NEWS CLICK
http://youtu.be/1Axtbfp69Xo
Egypt has retaliated to the beheading of Egyptian Christians by ISIS through bombing and targeting their network in Libya. Newsclick interviewed Prof. Aijaz Ahmed, well know political commentator to discuss the latest events in West Asia and North Africa, particularly with Jordan and Egypt attacking ISIS.
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Prabir Purkayastha (PP): Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today, we have with us Prof. Aijaz Ahmad, a well known political commentator to discuss latest events which have rocking West Asia, and North Africa and the west calls Middle East. Aijaz, we already had this issue about Libya now been drawn into air strikes by the Egyptian armed forces essentially been in response to Egyptian Christians being killed there. Earlier, we had similar kind of thing with Jordan. Jordanian Airforce bombing ISIS or IS whatever now it’s been called. Do you think the war that was started essentially in Syria then spread to Iraq back and forth now is getting much larger?
Aijaz Ahmad (AA): Well, I think that’s one way of looking at this new sort of alignment with Islamic terrorist and so forth. The Libyan group is the group that has become the part of the IS but I think that is something else that is specifically Egyptian which is connected with this. One, Egypt has been on the one hand going after Islamists in the Sinai alleging them to be connected with Al Qaeda or more often with Hamas and so on. More recently, after the Davos meeting, when he returned Sisi with accolades from all over the West, came back and called upon Egyptians to help him. So this escalation against the Islamic terrorist on the part of Egypt is I think is also tied up with increasing difficulty at home with Muslim Brotherhood and so on and he wants to somehow tie up the Hamas, Sinai and that’s particularly Egyptian, the decision that IS that he has taken. The other part in this is again specifically Egyptian Sisi has not waged against Bashar Al Assad. He has improved his ties with the Russian. More recently they are trying to put up a group of opposition leaders distinct from the existing defunct one that the West has been pushing overlapping with it for mediation in Syria. That links up with the new scenario which developing of creating of, Jordan you mentioned, changing its colours. It has been supporting all of those Jehadis and now bombing them etc. In that I think we will also have to watch Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are not feeling the heat of the IS which has called for strikes inside Saudi Arabia and there has been a shift in dispensation in Riyadh.
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