GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Newsmax Source in Cairo: Riots Have Nothing to Do With Religion

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Newsmax

28January2011 10:58pmEST

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: A source on the ground in Cairo who supports the protesters and who joined the rally that triggered a brutal backlash from police Friday tells Newsmax that the uprising in Egypt has no link to Muslim extremism, nor any other religious motivation.

“It has nothing to do with religion, it has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, there were no religious connotations in this revolt,” says Ahmed, an owner of a high-tech business who has lived his entire life in the Cairo region. “People were just asking for freedom and liberty after 30 years of oppression.”

Newsmax is withholding Ahmed’s full name to avoid any chance of reprisals from his speaking to the media. This morning the government of Egypt shut down all cell phone communications, and about 85 percent of the nation’s Internet traffic, in order to block protesters’ efforts to coordinate their activities. But Ahmed was still able to speak to Newsmax via a landline.

Despite the important role played by Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, whose return to Egypt encouraged tens of thousands to pour out into downtown Cairo and Alexandria to protest the 30-year rule of strongman President Hasni Mubarak, Ahmed says the uprising in Egypt is essentially leaderless. (read full report)

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Egypt tense after bloody protest

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA

28January2011 10:48pmEST

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Protesters in the Egyptian cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez have defied a nighttime curfew and continued with demonstrations demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year presidency.

Speaking on national television in the early hours of Saturday, the president said he had ordered the government to step down and that he would name a new cabinet later in the day.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Cairo, said protesters had been "galvanised" by Mubarak's announcement that he was staying in power.

"The streets are definitely still abuzz," he said at 4am local time. "The chants have died down in the last hours but there are still many people out and about in the street despite the fact that there is a curfew supposed to have been imposed, starting from 6pm to 7am.

"The protests and the clashes with police have completely died down as a result of the fact that the police have melted away and the military has taken over."

Military armoured vehicles rolled onto the streets of the capital on Friday night in a bid to quell the protests. People cheered as the army arrived, and hundreds of people thronged around a military vehicle near Cairo's Tahrir square.

"The army is a respected establishment in Egypt, and many feel they need their support against what they see as excessive force by the police and security forces," our correspondent said. (read full report)

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING:Mubarak announces dismissal of entire government

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: JPOST

28January2011 8:32pmEST

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: CAIRO – Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fired his Cabinet early Saturday and promised reforms in his first response to protesters who have mounted the biggest challenge ever to his 30-year rule.

But many protesters were outraged by Mubarak's nationally televised address, in which he also defended the crackdown by police on tens of thousands of demonstrators that drew harsh criticism from the Obama administration Friday, and even a threat to reduce a $1.5 billion program of foreign aid if Egypt escalated the use of force.

The number of people killed in the latest day of anti-government protests in Egypt rose to 30 on Friday, with 13 people killed in the port city of Suez, al-Jazeera reported.

Nearly 20 people were also reportedly injured in the protests in Suez, with over 900 people injured throughout the country.

Mubarak's decision to dismiss Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and the rest of the Cabinet would be interpreted as a serious attempt at bringing change under normal circumstances. But on a day when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand Mubarak's ouster, it fell far short of expectations. (read full report)

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Mubarak hangs on to power as Obama dictates terms. But for how long?

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: DEBKAfile

28January2011 8:12pmEST

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: (exerpt:) DEBKAfile reports that "The coming hours will see how the protest movement responds to Mubarak's decision to hold on to power in defiance of their main rallying cry and how the army conducts itself as thousands of protesters defy the nationwide curfew decree. So far, they have not fired the machine guns on their tanks and the soldiers were welcomed although there were some cases of hostility.

According to some sources, tanks are surrounding the British and US embassies.

After announcing that US aid to Egypt would be reviewed in the light of "unfolding events," Obama laid down five conditions for Mubarak to stay on as president with US support:

1. Egyptian military and security forces must be restrained from violence against civilians. The US would defend the rights to freedom of assembly and speech everywhere.

2. Mubarak must deliver on his pledges of reforms for a better democracy and greater economic opportunities;

3. He must hold a dialogue with the opponents of his regime and abandon the use of force;

4. The shutdown of Internet and other services must be reversed.

Before Obama communicated with Mubarak, his administration was generally seen to have abandoned the Egyptian president as a write-off and thrown its support behind the protesters."

(read full report)

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Muslim Brotherhood joins Egyptian protesters. Three cities locked down

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: DEBKAfile

28January2011 11:12amEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: The Mubarak regime was badly shaken Thursday night, Jan. 27, when Egypt's most powerful opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, ordered its teeming membership to join the protest movement raging in Cairo and other cities since Tuesday after Friday (Jan. 28) prayers.

DEBKAfile's Cairo sources report that the capital's poor districts, like Shubra which houses four million inhabitants, were bustling Thursday night with preparations for street action the next day. The question on all lips now is: Can the security forces control the many millions of protesters expected to suddenly pour into city streets across the land as of Friday and defend the regime against them.

The police, almost a million security officers and units of the Interior Ministry's special units, have been on their feet for three days quelling outbreaks. They are exhausted and demoralized. They managed to keep the demonstrations from getting out of hand, but not to suppress them. Now that millions of Muslim Brotherhood loyalists have been told to throw in their lot with the protest movement, the beleaguered 82-year old President Hosni Mubarak can no longer avoid sending the army in to stem the unrest, which looks increasingly like turning into a popular revolution. (read full report)

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Egypt's defense minister bids for US backing in Washington

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: DEBKAfile

27January2011 12:59pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE:  Mubarak has sent his defense minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to Washington with an urgent request for US backing for his embattled regime against the street protest movement which gained in violence on its second day, Wednesday, Jan. 26. 

DEBKAfile's Washington sources report that in secret meetings, the Egyptian defense minister put the situation before President Barack Obama and a row of top US political, military and intelligence officials. He warned them that by advocating a soft hand with the demonstrators and responsiveness to their demands, American officials were doing more harm than good. Without a crackdown, he said, the regime was doomed.

Tantawi also warned that the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which has stood aside from the opposition protests, was merely biding its time for the right moment to step in and take over. He asked the Obama administration for an urgent airlift of advanced riot control equipment.

The American response to the case presented by Tantawi is not known. Disclosure of his trip to Washington might well add fuel to the fires of disaffection burning in cities across Egypt. The protests are spearheaded by a youth opposition coalition whose members are proud of their Arab and Egyptian identity. Evidence of the regime's collaboration with a foreign power may well heighten their resolve to battle the regime and the million security services agents which Mubarak put on the streets Wednesday.  (read full report)