Word: egyptians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Billowing plumes of dust high into the air, a column of heavy tanks rumbles across the flat Arabian desert just south of the Kuwaiti frontier. The M-60s are American-made, but their crews are Egyptian. Five miles away, a cluster of British-built Chieftain tanks are poised with their guns pointed toward the border. This detachment is part of a Kuwaiti army brigade that managed to escape the Iraqi invaders. "Our mission," says Colonel Ibrahim Al-Wasmi, the unit's deputy commander, "is to return to Kuwait...
...question is whether the Arabs would carry the fight across the border into Kuwait. The Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, said early in the crisis that his country could not be used as a launching pad for an attack on Iraq without King Fahd's approval. Commanders of the Egyptian and Syrian units have said their troops are deployed to defend Saudi Arabia and not for offensive operations. While a United Nations resolution authorizing force against Saddam Hussein might galvanize the Islamic forces, for some of them the thought of killing their "Arab brothers" is still a strong deterrent...
...Egyptian armored units have been slow to arrive, and only 300 tanks are on station in the desert so far. Those are mostly older M-60s, slower and packing less punch than the new M-1 Abrams. One big advantage: Egyptian forces have been training with the U.S. army for several years in biannual Bright Star maneuvers in Egypt...
...many who wear it, it is freedom -- not just from the tyranny of Western culture but also from unwanted sexual advances. In Cairo veils have become so popular that fashion shows are occasionally staged to show off new styles. Says Leila Takla, a Christian member of the Egyptian parliament: "As long as women are covering their heads and not their minds, it is an individual expression." Unfortunately, however, as laws are revised and rights withdrawn, the cloaking of Islamic women grows ever more profound...
...just how vulnerable these governments have become. While no one claimed responsibility for killing el- Mahgoub, who was shot in his car by four gunmen who escaped on motorcycles, authorities said the murder probably was carried out either by a foreign hit squad, most likely Palestinians, or by Egyptian Muslim fundamentalists...