MFO troops in Sinai wounded by IED
According to Fox News, four US troops and two others were wounded by two IEDs last week as part of the Multinational Force and Observer mission in the Sinai. The Multinational Force and Observer mission is charged with keeping Egypt and Israel separated according to the Camp David accords of 1978.
No group has taken responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State has a well-known and active faction in the region, posing a complex security challenge for the peacekeeping force that has been there for decades. While much attention has been paid to the deployment of American troops back to Iraq to help fight ISIS, Americans make up the biggest component of the little-known international mission to Sinai — in place since after the signing of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. The roughly 1,700-strong force includes 650 American soldiers.
But with an ISIS offshoot flexing its muscle there, analysts warn they are hardly equipped to defend themselves against major attacks.
You guys probably know more about the MFO than me, but as far as I know, the mission has been left largely untouched by world events until now. Egypt was scared of Israel and Israel was glad Egypt was scared. But, ya know those ISIS guys love every chance they get to kill American troops. I guess that means that they’re going to have to dig into those overseas contingency operation funds one again to beef up security for the MFO guys.
Category: Terror War
my last unit is over there right now. I hope it was none of them. Godspeed to the mall.
“To them all” stupid auto correct. “The mall”? WTF.
Damned sad….I was with MFO from 95-96 @ South Camp; at the time it was considered a nice tour of duty with opportunities to see not just Egypt, but Israel and Jordan as well.
Stay safe.
Hoah BATTLEHARD
Doc and Meredith: Thank you for your service. I’ve been to that part of the world. Even if it’s a nice tour, it ain’t home.
I didn’t do MFO, but several friends did. Their biggest concern was getting through the EIB stations.
Given the leaky Egyptian border, in surprised that it took this long.
I’m surprised that nothing worse has happened, although there is some evidence that the Gander crash was really a terrorist attack…
The MFOexists as a result of the 1979 Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, and is therefore emblematic of the events that created modern Islamic terrorism.
The Islamic Jihad couldn’t stand the peace treaty, so they and a few other groups decided to do something about it. A guy by the name of Omar Abdel Rahmen issued a Fatwa authorizing the assassination of the Egyptian president (Anwar Sadat). They killed Sadat during a military parade (ironically) celebrating one of Egypt’s few military victory against Israel.
Rahmen was thrown in jail with a bunch of other radical Islamists, to include another guy by the name of Zawahiri (you may recognize that name). A number of bad guys with dangerous ideas got together during this period and formed the groups that would eventually become Al Qaeda.
Rahman was more of idea man and cleric than a fighter because of his blindness, which is also how he got his nickname ‘the Blind Sheik’. If you are wondering where you heard that name, he was the guy that issued the fatwa authorizing the 1993 WTC bombing.
All of this because of a peace treaty. If you think about it, Jimmy Carter did just as much as anyone else to create Al Qaeda…
Doesn’t this whole thing really go back further than Carter? All those brief shooting wars led up to the Sinai treaty, if I remember, but I do think it goes back further than that, to the end of WWI, when the geographic boundaries were redrawn.
The aftermath of WWI led to the creation of a countries we called Iraq, Syria, and another we called Saudi Arabia. Iraq was a predominantly Shia country led by Sunnis, and Syria is a Sunni country led by Shias. Saudi Arabia is the ideological home of Sunni Islamic Fundamentalism (wahhabism).
This recipe is basically responsible for the sectarian violence that gave us ISIS.
Egypt was left intact, and it was the military powerhouse that did most of the fighting when Israel was created (they used to say that the Saudis will fight Israel to the last drop of Egyptian blood).
So, yes, the real roots of the violence (aside from fundamental Islam’s incompatibility with the modern world) go back to the world order established after WWI.
The creation of Israel enraged
I say ‘we’, but it was really the Brits and the French. We came into the war a bit to late to have much of a say in the peace treaties. Besides, we were focused on getting the League of Nations off the ground…
Had the Ottoman Empire not been aligned with the Central Powers, one can only speculate if the ME would look a heck of a lot different today.
You guys should also look up how Mahatma Ghandi is responsible for millions of deaths and the fact that the most dangerous Islamic government in the world has a nuclear weapon:
http://dougsaunders.net/2007/07/india-pakistan-blame-gandhi-churchill-partition-wanted/
@ RED DEVIL, Et Alii:
Having served in the 101st Airborne, the crash at Gander, Newfoundland really hit me.
I had never heard of any suspicions of sabotage.
What is the evidence to indicate that as a possibility?
Good thing the DoD pulled hostile fire pay/imminent danger pay from that whole region in 2013 to save a few bucks.
It may only get worse. Egypt was already having a bad enough time in Sinai, that Israel had agreed to allowing more and better armed Egyptian troops into Sinai than the agreement called for. You can bet that the observer force folks took notice of that, and started getting a little worried.