Be sure to check out our collection of useful links to blogs and websites from around the globe, ranging from US foreign policy, national security and politics to law, development, econo- and enviro-bloggers, and tech and media.
“Far better to attack Mr Assad’s regime where it is vulnerable—by peeling away his support, both at home among Syria’s minorities and abroad, especially in Russia, its chief defender on the UN Security Council. Both Syria’s Alawites and Vladimir Putin cling to this dictator because they think that, despite his faults, he is better than the alternative. Yet under Mr Assad Syria has no future. Before the Arab spring his attempts to modernise the economy enriched a coterie of his cronies but did little for ordinary Syrians. Were he to see off today’s uprising, he would be left ruling over an isolated, impoverished and angry country. Surely the opposition can offer enough Syrians of all creeds a better future than that?
“To make that promise credible, Syria’s fractious opposition must unite. A contact group of outside powers and the opposition could channel money into Syria, as well as help with communications and logistics. With a single voice and a credible leader, the opposition could seek to reassure the merchants, Kurds and Christians who back Mr Assad that they will be safer and more prosperous without him. The Russians would also begin to shift ground. Mr Putin enjoys standing up to the interfering West, not least for domestic political reasons (see article), but sticking with a doomed leader could cost Russia its naval-supply base in Tartus and its arms exports. The more senior officials and army officers defect from the regime, the more likely Mr Putin is to change sides too.
“To help persuade them, Turkey, with the blessing of NATO and the Arab League, should create and defend a safe haven in north-western Syria. The FSA can train fighters there, and a credible opposition can take shape. Turkey seems willing to do this, providing it gets Western support. The haven would be similar to that created for the Kurds in northern Iraq; Mr Assad would suffer only if he attacked it.”
This has not just one, but two major weak points. Working from the proposed action, it assumes first that the creation of a safe haven can somehow unite the opposition, and second that this opposition could persuade Assad’s supporters within Syria to switch sides. Unfortunately, I don’t see much in the way of mechanics for how either actually works.
“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.
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.
“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.”
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 Bureaureports:
“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.
“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.
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.
recent comments