Egypt MOD updates

Posted on By 3arabawy

The Pentagon has awarded

Amentum Services Inc., Chantilly, Virginia, … a $591,653,634 cost reimbursable, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) supportability follow-on technical support to provide eligible foreign navies access to a broad range of life cycle support, systems upgrades, systems integration, and other related efforts associated with the transfer and acquisition, operation, and maintenance of naval vessels and systems within their inventory. Work will be performed within the continental U.S. (55%), and outside the continental U.S. (OCONUS) (45%). Work will be performed OCONUS in Iraq (25%); Egypt (25%); the Philippines (10%); and various countries to be determined (40%).

In other news, Deputy Defense Minister Maj. Gen. Khaled Megawer was in Russia last week, attending the 11th Moscow Conference on International Security. He discussed with Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense Colonel General Alexander Fomin “holding joint combat training events in 2023.”

Khaled Megawer in Moscow

Megawer is the former director of the Military Intelligence Authority.

The curse of Rabaa

Posted on By 3arabawy

David Hearst quoted me in his opinion piece on the tenth anniversary of the massacre:

Hossam el-Hamalawy, a journalist and activist who played a key role in the revolution of 2011, well remembers the mood among the Egyptian left.
“Most of the left-wing organisations in Egypt regarded Islamists as fascists. They lumped the Muslim Brotherhood and radical jihadis in one basket and used to claim the relationship between the two is a division of labour,” he said. “One could excommunicate and the other would assassinate.
“The left supported not just Rabaa, but all the killings that happened after the coup. They framed it as a war on fascism. Some of them came up with the rationalisation that it was two wings of the counter-revolution fighting each other. ‘It’s not our fight, so let them finish each other off’.”
But that is not what happened. After the generals had finished off the Brotherhood, they turned their fire on the left, and they soon ended up in the same cells as the Brotherhood. Some paid for their support of the military with their lives. Others languish in prison to this day.
“History will never forgive them. And I don’t think that any of them actually has issued a statement of apology for their position regarding Rabaa,” Hamalawy told Middle East Eye in an extended interview from his new home in Berlin.
“And the sad thing is that if they had their time again, they would repeat the same mistake.”