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“Security forces attacked my home, broke our doors with sledgehammers, and terrified my family. Without any warning, without an arrest warrant and without giving any reasons; armed, masked men attacked my father. Although they said nothing, we all know that my father’s crime is being a human rights activist. My father was grabbed by the neck, dragged down a flight of stairs and then beaten unconscious in front of me. He never raised his hand to resist them, and the only words he said were ‘I can’t breathe’. Even after he was unconscious the masked men kept kicking and beating him while cursing and saying that they were going to kill him. This is a very real threat considering that in the past two weeks alone three political prisoners have died in custody. The special forces also beat up and arrested my husband and brother-in-law.
“Since their arrest, 3 days ago, we have heard nothing. We do not know where they are and whether they are safe or not. In fact, we still have no news of my uncle who was arrested 3 weeks ago, when troops put guns to the heads of his children and beat his wife severely.”
Zainab addresses a call for support to President Barack Obama:
“I am writing this letter to let you know, that if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the AlKhalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American, Syrian or a Libyan and that regional and political considerations should not be prioritized over liberty and human rights.”
I don’t know what kind of influence the U.S. can use with Bahrain on issues where the regime has decided its survival seems to be at stake, and I suspect that some in government are falling for the fear of Iran that the GCC has been peddling. If there is leverage, however, simply supporting the rights of dissidents is an appropriate place to use it.
“The protests, which are still ongoing, have not only unleashed populations’ pent-up frustrations with the KRG-party apparatus but also have reinforced fractures in Kurdish politics and society. While most Kurdish populations seek political reform, only those in Sulaimani have had the opportunity and interest to openly challenge KRG and Barzani family power. Political polarization between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was made evident after the PUK refused the deployment of KDP militia into Sulaimani, which attempted to quell a situation that its KRG partner has proven unable to manage.
“New fissures also have emerged between the KRG and its challengers — Kurdish populations it now refers to as ‘Those Who Do Not Love Kurdistan’. In fact, the entire opposition movement and protests have become highly politicized as old party feuds over leadership and control are intertwined with demands for real political reform. While the KDP and PUK accuse the opposition group, Goran, and demonstrators for being disloyal to Kurdish nationalism, Islamic parties that have joined the protestors in Sulaimani have permitted their mullahs to give sermons referring to the demonstrations as ‘a jihad against the KRG’. These political tensions have widened the Badinani-Soran rift, or the geographical polarizations between regions, that has evolved alongside the aggrandizement of Barzani-family power and weakening of the PUK since 2006, making the possibility of a truly unified Kurdish government unlikely.”
“On February 25, Arabs and Turkomans planned to protest in Kirkuk against corruption and unemployment. The Kurds believed that these protests would lead to attacks against them and sought to preempt the protests. Therefore, two days earlier, Dr. Najmaldin O. Karim, until recently a prominent spokesman for the Kurds in the United States and now a member of Iraqi parliament from the Kirkuk region, told a press conference in Baghdad that ‘[Arab] chauvinists were planning to destabilize Kirkuk during the protests’ (Kurd Net, March 3). Khalid Shwani, another Kurdish MP from Kirkuk, claimed that the Arab Political Council planned to attack numerous Kurdish administrative and security offices. The following day 8500 to 12,000 heavily-armed peshmerga, including crack units of the Zeravani (paramilitary police), were deployed just west of Kirkuk. The Arab Political Council and Turkoman Front denounced the Kurdish move and demanded its immediate withdrawal. A call for a ‘day of wrath’ to protest the peshmerga presence was only averted by a police-enforced curfew.
“On March 3, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded through a spokesman that the KRG withdraw its troops: ‘These troops were deployed without the permission of the central government and the Prime Minister has asked them to draw down immediately’ (Kurd Net, March 4). However, Shaykh Ja’afar Mustafa, the Minister of Peshmerga Affairs, announced that the Kurdish forces would not withdraw until the situation normalized (Kurd Net, March 9). He claimed that the Kurds had to protect Kirkuk from al-Qaeda, Arab groups, and Ba’athists and were acting on the basis of intelligence reports that indicated that these groups had been planning to take over the city during the protests (Kurd Net, March 9). Mustafa also asserted that the Kurds were coordinating their actions with the Iraqi army units in the region (Kurd Net, March 2).”
These events in Iraq outside Baghdad have not gotten the attention they deserve, as the type of protests seen across the Middle East are, in Iraq’s north, increasing the volatility of an already situation. On one level, there is the KRG’s stated fear for their interests in Kirkuk. On the other, there is the fact that it is easy for the challenged authorities in Iraq, in this case the KRG, to try and answer protests by standing up for the interests of the community they represent against those of other communities, and portray the opposition as traitors.
“As rumours of black mercenaries flown and trucked into Libya in their thousands have swirled about the country, poor sub-Saharan African migrant workers have borne the brunt of rebel outrage at the claims…
“The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it has become a “poisonous” atmosphere for sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, noting youth gangs this week broke down the doors to threaten an Eritrean family in hiding for three weeks, and that there are unconfirmed reports of some killed…
“Says the man in hiding: ‘Some people here among the black African community tend to support the regime purely on the basis of wanting to survive. If the rebels win, they’re going to unleash their terror on black Africans.’”
“Colonel Gaddafi had been mentor of the Arab Gathering. When relations with the Arab League sourced in the 1990′s, he turned his attention towards building strategic alliances in Africa, and opened Libya’s borders to migrant workers. But an estimated one-third of Libya’s youth were unemployed, and race riots in 2000 killed an estimated 250 black migrants. Thousands more were expelled from the country.”
Libya, incidentally, is relevant to Darfur because during the 1970′s and early 1980′s, Qadhafi sought a Saharan empire, fighting a lengthy war with Chad in which he used Darfur as a side base. Qadhafi promoted an aggressive Arab supremacy as a political movement potentially favorable to his ambitions, which led to the “Arab Gathering.” This ideology of Arab supremacy is an important element to the genocide in Darfur.
Today’s Washington Post‘s describes “America on the installment plan”:
Absent an agreement to fund the government until the end of the fiscal year in September, Congress has passed six short-term stopgap measures, one after another. The current one lasts until April 8.
The short-term extensions have kept the lights on. But the uncertainty over whether the two sides will eventually reach a long-term budget deal has done its own damage, producing waste and inefficiency as a massive federal bureaucracy tries to live paycheck to paycheck.
Some agencies have had to halt new projects in midstream, because the funds they expected have not arrived. In California, there is a new federal prison with 160 staff and no inmates. The government has no money to open it.
This is the same government that has launched over 150 Tomahawk cruise missile into Libya, each of which cost approximately $1.5 million. Galrahn at Information Dissemination calls that per missile figure a bit high, but emphasizes the operational/energy costs of an operation like this.
I am not familiar enough with the particulars of American involvement in Libya to have a strong opinion about it. But one thing is clear: unless we can pay our bills at home, it becomes very difficult to argue for expensive foreign ventures. One good reason to have a thriving economy and a well-financed government is so that we have the resources to act abroad when we need to. A major crisis — the unravelling of the North Korea, for example — might require American boots on the ground or American planes in the sky, and it would be a shame if they simply were not available.
I realize that this is as much an argument against unnecessary foreign intervention as it is an argument for fiscal prudence at home, but there is something unsettling about a government that neglects its domestic responsibilities but so enthusiastically uses force abroad.
(Just to be clear, there are a lot of ways we could better match fiscal means to ends, and I am not endorsing a particular strategy in this post)
Today an international coalition began attacking military forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar al-Qadhafi, with the official aim of protecting civilians in rebel-held areas of the country, especially the major city of Benghazi. The Obama administration is working hard to ensure that this is not perceived as an American operation. I believe this scenario is correct:
“Perhaps the Obama administration has cleverly figured out a way to bring about the neoisolationist fantasy of the 1990s: making the rest of the world shoulder the load of global policeman. Many of the critiques of U.S. military intervention over the past twenty years have been critiques of U.S. involvement, not military intervention, per se. The cases in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and so on were deemed not to be in our interest. Perhaps they required military intervention, but let someone else bear the costs.
“The Bush 41 and Clinton administrations tried this, but were never able to get the rest of the world to handle matters satisfactorily. The United States was ‘indispensable,’ Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright concluded. If we did not lead and shoulder the leader’s load it would not get done, whatever it was that needed doing (the East Timor exception that proved the rule notwithstanding).
“In Libya, the Obama administration followed the old Bush-Clinton playbook, but stuck with it much longer. For weeks, nothing much happened. Hawks bemoaned the fecklessness. Doves praised the ‘strategic reticence.’ And Qaddafi steadily slaughtered the rebels.
“Finally, the French and British couldn’t take it anymore and, just before the rebels couldn’t take it anymore, forced through the Chapter VII UNSCR that made military intervention imminent.”
This fits with Obama’s usual modus operandi, which centers around patience and sticking to a strategy past the point where everyone else is a nervous wreck clamoring for action, as well as his public statements and what appears to be actually unfolding in the conflict zone. The United States has been involved in missile warfare to degrade Qadhafi’s air defense capabilities, but the French are leading publicly and actually flying the bombing runs into Libya. Whether the domestic and international perceptions are what Obama hopes they will be remains to be seen.
Regardless of the allied leadership configuration, however, I have concerns about where this is headed. The textbook successful no-fly zone, in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990′s, depended on the group we were protecting having ground forces who could defend a perimeter such that the U.S. and Co. really only had to worry about the Iraqi air force. This is not the case in Libya, which is why we also have the “no drive” zone.
Another difference, however, is that unlike the Kurds the Libyan rebels are not interested in just maintaining autonomy, but want to topple Qadhafi. The international community has just offered to supply an air force allowing them to do so. What happens, however, if the civil war in Libya becomes a stalemate? This whole operation reminds me of Operation Deny Flight, which led after two years to a wholesale aerial bombardment of Bosnian Serb targets. If this conflict drags on, I expect the alliance currently enforcing UN Resolution 1973 to determine that eliminating Qadhafi is better than a commitment of resources with no end in sight.
Then, too, there is the aftermath. The ad hoc organization of the rebels does not seem to provide a clear, nationally recognized leadership which could take over if Qadhafi falls. We should even keep in the mind the possibility that civil war could continue among different factions, with the country possibly even splitting into Tripolitanian and Cyrenaican, or western and eastern, factions fighting for control of the oil in and around the Gulf of Sirte. It is possible the coalition could pull out once the threat of Qadhafi’s massacres is removed, but that would defy history and certainly leave a sour taste in mouths in the participating countries.
I am not opposed to a mission to stop massacres from happening. I am, however, concerned about the future direction these events could take. “Mission creep” seems not just a possibility, but a certainty unless the rebels quickly regroup and finish off the regime, and even then, if the country collapses, former colonial powers are not the ideal choices to manage the aftermath. This could indeed be the dawn of an odyssey on which none want to embark.
Recent days have seen Moammar Qadhafi’s forces advancing steadily against Libya’s rebels and gathering for a final assault on their stronghold in Benghazi. The United Nations Security Council just voted in favor of strong action:
“The United Nations Security Council approved a measure on Thursday authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians from harm at the hands of forces loyal to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.
“The measure allows not only a no-fly zone but effectively any measures short of a ground invasion to halt attacks that might result in civilian fatalities. It comes as Colonel Qaddafi warned residents of Benghazi, Libya, the rebel capital, that an attack was imminent and promised lenient treatment for those who offered no resistance.
“‘We are coming tonight,’ Colonel Qaddafi said. ‘You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.’
“With the recent advances made by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east, there was a growing consensus in the Obama administration that imposing a no-fly zone by itself would no longer make much of a difference and that there was a need for more aggressive airstrikes that would make targets of Colonel Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery — an option sometimes referred to as a no-drive zone. The United States or its allies might also send military personnel to advise and train the rebels, an official said.”
When Libya’s uprising first started, I posted in support of a no-fly zone. Subsequent discussion made me realize that would not work under Libyan conditions the same way it did those in late Ba’athist Iraq. What we have now is what we could even have gotten then, a full assault on air and ground forces in conjunction with Libyan rebels. In other words, the United States and its allies are about to become a full part of this war.
Undemocratic regimes don’t consist of just one powerful person. They exist with the support of certain elements in society that profit from their continuation. Because of this revolutions aren’t just protests which depose rulers, but broader social movements by which different social groups try to improve their position, whether economically, politically, or even culturally. Egypt is clearly following this trajectory, as protests since Mubarak’s resignation continue to reshape the country.
Perhaps the most significant development for the future of Egyptian society, however, is that noted by Ursula Lindsey
“One of the most interesting (and hard to follow) phenomena of the moment in Egypt is the proliferation of demands for reform at the level of institutions and workplaces. At all sort of different organizations, workers are demanding the resignation of top officials and the institutions of more equitable pay scales.
“I just did a piece looking at this for the radio show The World. One of the people I spoke is my old friend Sabah Hamamou, who is one of the leaders of an effort to reform state newspapers. She and 300 other journalists wrote a letter of apology to readers for Al Ahram’s coverage of the protests. The editors refused to print it so they called a press conferences and read it out loud.”
“Workers were critical in bringing the reluctant generals to the decision to ask Mubarak to step aside (or force him out, it’s unclear). They also continue to play a role by engaging in strikes since Mubarak’s departure…
“Certain kinds of anti-corruption demands also have a specific working-class component. For example, workers demanded the dismissal of the CEO of the public sector Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra, the largest textile enterprise in Egypt, on the grounds of corruption. And they won this demand after a three-day strike…
“The business cronies of Gamal Mubarak, the son of the former Egyptian president, people like the steel magnate Ahmad Ezz, have been dealt a strong blow. But they will not disappear so easily, and it is very possible to imagine that once ‘stability’ has been re-established they, or others like them, will return.”
At the same time, a counter-revolution is under way:
“A look at the most prominent discourse making the newspapers and airwaves during the last week indicates that the army (or parts of it) and elements of the old regime will resist attempts at meaningful democratic reforms. While paying lip service to the youth, the revolution, and the martyrs, the ubiquitous appeal in all the local media has been to urge Egyptians to get back to work in order to get the economy back on track – as if the economy was ever on track in the first place…
“In the Egyptian context, the counter-revolutionary ‘who’ is not too difficult to identify: It certainly includes those officers of the despised state security services who fear being eventually brought to trial (however unlikely that scenario is) for their participation in the systematic torture of Egyptians, as well as people in the intelligence service who are loyal to Omar Suleiman. It includes corrupt businessmen who fear future prosecution and forfeiture of their wealth, and high- and mid-level operators of the now-defunct National Democratic Party for whom it would be almost impossible to do a facelift in a new era. It also includes those media executives, editors-in-chief, journalists and pundits who “spun” the most for the Mubarak regime and who are anxious about their own ouster…
“In this counter-revolutionary discourse, Mubarak’s name is being invoked in nostalgic terms, whereas Wael Ghoneim, who emerged as one of the most prominent figures of the revolution, is being written and talked about as a foreign stooge, a member of the Free Masons, and even as a yes-man for the security services…
“The counter- or contra-revolutionary media blitz has been in full swing over the last week. Mona Shazly, whose program 10 pm has a large following, deserves to become an honorary member of the High Army Council for her recent performance when she interviewed three of its generals and only one young activist. She helped paint the military in the best possible light by allowing the generals to repeat the same vapid media catchphrases: ‘forgive and forget,’ ‘we are all one,’ and ‘Egypt is above all.’ It was a tour de force, which suggests that this police state might be able to get away with the same crimes that it has been committing for the last 30 years if public opinion is persuaded to embrace this discourse of forgiveness and the parallel discrediting of continuing revolutionary ‘chaos.’”
Implicit in this is the assumption that the Egyptian military concluded that Mubarak was lost, but that his ruling structure as a whole, one from which they benefited, could still be preserved. Recent weeks have seen the army attack protestors. More dramatic, if away from the cameras, was the attack on Coptic desert monasteries which had built walls for their protection in the unstable revolutionary security situation. At issue seems to be the fact they did not seek government permission for this construction, but in practice it looks like the continuation of the Mubarak regime’s policies which forbid construction on Christian religious buildings without explicit government permission. A deeper issue is the level of force used, which was clearly excessive and designed to send some sort of message.
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