Egypt Security Sector Report

This week’s dispatch includes reports on Egypt and the regional wars, the regime’s new political party, foreign military cooperation, the Egyptian Military Academy, the militarization of education, Egyptians executed in Saudi Arabia, refugees, aviation, prisons, security crackdowns, as well as a review of a new book authored by a 1973 War sapper.

📁 Palestine, Syria

• According to news reports on Monday, Syria’s new leader, Ahmed el-Sharaa, appointed around 50 former insurgents to the restructured Syrian Arab Army and gave them official ranks, including some foreigners—at least two are Egyptians:
  Alaa Mohamed Abdel Baqi was given the rank of colonel. He had joined the Nusra Front and was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison on terror charges by an Egyptian court in 2018.
  Assem Rashed Hawwari was also given the rank of colonel.

• Having declared Egypt’s support for Assad just three days before his ouster, FM Badr Abdelatty waited three weeks before calling his new Syrian counterpart Asaad Hassan al-Shibani on Tuesday and urged the de facto authorities to practice “inclusivity.”

• Until this moment, neither the Egyptian nor Israeli governments have made any public statements on the killing of an 18-year-old Egyptian on 21 December by rocket from an Israeli F-16I Sufa in Sinai during the downing of a Yemeni drone.

  

• Abdel Rahman al-Qaradawi, Egyptian poet and regime critic, was detained by Lebanese authorities on 28 December 2024 at the Masnaa border crossing upon returning from Syria, where he celebrated Bashar al-Assad’s fall. Holding Turkish citizenship, he was arrested on an Egyptian warrant after being sentenced in absentia to five years on fabricated terror charges.

• Egypt banned the entry of Syrians without a prior security permit, including Syrians with Egyptian spouses, on Friday. However, Syrians who already have a residency permit in Egypt are exempt from that decree.
  Syrian refugees and residents in Egypt face an uncertain future as new regulations may jeopardize their right to remain in the country after al-Assad’s ouster.

• An Egyptian aid plane touched down at Damascus Airport on Saturday, carrying Cairo’s first humanitarian delivery since the toppling of al-Assad. On the same day, FM Abdelatty discussed the situation in Gaza and Syria in a phone call with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

• Security forces raided the flat of Syrian refugee and activist Laith al-Zoubi on Saturday in Hurghada. The reasons remain unclear, and some speculate it is because of a recent interview he conducted with the Syrian Consul, where he demanded raising the Syrian revolution flag on the embassy building in Giza.

• Speaking yesterday to the GIS-run Al-Qahera News, an Egyptian government source denied reports from Israeli media claiming that Egypt was preparing for military intervention in Yemen amid tensions in the Red Sea. The source described these reports as “misleading and baseless.”

📁 The Regime’s New Party

Last Monday, former cabinet officials, retired generals, and Sisi loyalists gathered at the military-owned Al Massa Hotel in the New Administrative Capital to launch the National Front Party—the regime’s latest attempt to “manufacture politics” in the country.

Though he sponsored the preliminary meetings for the party’s launch, officials said Ibrahim el-Orjani was not to become a party member. He was not present at the launch. In all cases, it’s a trivial technicality. After all, his son Essam is a founding member.

The new party will contest the parliamentary and senate elections sometime this year, along with other security services-backed parties, such as Nation’s Future and Homeland Defenders. Sisi will carefully engineer the composition of the next parliament and senate since they will most likely oversee the amendment of the constitution to ensure he remains in office beyond 2030.

📁 Military Reshuffle