American Footprints » Brian Ulrich

Hamas’s Popularity

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:15:40 +0000

Ha’aretz reports that the last Hamas leaders have left Damascus:

“A senior member of the Hamas movement politburo, Imad el-Alami, previously based in Syria, returned to the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

“Hamas sources said he was the last remaining member of the movement’s Damascus-based politburo to leave Syria.

“Hamas decided to leave Syria in order not to be seen as endorsing the regime of President Bashar Assad in his bloody crackdown against his own people.”

By leaving Damascus, Hamas has placed itself squarely on the same side as Arab public opinion, and Sunni Arabs especially. Along with Khaled Mesha’al’s decision to stand down from power within the organization, it suggests to Palestinians that the organization embodies the values of the Arab Spring. This also comes on the heels of its use of Gilad Shalit to liberate hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas may be taking advantage of these popularity boosts to attempt a comeback in the West Bank:

“According to the officials, over the past few weeks, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service have intercepted relatively large amounts of funds that Hamas activists abroad have tried to smuggle into the West Bank as part of these efforts…

“However, following last October’s prisoner-exchange deal that saw Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit freed from Hamas captivity in return for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, Hamas’ standing in the West Bank has been boosted.

“One indications of this has been the seized money, which, security officials believe, was intended to help reignite Hamas activities following a long period during which the organization had difficulty in operating in the West Bank.

“It appears that in the initial stage, Hamas is trying to spark activists back into action in various parts of the West Bank. By and large, Hamas has refrained from staging terror attacks from the West Bank in recent years, due both to operational difficulties and political considerations.”

Fatah cannot compete with this, as its signature policies of negotations and the UN statehood campaign were both stymied by the Netanyahu government with the Obama administration actively campaigning against the UN bid and acquiescing in practice to whatever Netanyahu does at the negotiating table.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Already One State

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:55:58 +0000

Much like me, Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled don’t see much future for the two-state solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They argue, however, that a single state already exists:

“Instead of pursuing the mirage of a two-state solution, would-be peace makers should recognize the fact that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in fact constitute one state that has been in existence for nearly forty-five years, the longest lasting political formation in these territories since the Ottoman Empire. (The British Mandate for Palestine lasted thirty years; Israel in its pre-1967 borders lasted only nineteen years). The problem with that state, from a democratic, humanistic perspective, is that forty percent of its residents, the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, are non-citizens deprived of all civil and political rights. The solution to this problem is simple, although deeply controversial: establishing one secular, non-ethnic, democratic state with equal citizenship rights to all in the entire area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.”

What’s striking is how intuitive this is. U.S. Presidential Rick Santorum recently committed a gaffe by saying that all the inhabitants of the West Bank were Israelis because they lived under Israeli rule. The Israeli government refuses such a formulation because giving Palestinians in the Occupied Territories citizenship would, in fact, mean that Israel is no longer “the Jewish state” as that has usually been defined. However, the fact that Santorum’s is a mistake commonly made tells you a lot about the political configuration in practice on the ground.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Shippensburg in Iraq

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:07:27 +0000

I don’t intend to become my university’s new publicist, but this month saw the beginning of an initiative to have Shippensburg assist with the development of business education in Iraq:

“The two-year grant has three components and different individuals will work on the components simultaneously. Their initial visit will be to assess the present situation. Kooti has no illusions about the state of colleges and universities in Iraq as ‘higher education has suffered significantly since the 1980s and it has continued to decline until recently.’

“The first component will be to conduct a feasibility study on establishing a center for excellence in finance and banking. ‘We will work with the government, the ministry of higher education in Iraq, as well as the private sector banking and financial (businesses) to see how we will be able to establish the center in Baghdad.’

“The second component will be to establish a center for excellence for Iraqi colleges of management and economics. ‘The objective is to improve the business programs in selected universities to improve their curriculum to update and upgrade their programs. We will look at capacity building, working with their faculty and their staff to determine what resources are needed. It will be a center for teaching excellence.’

“The third component will be to use the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) standards to assure quality of the programs, the development of administrative capacity and guidance. Grove College has long held AACSB accreditation. By employing the process that AACSB provides, Kooti believes Iraqi colleges and universities will provide a high caliber education, which will be needed as Iraq transitions into a new government, economy and way of life.”

(Crossposted to my blog)

Rafsanjani Falling

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:05:44 +0000

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as Iran’s president from 1989-1997, lost to Ahmadinejad in 2005, and was a behind-the-scenes mover of Mir Hussein Musavi’s 2009 campaign that led to the Green Movement, has been taking major political hits for at least a year, possibly as payback for his 2009 actions. Tehran Bureau reports:

“Two websites connected to Ahmadinejad and the security forces claimed that when the current term of the chairmanship of the Expediency Discernment Council expires next month, Khamenei will not reappoint Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as its Chair. Bultan News, a website linked with the security forces, speculated that Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator during the Khatami administration, will be the new Chair of the Council. Rowhani is a member of the Council, as well as the head of its Center for Strategic Studies.

“Then Shabestan News Agency, run by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, analyzed the possibility that Rafsanjani might be assassinated, but dismissed the notion, pointing out that he is no longer an influential figure after losing the Chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts and control of Islamic Azad University. He also no longer serves as the Friday prayer Imam of Tehran. It then speculated that he will not be reappointed as the Chairman of the Council.

“Since the June 2009 presidential election, the hardliners’ pressure on Rafsanjani has increased tremendously. In addition to losing all his influential posts, the website that reflected his views has been blocked, his daughter Faezeh Hashemi has been sentenced to six months in jail, and his 16-year-old grandson is under investigation. The family of one his sons has also been barred from leaving Iran.

“As a result of a quasi-coup, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has finally succeeded in taking control of the Islamic Azad University, Iran’s largest university system, one of the largest of its kind in the world. It happened at the end of a meeting of the board of trustees of the university, which Rafsanjani leads. After the former president and his supporters left the meeting, the representatives of Ahmadinejad’s camp on the board announced that Farhad Daneshjoo, a brother of the Minister of Science, Research and Technology, which overseas the universities, has been elected by the board as the new president of the university, replacing Rafsanjani’s ally Dr. Abdollah Jasbi, who has led the university since its inception in 1982. Rafsanjani said that he will not sign the order for Daneshjoo’s appointment, but Daneshjoo has said that he will not back down because the Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution, an extra-constitutional body that control cultural affairs, has confirmed him as the new president of the university.”

Some of that is unconfirmed or still being battled over, but the trend is clear. Leadership of Islamic Azad University is a big deal financially as well as politically, as it has well over one million students. It has been the scene of political fighting at least since mid-2010.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Al-Qaeda and Syria’s Uprising

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:48:12 +0000

Nicholas Blanford examines the question of whether al-Qaeda is involved in Syria’s uprising:

“The Assad regime insists that the opposition protests that have rocked the country since March are being driven by ‘armed terrorist groups’ and ‘Islamic militants.’ It has blamed Al Qaeda for three suicide bomb attacks over the past month against security offices in Damascus, which left 70 people dead.

“Analysts say there is little proof – at least for now – that suggests that Al Qaeda, or its militant affiliates, are seeking to play an active role in the Syrian uprising…

“(However,) as the violence has steadily worsened, some commentators on jihadist websites are openly calling for waging a jihad against the Assad regime. In November, Osama al-Shehabi, the leader of Al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, called for an armed struggle in Syria.

“‘The regime’s brutal oppression of the Syrian people proves that it is time to change direction and use real weapons against the regime,’ he wrote in an article that was published by the Shumoukh al-Islam online forum. ‘The revolution is a jihad; it is a war; prepare for jihad for God; scrutinize your intentions and take up arms, for they are your obligation.’

“Last month the jihadist website Minbar al-Tawhid Wa al-Jihad posted a fatwa, or religious edict, by an influential Salafist cleric, in which he sanctioned the use of violence against the Assad regime.

“‘Why do you insist on confining yourselves to peaceful protests?’ wrote Sheikh Abu Mundhir al-Shinqiti. ‘Is it a disgrace to kill those who kill us?… It has come to a stage where nothing will avail except taking up arms.’”

The answer to the question probably depends on the meaning of “al-Qaeda.” The intelligence coup from the Bin Laden raid revealed that al-Qaeda central did have a larger coordinating role over al-Qaeda branded groups than most scholars had previously suspected. However, all these local groups still had their own levels of affiliation, as well as favored local causes. The Libyan Islamic Fighters Group was always primarily interested in their struggle against Qadhafi, and now that he’s gone, there’s been no evidence of their attacking other topics. It sounds like Lebanon’s Fatah al-Islam has an interest in the Syrian cause, as well. Even then, however, if Syria did rank high on the agenda of the al-Qaeda movement as a whole, I’d expect to see more happening in Aleppo, which as I recall had an underground jihadist community which supported foreign fighters en route to Iraq.

(Crossposted to my blog)

2011 in Arab History

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:51:07 +0000

One year ago yesterday, I noticed a news item about protests in southern Tunisia. Although I had intended to take a blogging break until after the new year, I sensed in these protests a new social movement of some significance, and so put up a post, and continued following the story the next two days (1, 2, 3). I definitely did not expect them to succeed in toppling the regime, and even when they did I was skeptical that they would lead to similar movements elsewhere. They did, however, and the result was what many have called the “Arab Spring,” a year of popular activism which toppled old regimes and led to a rebirth of hope across the Arab world.

As a historian, I recognize the hubris in the title of this post, since we can only speculate what the immediate consequences of these uprisings might be, much less what will stand out about them after decades or a century. At most, we can say that these events will continue to be contested in political rhetoric, secondary education classrooms, and public history displays, as politicians and various social forces strive to shape their legacy and place themselves within it. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile to offer some thoughts about aspects of these ongoing events that, to me at least, seem early candidates for consideration.

One of these aspects may lie in their origins. Leaving aside Kuwait, where popular protests have been having an impact for years, we can look at a group of countries where monarchies with colonial ties were, in the name of national independence, replaced by regimes based in the military or other security services. This also usually led to different social classes gaining power and influence in society, as the old urban notable and landowning families saw themselves targeted as a rival power center. Something like this also happened in Iraq in 1958, although the 2003 Anglo-American invasion meant that the successor regime of the 1958 “revolution” was gone before the year started. The exception which proves the rule is Syria, which had not had a king since 1920, but where the governing National Bloc was still based on the power of the old notables and landowners. As others have noted, the states which did not have these upheavals, which means those that remain monarchies today, as well as Lebanon and Algeria, have also seen little “Arab Spring” action. This is enough of a pattern that it could point toward some interesting socio-political roots of what we’ve seen in the past year and are seeing now.

Those regimes which had the least social basis fell most swiftly. Tunisia’s wealthy elite wasn’t going to take up arms to defend Ben Ali, and Egypt’s military chose to manage the transition rather than prop up Mubarak. Other countries have seen tribal or sectarian groups who stood to lose a benefactor fight on behalf of the old system, as happened with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. A key issue going forward will be the ability of new government forms to have a broad constituency among the populace, ideally through elections providing for a rotation of power.

This, however, is tied to another issue. One framework we have seen the past year is that “the nation,” meaning the people, is rising up against internal oppressors so as to establish a new government on its own behalf. One question now is how the “nations” will be defined, or what identities will be on people’s minds as they act politically. In Iraq, probably moreso than under Saddam Hussein, loyalty to a community of Sunnis, Shi’ites, or Kurds competes with that to Iraq as a whole. Those “Arab Spring” countries with religious differences will face the question of deciding if those differences preclude national unity. This issue might be most explosive in Syria, but for the moment, it is also a subject for discussion in Egypt, where salafis see Christians not as equal citizens, but as a subject population under Muslim rule.

2011 also shows signs of introducing new norms into Arab political life, as the Arab League is now willing to at least pretend to be upset by rulers oppressing their people, especially if those people are Sunni Arabs. In addition, peaceful mass protests have become for many the preferred form of political action, even affecting Hamas rhetoric. This still doesn’t work if the government shoots back too much, but then it never has. This development, along with the death of Osama bin Laden, may have completely eliminated the already marginal al-Qaeda-like voices from the Arab political landscape, and could become a thorn in regimes’ sides for decades to come.

I have mostly ignored Bahrain in this because it really doesn’t fit the pattern, but I don’t think interferes with it, either. Although its activists joined in the “Arab Spring” wave, their models are more Kuwait and Iraq than Tunisia and Egypt, and unfortunately, it is a country where mass protests appear to have been successfully contained, though they continue in rural areas. Bahrain shows the effects of the troubling sectarian political framework emanating from Iraq which may prove the region’s biggest challenge in the 21st century.

All this is not to proclaim the “Arab Spring” over, especially in the cases of Syria and Bahrain. As I said, it is simply a pause for reflection on the past year, thinking about where it might have come from and what challenges and opportunities might lie ahead, as the Arab world enters what will clearly be a new phase of its political history.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Requiem for a Two-State Solution

Brian Ulrich — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:23:24 +0000

Carlo Strenger believes a two-state solution is no longer a viable option in the Arab-Israeli conflict:

“Nousseibeh suggested (in a recent book that) the Palestinians relinquish their struggle for statehood. He even asked them to accept that, for a long time, they would not have full political rights, and that they should settle for civic and human rights to make life as bearable as possible. His deeply pessimistic conclusion was that, given the realities, the human cost of continuing the struggle for a Palestinian state was too high…

“From a historical perspective, the two state solution’s demise was, maybe, inevitable. Except for six years, the Likud has been in power for the last thirty-five years, and the Likud never relinquished its dream of the greater land of Israel. When Rabin won elections for Prime Minister in 1992, both he and Peres felt that this was a last chance; they believed that what they would not achieve in Rabin’s term would not be achieved at all.

“Rabin had to govern, with a minority of the Knesset supporting him, and Israel’s right never felt that he had a mandate for the Oslo process. Netanyahu spoke at demonstrations where crowds held posters depicting Rabin as a Nazi. He was later recorded taking pride in having killed off the Oslo process.

“Now he can take partial credit for having killed the two state solution. The other half goes to the Palestinians: As Mahmoud Abbas said more than a year ago, the Palestinian’s greatest mistake was the second Intifada. Indeed, together with Hamas’ win of the elections in 2006 and the shelling of southern Israel, the Intifada’s horrible violence has made Israelis averse to taking further risks for peace.”

I am not the one to say whether Strenger is right. I would still like to believe it could work, but do not see a realistic chance of it happening under Netanyahu’s leadership. Whether two states remain possible depends on the combination of facts on the ground and the political will to alter them. I cannot judge the former, and perhaps given the latter, it might be better to say that it has entered a persistent vegetative state from which no recovery is foreseeable.

How one apportions blame depends largely on what you think happened in the diplomacy under Ehud Barak in 2000. I’m not even going to attempt to untangle that mass of conflicting assertions. Strenger is right that the Second Intifada strangled the Israeli peace camp, but that in turn flowed from a belief in Israeli perfidy during negotiations. The uprising’s most violent aspects were also the terrorist attacks on civilians inside Israel, and in the history of the conflict’s violence, one should not forget that Hamas only turned to those tactics and made them a key part of its struggle after Baruch Goldstein committed the Hebron massacre in 1994, a massacre which stemmed directly from the inclinations toward ethnic cleansing on the part of many in the settler movement which the Israeli state tries to control, but also supports with defense and infrastructure. What Hamas did, in other words, was escalate dirty warfare in the region, not introduce it.

Strenger also addresses the future:

“Our long-term task is to develop new models of dealing with the emerging reality. I wish I could say something clear and constructive, but for the time being I can’t. I have not yet seen realistic models other than the two state solution.

“The one state solution, at this point, is an empty concept, so is that of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. For neither case can I imagine how the parliament of the greater Israel-Palestine would function, or how equality of all citizens with respect to security could be achieved: I agree with Sari Nousseibeh that Jewish history from the Pogroms through the Holocaust, from the 1948 war to that of 1973, is too traumatic for Israelis to relinquish control of security for a long time to come…

“I am afraid that Israel will lose many friends in the gradual process of finalizing its sovereignty over the West Bank. Netanyahu and Lieberman have already aggravated many politicians and supporters of Israel, ranging from Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. And they have deepened the alienation many Jews in the Diaspora feel towards the current government’s policies that they cannot accept.”

I actually think that what will happen is that, within 10-20 years, Israel will impose Netanyahu’s vision of disconnected cantons with nominal sovereignty under Israeli domination. The path toward any one-state solution depends on demographics and, perhaps, the fate of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Iraq after the U.S.

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:45:43 +0000

Shortly after the official end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved against high-ranking Sunnis in his government:

“On December 18, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki requested the dismissal of his deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq…

“The next day, December 19, an arrest warrant was issued for Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi, also a Sunni, on terrorism charges.

“On December 20, Mutlaq was prevented from entering the cabinet building in Baghdad. The same day, vehicles in which two Sunni politicians were travelling in the west of the capital came under fire, apparently from members of the Iraqi security forces.

“Although Mutlaq and Hashemi are the two most senior Sunni Arabs in positions of power, the authorities insist the proceedings against them have nothing to do with sectarian politics.

“State-run television last week showed what purported to be the confessions of Hashemi’s bodyguards, in which they said they assassinated health and foreign ministry officials and Baghdad police officers. They alleged that Hashemi paid them 3,000 US dollars for each attack…

“Hashimi left Baghdad and went to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north after security forces raided his home and office and arrested some of his staff…

“On December 21, the prime minister made it clear he no longer felt bound by the power-sharing agreement in which posts are shared out among Iraq’s various ethnic and confessional groups. Instead, he announced, he would be setting up a new majority-based cabinet.”

The story here is that while Iraq today is politically freer with far more democratic features than it had under Saddam Hussein, the game being played is still one of which faction will dominate the state and the webs of government patronage that makes possible. In the decades prior to the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, the nation was ruled through the Ba’ath Party, which was dominated by military officers from the Sunni regions around Baghdad where power was concentrated under the Ottomans and British. After the complete collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, power passed to militias, either Shi’ites trained by Iran or Sunni units rooted in the old Iraqi army and augmented by foreign salafi fighters. The Sunnis wound up losing that civil war, which was at its peak from 2006-2009 and saw the end of mixed neighborhoods as people were forced to join their co-religionists for their own protection.

Prime Minister al-Maliki came to office through elections, but his power also rests on his dominance of a government which controls much of the economy and security services dominated by veterans of those same Shi’ite militias. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Sunnis live as refugees elsewhere in the Arab world, and al-Maliki’s government is in no hurry to repatriate them. This is why Iraq’s government is widely perceived, not as democracy, but as control by a sectarian strongman, and why those elsewhere in the Arab world always cited it as a negative example rather than a model. This is also why, over the past few months, Sunni regions have begun seeking autonomy:

“In recent months, Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala Provinces have each pushed for a public vote on creating their own regional governments…

“Early Friday morning, Iraqi police commandos arrested a leading advocate of Salahuddin Province’s push for regional status and seized his computer and reams of documents, security officials said. They did not say why he had been detained.

“The provinces are not seeking a total divorce from the rest of Iraq, just a wider separation in the mold of Kurdistan, the relatively prosperous and safe area in northern Iraq. The Kurds, who have lived for decades as a people apart from the rest of Iraq, have their own Parliament and president, command their own security forces and have signed lucrative oil deals with foreign companies without Baghdad’s approval.”

American forces have withdrawn, but the future of the country remains undecided. Its leaders treat their posts as fiefdoms through which to build their own power bases, and the general public fears a collapse of the security situation should competition among those leaders get too out of hand. Furthermore, the empowerment of a previously disadvantaged Shi’ite population has come at the direct expense of Iraq’s Arab Sunnis, and that fact, kept firmly in Arab consciousness by the refugee problem, has been perhaps the most significant ingredient in a spike in anti-Shi’ite attitudes among Sunnis throughout the region. I will not say the country was better off under Saddam Hussein, but no one should pretend for political reasons that the U.S. has mid-wifed a stable democracy rather than a weak yet abusive state in a battered society which serves, not as a model of freedom, but a source of instability.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Onward, Egyptian Democracy

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:06:30 +0000

The first round of voting in Egypt’s three-stage elections indicates that the new parliament will be dominated by Islamist parties. The areas that voted this week were more liberal than Egypt as a whole, and yet the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have upwards of 40% of the seats, or about what they were expected to do nationwide. More surprisingly, Salafis strongly overperformed expectations to win about 25% of the vote. As the New York Times reports:

“If the majority proves durable, the longer-term implications are hard to predict. The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

“Their leaders have sometimes proposed that a special council of religious scholars advise Parliament or the top courts on legislation’s compliance with Islamic law. Egyptian election laws required the Salafi parties to put at least one woman on their electoral roster for each district, but they put the women last on their lists to ensure they would not be elected, and some appear with pictures of flowers in place of their faces on campaign posters.”

Egypt’s liberals are despondent, and there is concern for the future of civil liberties in Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood decides to move in a more conservative direction to co-opt the salafis. My belief, however, is that the path forward is to establish a stable democratic system in which free elections become the norm. This means, in fact, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to speed the transition to civilian rule. Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna himself cited elections as something to admire about Western civilization, as it allows people to hold their leaders accountable, force those leaders to take into account the popular will and the condition of the country as a whole instead of just themselves and their own patronage networks.

Although Western political commentators assert as a given that all Islamist commitments to democratic principles is deceptive window dressing and that their true agenda is “one person, one vote, one time,” evidence for that is scanty. After the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini installed an “Islamic Republic” which still has lots of democratic features, and which even with its undemocratic elements happens to be what he stood for before the 1979 revolution. In Turkey and so far Tunisia, Islamist parties have maintained their democratic commitments. In Algeria and the Palestinian Territories, Islamist election victories were followed by chaos, but in both of those case the ruling powers acted undemocratically against the election results, cancelling them in Algeria and sharply curtailing their ability to do anything in the PNA. In other words, there’s no real precedent for Islamists suddenly acting on a hidden agenda, and plenty for fear of Islamists leading to rash, undemocratic actions damaging to the polities involved.

Given this history, the liberal parties, who are losing badly because they are simply badly underdeveloped and without a long history of arguing their message in society, should consider their common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood and the prospects for forming a coalition with them rather than leave the salafis are their only willing partners. The MB, for its part, has expressed an openness to this, denied rumors they are tacitly allied with the salafis, and even advertised their willingness to put Christians in high-profile positions. The way forward for those disappointed today is not to become political insurgents in league with the SCAF, but to accepts the results of 2011 so as to make sure they have a chance to do better in future elections.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Next Phase

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:11:08 +0000

My weekend was dominated by pre-Thanksgiving binge grading, and so I’m only now getting my mind around the details of the tumult taking place, not just in Cairo, but Alexandria, the Suez Canal cities, and elsewhere around Egypt. The direct chain of events leading to the current clashes came when Deputy Prime Minister Ali al-Silmi of the SCAF’s transitional government proposed a set of “supra-constitutional principles” which he asked Egypt’s political parties to sign on to in advance of the first round of parliamentary elections November 28. These included two controversial articles putting the military beyond the control and oversight of any elected civilian government. All of the Islamist groups and some of the leftist opposition refused these conditions, and on Friday staged a major protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to pressure the SCAF into accepting a civilian-controlled government as quickly as possible. Marc Lynch explains what happened next:

“The Islamists and most other participants in the demonstration left Tahrir at the end of the rally. A few hundred people, mostly (it seems) families of the martyrs of the January 25 revolution and veterans of past Tahrir occupations, decided to launch a new sit-in. This does not seem to have been coordinated with the political strategy of the day’s demonstration. The move risked going down the same path as the July 8 demonstration, an originally successful rally which squandered its gains with a wildly unpopular occupation of Tahrir.

“But then Egyptian security forces, acting on authority which remains murky, moved in with extreme force to drive out the small group attempting to occupy Tahrir. Their over the top violence, including massive tear gas and highly abusive police behavior, seems to have then attracted the attention of the core of Egyptian activists who came running to join the fight. Instead of rapidly clearing the square, the security forces found themselves locked in an epic running battle with thousands of protestors. The momentum shifted repeatedly, with protestors holding the square and then being driven out and then returning. The security forces used massive amounts of tear gas, brute force, and weapons. That battle rages on.”

Today, on the third day of protests, the crowds have become large enough and the demonstrations geographically widespread enough to recall the days of the revolution last winter. They are demanding an end of SCAF rule, and lethal fighting continues at the entrance to the street leading to the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior. The latter point suggests that the SCAF regime’s frequent resort to violence in the face of any street opposition is the major sore point, and that a critical mass of Egyptians see the failure to rebuild the government’s internal security apparatus as an important piece of unfinished revolution business.

Aside from the SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood is the institutional political actor drawing the most scrutiny. MB leaders show a sensitivity to any slight against their potential influence, and seem to have, perhaps with some justification, interpreted the supra-constitutional principles as something akin to the Turkish tradition where the military stands on guard against Islamists. There is also muttering that this entire crisis might have been provoked deliberately to postpone the elections, in which their Freedom and Justice Party is expected to win upwards of 40% of the seats. Because of this, they are insistent that the elections go forward as scheduled, arguing that they represent the best way to bring a civilian government into power. The leftist opposition, however, seems to favor postponing the vote on the grounds the situation is too chaotic and the SCAF cannot be trusted to fairly administer it. The MB has been ambivalent towards the protests, expressing sympathy with the demonstrators grievances, refusing to participate as an organization, and yet highlighting the participation of individual MB members, especially medical personnel.

As a historian, I find it unsurprising that a revolution would traverse multiple phases, as that is simply what often happens. This is especially true when there is no ready made united opposition to assume the helm. Even in Tunisia, there were protests several weeks after Ben Ali fled to oust his prime minister, Muhammad Ghannoushi. In the Egyptian case, almost everyone seemed to put the regime’s flaws primarily on Mubarak, and so were content to leave the transition to the military. Even then, I’ve seen a steady stream of stories in which a large number of groups fight for different types of influences and changes in local communities, businesses, and other institutions. It would not surprise me if Egypt’s politics develop something like Kyrgyzstan did after the Tulip Revolution, with a steady ebb and flow of protest as groups with conflicting agendas that trust neither each other nor the system vie for influence.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Sectarianism in Homs

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 22:28:17 +0000

Anthony Shadid fears that what’s happening in Homs could be a harbinger of things to come in Syria:

“A harrowing sectarian war has spread across the Syrian city of Homs this month, with supporters and opponents of the government blamed for beheadings, rival gangs carrying out tit-for-tat kidnappings, minorities fleeing for their native villages, and taxi drivers too fearful of drive-by shootings to ply the streets…

“Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, has a sectarian mix that mirrors the nation. The majority is Sunni Muslim, with sizable minorities of Christians and Alawites, a heterodox Muslim sect from which Mr. Assad draws much of his top leadership. Though some Alawites support the uprising, and some Sunnis still back the government, both communities have overwhelmingly gathered on opposite sides in the revolt…

“Fear has become so pronounced that, residents say, Alawites wear Christian crosses to avoid being abducted or killed when passing through the most restive Sunni neighborhoods, where garbage has piled up in a sign of the city’s dysfunction…

“Even as the death toll has dropped in Homs in recent days, the sectarian strife seems to have gathered a relentless momentum that has defied the attempts of both Sunni and Alawite residents to stanch it. One prominent Sunni activist, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, used the term shabeeha — an Arabic word that refers to government paramilitaries — to describe the situation evolving inside Homs.

“‘There are shabeeha on both sides now,’ he said.”

There is a relentless logic to these kinds of identity-based conflicts by which a small number of militants can pry apart larger communities that would otherwise get along. Where public order is weak, armed fanatics will target you just for who you are. How do you respond? By finding the armed fanatics who will protect you just for who you are. We saw this dynamic play out in Iraq, especially between 2006 and 2008, when mixed Sunni/Shi’ite neighborhoods were cleansed of one group or the other. As a result of the turmoil of post-Saddam Iraq, hundreds of thousands of mainly Sunni Iraqis remain as refugees in Syria and Jordan, an everyday reminder in those countries of what many Arabs see, not entirely fairly, but also not unfairly, as an ethnic tyranny that now controls Mesopotamia.

Much as Saddam Hussein’s regime was not overtly sectarian but disproportionately favored Sunnis based on personal connections, so Ba’athist Syria supports and is supported by the Alawite communities and other religious minorities. When Sunni/Shi’ite prejudices are already high because of the Iraq situation, the more recent developments in Bahrain, and Arab fears of Iranian influence, the ground is ripe for a repeat of sectarian civil war following the collapse of a Ba’athist regime. Based on the reporting out of Syria, I fear the worst.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Nahda’s Caliphate Concept

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:54:38 +0000

This dispute over whether Tunisia’s Nahda party has a secret radical agenda briefly revealed in a leader’s comment about a caliphate is all about nothing:

“Talks on forming a coalition government halted briefly this week after a secular party questioned the motives of its moderate Islamist partner amid intense jockeying for power.

“The trouble began when Le Maghreb, a Tunisian newspaper, reported that Hamadi Jebali, secretary general of the Islamist Ennahda party and pick for interim prime minister, had likened post-Ben Ali Tunisia to a new caliphate.

“The secularist Ettakatol promptly suspended talks on forming a government, sending Ennahda scrambling to reassure its partners and public opinion of its commitment to democracy…

“‘Mr Jebali was talking to Islamists in the audience, people who think about the caliphate,’ said Said Ferjani, a member of Ennahda’s political bureau. ‘Mr Jebali said that if they want a caliphate, it’s what’s happening now: democracy.’

“Ettakatol has accepted that explanation and agreed to restart talks, said Abdellatif Abid, a co-founder of the party and member of its political bureau.”

The caliphate is actually a Qur’anic concept according to which humans are the regents of God on Earth, and probably did not become a title for an individual ruler until the Umayyad dynasty. In modern Islamist thought, the definition has gained new salience in calling believers to take upon themselves the task of setting the world to right. This is such a common usage that, particularly during a semester in which I’m teaching a course called “Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East,” I thought of it immediately when I heard of the controversy, and therefore certainly believe Nahda’s explanation. That does not mean, however, that Arabs who are suspicious of public religious movements, and there are many among Tunisians who came of age under Habib Bourguiba, would immediately recognize that just because they’re Muslims. A comparison in American politics would be when a conservative Christian candidate speaks of God “calling” them to do something, and more secular people believe they think God is really talking to them.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Kuwait Parliament Stormed

Brian Ulrich — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:21:30 +0000

Thousands of Kuwaitis stormed their country’s parliament today, calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Nasser al-Sabah:

“Thousands of Kuwaitis have stormed parliamentary buildings after police and elite forces beat protesters.

“The protesters marched earlier on Wednesday to Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad Al-Sabah’s home to demand his resignation, an opposition MP said…

“The demonstrators broke open the parliament’s gates and entered the main chamber, where they sang the national anthem and left after a few minutes.

“The police had used batons to prevent protesters from marching to the residence of the prime minister, a senior member of the ruling family, after staging a rally outside parliament…

“Some activists said they will continue to camp outside parliament until the prime minister is sacked.”

Kuwaitis have been protesting since March over a corruption scandal which has already led to the resignation of the foreign minister. Kuwaitis are not new to protests, having staged a successful 2006 “Orange Revolution” for election reform. The current prime minister’s saga shows the edges of Kuwaiti democracy, in that parliament has been inhibited from supervising him as a member of the royal family. The current political crisis has been accompanied by a wave of public sector strikes, but I haven’t been able to tell if the two are related.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Gingrich on Arab Christians

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:17:24 +0000

Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has blamed U.S. policy in the Middle East for what he calls the “anti-Christian Spring.” He needs a better fact-checker, since he also blamed Muslims for a complaint an unrelated professor at George Washington University filed against Catholic University of America. Juan Cole, meanwhile, points out how Gingrich’s stated policy preferences on the matter are incoherent, and he’s obviously just playing for evangelical votes in South Carolina. The idea that the Obama administration had anything to do with outcomes in Egypt and Tunisia is also ludicrous. In Egypt, the administration clearly supported Mubarak until it became clear he was toast, has since cast in its lot with the SCAF which is seeking to preserve whatever it can of the old regime, and may even have encouraged such a development through military-to-military back channels back in February.

What matters more to me right now is the mindset he is articulating, which I suspect is widespread in some circles, that autocratic regimes in the Middle East are necessary to protect Christian populations. This view is unacceptable if one takes seriously the human rights of non-Christians in these societies. Would Gingrich now trade al-Maliki’s government for Saddam Hussein?

The most important problem currently faced by Christians in Iraq, Egypt, and elsewhere is a security vacuum caused by regime collapse. Chaos often accompanies revolutions, as happened with the classic cases of the French, Russian, and Iranian. In Eastern Europe in 1989, it was largely avoided as the old communist regimes mostly chose to manage the transition rather than cling to power until the last possible minute. Even then, nationalist violence erupted in Yugoslavia and Karabakh when the new leaders simply didn’t have legitimacy with large swathes of the population. In Egypt, Christians have been victimized by salafi vigilantes, the SCAF trying to maintain power, and ignorant people susceptible to superstition and conspiracy theorizing. Their problem is that they are a powerless minority during a period when security is weakened. Such turmoil might be a reason to fear revolutions in general, but that’s not a viewpoint I’m hearing articulated.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Assad’s Italian Tech Support

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:56:38 +0000

Blake Hounshell flags the story of the company installing Syria’s dissent-quenching network:

“As Syria’s crackdown on protests has claimed more than 3,000 lives since March, Italian technicians in telecom offices from Damascus to Aleppo have been busy equipping President Bashar al-Assad’s regime with the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country.

“Employees of Area SpA, a surveillance company based outside Milan, are installing the system under the direction of Syrian intelligence agents, who’ve pushed the Italians to finish, saying they urgently need to track people, a person familiar with the project says. The Area employees have flown into Damascus in shifts this year as the violence has escalated, says the person, who has worked on the system for Area…

“When the system is complete, Syrian security agents will be able to follow targets on flat-screen workstations that display communications and Web use in near-real time alongside graphics that map citizens’ networks of electronic contacts, according to the documents and two people familiar with the plans.”

This company’s contract for installing the system they call “Asfador” is $18 million.

(Crossposted to my blog)