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Egypt: Countries
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Egypt is one of a limited number of countries known to have employed chemical weapons against its enemies since the end of the First World War. Despite this history of use and contemporary concerns regarding the possession and proliferation of chemical weapons there is relatively little open-source information concerning Egypt's chemical warfare (CW) programs. There is strong evidence that during their intervention in the Yemen Civil War (1963-1967) Egyptian forces employed bombs and artillery shells filled with phosgene and mustard against the Royalist troops and civilians in North Yemen. Claims that Egyptian forces ... used nerve agent in the Yemen conflict are less well substantiated. There is also some evidence pointing to Egyptian cooperation on CW issues with Syria in the 1970s and Iraq in the 1980s. However, there is relatively little evidence of ongoing Egyptian offensive CW efforts since the late 1970s.
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Egypt is the fifteenth most populous country in the world. The vast majority of its 78.8 million people (2006) live near the banks of the Nile River (about 40,000km² or 15,450sq miles) where the only arable agricultural land is found. Large areas of land form part of the Sahara Desert and are sparsely inhabited. Around half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo (the largest city in Africa and the Middle East), Alexandria and other major towns in the Nile Delta.
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In contrast to many developing countries, Egypt has a high degree of social and national integration. Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954 - 1970), Anwar al-Sadat (1970 - 1981), and Husni Mubarak (1981 - ) have all spoken proudly about Egypt's national unity, by which they mean the peaceful coexistence between the country's Muslims and Copts. This unity has been tested when Muslim extremists attacked, robbed, and occasionally murdered Copts. The Copts ... began to fear growing pressure to apply Islamic law in Egypt, which could weaken their position relative to the Muslim majority.
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Egypt has the structure of an independent judiciary, with courts of varying degrees and judicial review by a Supreme Constitutional Court and Council of State. The country's laws are based on French, English, and Islamic legal codes.
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British interest in Egypt arose from concern to protect the route to India. Napoleon's occupation in 1798 was terminated by the peace of Amiens three years later, when the country was restored to the Ottoman empire. The opening of the Suez canal in 1869 increased the strategic importance of Egypt, and British troops occupied the country in 1882. A British protectorate was declared in 1914 when Germany's alliance with the Ottoman empire posed a new threat. Nominal independence, under a constitutional monarch, was restored in 1922, but Britain maintained a military base until Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in 1952 and nationalized the canal.
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There is very limited open-source information indicating that Egypt is pursuing a biological weapons (BW) program. The country acceded to the Geneva Protocol on December 6, 1928 and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) on April 10, 1972. Most assessments by security experts indicate that while Egypt has a strong technical base in applied microbiology, it lacks the necessary infrastructure for developing or producing BW. Furthermore, there is no corroborated open-source evidence of any organized BW-related research activity. There have... been some allegations by Israel that Egypt is conducting research to develop anthrax and plague bacteria, botulinum toxin, and Rift Valley fever virus for military purposes. The Egyptian government strongly denies these accusations.
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