the Egyptian states's imprisoning and suppression of journalism but it is a necessary consequence of the shoddy and failed foreign policies of its Gulf allies and which has contributed towards the havoc, mayhem and death spreading across the Middle East.

A Bleak Future of Conflict for Egypt.

'General Abdul Fattah al Sisi, who last week announced his candidacy for president and will almost certainly get the job. And I can't help comparing the behaviour of the institutions around Mubarak with the current behaviour of the state institutions'. ( Khaled al-Berry ,Why Egypt is in a spiral of despair The Guardian 2 April 2014 )

One reason for the militancy of the Muslim Brotherhood is the fact that it is seen to represent poorer sections of Egyptian society. It appeals especially those migrated into Egypt's burgeoning and overpopulated cities, especially Cairo, from rural areas for work and a university education to improve their life chances.

Unfortunately, Egypt's economy has struggled to keep pace with the population growth. The 'Arab Spring' was as much a revolt of the hungry due to the high price of bread as there is not enough land within Egypt to grow enough wheat and the global crop was affected by the 2010 fires in Russia.

Moreover, oil revenue has declined as peak production rates were reached in 1996 and have been declining since. That has led to a balance of payments crisis and the IMF demand to cut subsidies on fuel and bread, measures that the MB's President Morsi agreed to and that failed to stem popular anger.

The return of a Mubarak era strongman in the form of Sisi was always highly probable given the combination of economic collapse, political instability and the consequent fear that the MB's attempt to 'Islamise' Egypt would drive up militancy and drive off tourists and hence a much needed source of income.

The problem is that the reimposition of an effective secular military leader, after the way the MB was crushed and its leaders jailed or purged from administrative positions, is that it has led to militants seeing Sisi as Sisi's supporters also see Islamists; as tools of US imperialism.

Sisi's military regime continues to be supported by the USA as part of its geopolitical strategy of protecting Israel as well as the Suez Canal and the oil and gas pipelines running through Egypt. Militants from the poorer underclass and bedouins have sought to threaten the security of North Sinai.

Since August 2013 an effective civil war has been raging on the Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian military's ruthless counter-terrorist measures against the Bedouins having the opposite effect of pushing even more from these poorer regions of Egypt towards belonging to Islamist guerilla groups.

One reason the British government is considering a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain is the fear of 'blowback' from those angry at the way the west allowed Sisi to crush what was considered by many in Egypt a democratically elected government in order to preserve its interests such as the BG group's stake in Egyptian gas production.

Egypt's economic crisis is not going to abate unless it attains political stability but if that comes at the cost of an election in which the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, it is hard to see how deep divisions and the threat to Egypt's tourist revenue from jihadist attacks can be prevented.

Moreover, pipelines pumping oil and gas within and through Egypt have been targeted as they have in Algeria and Libya in the past. The pipeline to Israel was attacked in 2012. Fears of an attack on the Suez Canal's container traffic of oil and gas persists. The prospect for peace in Egypt looks extremely bleak.

Crisis in Egypt: From Libya to Sinai and Syria.

News of Mubarak's imminent release looks likely to inflame a highly volatile mood in Egypt. It comes after the army's clearance of two Cairo protest camps last week, which sparked bloodshed in which at least 900 people have been killed and unprecedented polarisation..'

The prospect of Hosni Mubarak making a comeback is yet another blow to the hope of a 'political' solution being found by EU statesmen and envoys as they mill around in Brussels and utter vacuous statements about an "urgent review" of the $5 billion they give in aid.

The Egyptian military is large self financing from having over a third of the the economy of Egypt under its control. Having said that, the 2011 revolt against Mubarak empowered the military whose top generals had come to resent Mubarak's nepotism.

The real problem is the potential for destabilisation in the Sinai Peninsula after 26 policemen were shot dead. One reason the US is wary of going against the Egyptian military in spite of the coup and the attempt to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood is that there is no other force that can ensure security there.

The Egyptian army knew that if they were to launch a military campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, as part of its remit of 'counter terrorism' that the US has supported, the upsurge in jihadism would only serve to make them even more indispensible to external powers.

The threat to the border with Israel, and Saudi Arabia which is just across the Gulf of Aquaba, can only escalate if there was protracted violence in Egypt. Many unemployed angry young men who supported the Muslim Brotherhood will be tempted to turn to join terrorist groups.

The security of Sinai has been deteriorating since Britain and France helped insurgents in Libya overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in 2012. Weapons have been smuggled in to Sinai from Libya where jihadists have retained their arms and are irate at the way Western backed elites grabbed the oil pie for themselves.

Since 2012 Libya has been in a state of chaos. 30,000 have died since the West's military intervention ended. Many battle hardened jihadists moved to Syria after the collapse of the Gaddafi regime and will be spoiling for a fight in Egypt. Bedouin tribesmen are also hostile to the Egyptian state.

The chaos in Egypt emboldened jihadists to try and cause problems on the border from the outset of the coup. On July 4 2013 militants in the Mazar area blew up a gas pipeline to Jordan and Israel. On July 7 another bomb attack happened near El-Arish in North Sinai.

This upsurge of jihadist violence happened before the Egyptian military upped the ante and started clearing the street camps and mowing down Muslim Brotherhood protesters. The Izzadeen al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, is already protesting for Morsi.

Historically, Hamas is an ideological offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. But it is isolated not just by the coup in Egypt, which sends the signal that only armed resistance is needed, but also by the fact that Iran cut off its funding after it broke off from Hizbollah.

The Syrian Civil War caused the old unity against Israel between Hamas and Hizbollah to fracture on sectarian lines. Feeling threatened , Hamas has condemned the massacre in Egypt and the Egyptian military could potentially react with violence to attacks coming from Gaza.

Within the Gaza Strip, there are already divisions about whether to stay in or out of conflict with Egypt and possibly, by extension, Israel. The air strike in Rafah on August 9 against militants has led to conjecture it was an Egyptian helicopter attack or Israeli drone strike.

The spectre of a joint Egyptian-Israeli action in Sinai is one clearly wanted by Al Qaida affiliated fanatics such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem), has already led to retaliatory rocket attacks on Eilat in southern Israel.

A BBC report three hours ago underscored the terrifying prospect of a regionwide conflagration, ( Sinai attacks: Dark omen for Egypt?)

'American officials are also worried that the generals might respond to an aid cut-off by suspending security co-operation or even allowing conditions in Sinai to worsen. That, in turn, might inflame Gaza and jeopardise the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, recently resumed after considerable American diplomatic effort.

Instability in Sinai has also resulted in repeated attacks on gas pipelines to Jordan, putting pressure on the fragile economy of a key American ally.

Sinai may be a dark omen of things to come in Egypt.

If the government acts on its threat to ban the Brotherhood, then the group's more radical and violent Islamist counterparts, including those in Sinai, will have a surfeit of recruits.

State repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950 and 1960s drove it underground and was instrumental in shaping the ideology of the modern, international jihad. The present leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was a young member of the Brotherhood who moved from Islamism to jihad in that period.

Today, that process would have the added advantages of social media, weak states like Libya on Egypt's border, and the context of flourishing al-Qaeda affiliates in places like Yemen and Syria.

 The situation in Egypt has the hallmarks of a serious global crisis. If the Sinai Peninsula becomes haven for terrorists, attacks on the Suez Canal and on oil and gas pipelines could cause potential disruption to oil supplies to Europe and the US as well as the import and export of global cargo.

Should Egypt founder deeper into violence, the chaos could spread even into Saudi Arabia creating an oil price shock and the global economy to go into meltdown. The entire framework of international relations could change dramatically and dangerously.