Egypt's Morsi allows extremists to do as they please

[quote]
On Saturday, Morsi attended a rally by hard-line clerics who have called for jihad and spoke before a cheering crowd at a Cairo stadium, mainly Islamists.

Clerics at the rally urged Morsi to back their calls for jihad to support rebels. Morsi did not address their calls and did not mention jihad. But his appearance was seen as in implicit backing of the clerics' message. It came after a senior presidential aide last week said that while Egypt was not encouraging citizens to travel to Syria to help rebels, they were free to do so and the state would take no action against them.

Under Mubarak's 29-year rule, Egypt was a major Mideast bulwark against religious militancy. Mubarak closely cooperated with the United States and other Western nations in the hunt for extremists wanted in connection with terror attacks and dismantling the financial networks for militant groups.

In the 1990s, militants who gained combat experience fighting the Russians in Afghanistan staged an anti-government insurgency that took the lives of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians. Mubarak's security forces crushed the insurgency, and in the years that followed the groups involved renounced violence, though they maintained a hard-line ideology.

The fall of Mubarak in early 2011 and Morsi's election nearly a year ago allowed many of the former militants to come in from the cold.

A senior official at the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police and internal security, said the names of at least 3,000 militants have in recent months been removed from the wanted list posted at the country's points of entry over the past two years.

Many of the 3,000 have since Morsi taken office returned to Egypt from exile and are now freely participating in the country's Islamist-dominated politics, said the official.

The change in Egypt's approach has not gone unnoticed in the West.

Last week, Germany's Interior Ministry issued its 2012 report on domestic security in which it noted an increase in the travel to Egypt by suspected Islamic extremists, ostensibly because they wanted to live in Muslim countries or study Arabic but in some specific cases may have been really interested in joining jihadi training camps.
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/egypt-give-nod-jihadis-syria-19415822

And it seems Obama is quite happy to support Morsi:

[quote]
"We look forward to working together with President-elect Morsi and the government he forms, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States," press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
[/quote]

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/06/white-house-congratulates-egypts-morsi-127117.html

Well now in Syria we can see the shared interests between Egypt and the United States at work. Obama will provide the weapons and his buddy Morsi will provide fighters to use them.