The North County Times February 11, 2011
MILITARY: Marines' relationship with Egyptian military enters uncertain phase
By Mark Walker
Among the unknowns confronting the Pentagon in the wake of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's resignation is whether U.S. Marines will continue to train with their Egyptian counterparts.
Every two years since 1981, the American and Egyptian troops and some from other Middle Eastern nations friendly to the U.S. have taken part in Exercise Bright Star.
The exercise is overseen by U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for North Africa and the Middle East and is headed by Marine Gen. James Mattis, former head of the I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.
The war game was born out of the 1978 Camp David accords that resulted in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty one year later.
That joint training, and a more-than-two-decade history of Egyptian officers attending U.S. military schools, have led to close ties between the men commanding the armed forces of the two countries.
How much of a role those ties may have played in Mubarak's decision to resign and hand power over to the military was unknown in the hours immediately after the longtime ruler's departure.
John Pike of the defense monitoring firm GlobalSecurity.org said he thinks Egypt will move quickly to re-establish civilian rule.
"Egypt is starting to look like Turkey, where the military is not too sure how deeply involved in the political system it wants to be," Pike said Friday. "The people running the election will want to distance themselves from Mubarak."
In the weeks ahead, the U.S. is likely to be the target of increasing criticism among ordinary Egyptians, Pike predicted.
"Everyone will want to blame someone for the mess the country is now in, and that has to be the Americans, since we propped him (Mubarak) up for so long."
If the scheduled September elections go ahead as planned, Pike predicted the Muslim Brotherhood will have a good showing if allowed to field candidates. The group was outlawed under Mubarak, and observers fear it would bring a hard-line, anti-U.S. stance to any government formed.
Just who's really running the country, and for how long, should become clearer in the next few days, Pike said.
"The real problem today is, we don't really understand who is in charge," he said. "Has the constitution been suspended? When is the election going to be?"
In the meantime, planning for the next Exercise Bright Star will go ahead "until further notice," he said.
© Copyright 2011, North County Times - The Californian
