Egypt: The opportunism of the Brotherhood and the plight of the youth

Posted on December 2, 2011 | Comments Off on Egypt: The opportunism of the Brotherhood and the plight of the youth

01/12/2011 –

By Osman Mirghani–

Will Egypt be able to heal the rift which has accompanied the elections atmosphere, or does the scene threaten further clashes and confrontations?

This is the question currently occupying the minds of many, especially in light of the debates that are looming on the horizon, which are increasing and will not subside. Egypt went to the elections fragmented rather than united, concerned rather than comfortable, tense rather than reassured. Political forces seem divided between those for and against holding the elections at this time and under such tension. The youth, or a large portion of them, insist upon continuing the sit-ins and demonstrations “to complete the revolution”, while the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has found itself busy holding press conferences and political meetings to explain and justify its insistence on holding the elections on time, and to reassure the people that it intends to hand over power before the end of next June.

This is certainly not the environment in which people were hoping the elections would take place, despite the acknowledgement that transitional periods are often difficult by nature. The elections took place just days after a large number were left dead and wounded in the protests and confrontations that broke out in Tahrir Square and Alexandria, and which then spread to other provinces, demanding that SCAF hand over power to a government of national salvation. A heated debate has also escalated about revolutionary legitimacy, those who have it, how it is granted, and its limits. The youth protesting in Tahrir Square say that SCAF has gained its legitimacy from Tahrir Square, and it should now hand over power after it lost the confidence of the Square. However, SCAF responded with an announcement of its refusal to yield to any pressure “internal or external”, adding that its legitimacy stems from its role as the guardian of the constitution and the people, and from its historic stance that swung the revolution in favor of the people, and forced Hosni Mubarak to step down. Major General Mukhtar al-Mulla, a member of SCAF, bluntly clarified the position of the Council when he said in an interview with “al-Arabiya” TV yesterday that if the youth of Tahrir Square think that they are the ones who granted legitimacy to SCAF then“they [the Tahrir Square youth] can take their legitimacy and walk; we are staying put”.

The controversy does not stop here. Whilst people are heading to the polls, further debate is raging about whether the elected parliament will have any role in the formation of the government, or even whether it will have the right to withdraw its confidence if it is not satisfied with the government’s performance. This issue has placed the Muslim Brotherhood in something of a predicament; they pushed for the elections to be held on time, boycotted the latest Tahrir Square demonstrations, and even took a stand against them as part of their stance of refusing to postpone the elections. By participating in alternative marches, they intended to pull the rug out from under the protestors in Tahrir Square. They did so because they believe that through their guise as a political party, they would be the big winners at the elections. Thus the Tahrir demonstrations seemed, in their view, to be a constraint on their plans and hopes for a win guaranteeing them the greatest influence in parliament and the government, and a loud voice in the constitution-drafting process. Indeed, Dr. Essam El-Erian, Vice President of the [Muslim Brotherhood] Justice and Freedom Party, went so far as to say, in comments attributed to him by “Al-Ahram” newspaper, that the recent events in Tahrir Square could have been avoided “by appeasing all those adversely affected in the revolution, and compensating those injured in order to quell the fire of anger within them”. Thus in just a few words Dr. El-Erian evaluated all the demands of Tahrir Square, and the blood of the dead and the wounded, to sum everything up as a simple case of reparation and compensation, which in his view is all that is required to extinguish the people’s anger and disappear make the popular demands go away.

However, a few days later, the Muslim Brotherhood was surprised by the remarks of Major General Mamdouh Shaheen, a member of SCAF, who in a television interview said that the forthcoming people’s assembly [lower parliamentary house] would not have a role in selecting members of the next government, and would not be entitled to withdraw its confidence from the current government or dismiss it. This was justified by the fact that Egypt is a parliamentary presidential system, and that government formation falls within the remit of the President of the Republic, and therefore until a president is elected, the responsibility for government formation remains in the hands of SCAF.

The Muslim Brotherhood found themselves at a loss, as they had considered themselves to be in a position similar to the al-Nahda movement in Tunisia, which won a majority enabling it to form and indeed lead the new Tunisian government, forming a coalition with other political forces. The Muslim Brotherhood saw their dreams shatter, believing that they would no longer be able to achieve the role they had outlined for themselves, namely forming the next government. Thus they reversed their position, after having said a few days before that the political process was following its natural path, as part of their rejection of the Tahrir Square protests. The Muslim Brotherhood have returned now to threaten the disruption of government work at the next parliament, if the government’s formation is not entrusted to the party that receives the largest percentage of votes in the elections, saying that they prefer the parliamentary system to the presidential system.

The scene looks set for strong debates following the elections; the Muslim Brotherhood want the “prize” of forming the government and will not settle for any outcome that doesn’t allow them to exercise their influence, which they have prepared themselves for. It is not unlikely that they will resort, if forced, to the weapon of “Tahrir Square”, which they opposed before the election. In such an event they may return to court the Tahrir Square youth, and once again be at the forefront of the debate over who has legitimacy and who does not. On the other side there is SCAF, which is in favor of the political forces that do not want the Muslim Brotherhood to dominate the government, the parliament and the social scene during the process of drafting the constitution and preparing for the forthcoming presidential election. As for the other party, the Tahrir Square youth, they feel that many forces have hijacked their revolution to reap the benefits, and therefore they appear determined to make their voices heard from the Square. The problem is that if they do not take on board the lessons of the past few months, and transform into a cohesive bloc capable of concerted action to influence the elections, whether by forming a party encompassing all youth segments or by rallying around a candidate and declaring their support for him in the upcoming presidential elections, then they will find that the fruits of their sacrifices will be harvested by other forces with a long history of political opportunism.

http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=27515

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Posted in Egypt, Religion

Syria and the unfolding hegemonic game

Posted on November 25, 2011 | Comments Off on Syria and the unfolding hegemonic game
Nima Khorrami Assl Last Modified: 25 Nov 2011 09:27

A new strategic alliance has formed, Ankara and Riyadh against Tehran, all trying to gain influence over Damascus.

London, UK – In spite of mounting international and regional pressure on Bashar al-Assad’s regime, there is still no real prospect of a quick end to the on-going instability and instead Syria is set to enter a long and bloody civil war. And as political stalemate continues, a genuinely regional hegemonic contest between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey over this small but strategically important nation has begun to unfold.

Since the fall of Mubarak, Saudis have decided to drastically reduce their reliance on the US for securing their foreign policy interests. Riyadh has not only begun to strengthen its armed forces, but it has also decided to use its petro-dollar more aggressively seeking to buy influence in return for the provision of generous financial assistance. Capitalising on Egypt’s weakness, moreover, Saudi has assumed the leading role in the Arab League to the extent that many Arab observers see the League today as “an extension of the GCC”. Finally, preferring evolution to revolution, Saudis have crushed revolutionary movements in Bahrain and Yemen albeit via different means.

Turkey’s continued economic growth in the face of the current global crisis, its remarkable success in achieving societal cohesion by needling the gap between secular and religious forces, and its boosted standing on the world stage as a role model for Arab revolutionaries, on the other hand, have enhanced her assertiveness. Today, Turkish leadership is keen to behave “as a kind of independent regional power similar to the democratic members of the BRICS”. To this end, Ankara has sought to expand ties with Egypt in order to defuse any potential Arab criticism of its hegemonic tendencies. According to the Turkish Foreign Minister, “a partnership between Turkey and Egypt could create a new, democratic axis of power”.

Lacking Turkey’s democratic appeal amongst the Arab public and Saudi’s money, Tehran has followed a different path seeking to strengthen its alliance system as opposed to trying to expand its influence into new theatres. And as American troops begin their withdrawal, Iran’s influence in Iraq is set to rise even further especially that Ankara is more interested in intra-Kurdish affairs and Saudi appears to have abandoned Shia Iraq altogether. Iran’s influence in Lebanon will also go unchallenged as Hezbollah continues to dominate the Lebanese politics. This leaves Syria as the first theatre in which this regional hegemonic game will begin to fold out.

Syria is important to Iran for two broad reasons. Firstly, it is the link between Iran and Hizbullah. Assad’s fall will therefore be a massive blow to Iran’s foreign policy by greatly reducing Tehran geopolitical reach. Given the Iranian regime’s own unpopularity, secondly, Tehran fears that Assad’s fall could dangerously revitalize Iran’s own anti-government movement. Saudis, on the other hand, are eager to see an end to the Assad’s rule not least because he is an Alawi. Moreover, Assad’s demise will enable Saudi to challenge Tehran in Lebanon with greater ease. For its part, Turkey is mainly concerned with the Syrian situation because it shares a long border with Syria, and that on-going instability in Syria could have destabilising effects on Turkey’s own Kurdish population. Also, Ankara knows all too well that Assad’s hold on power could mean a near-total loss of its investment in Syria. This is not to mention that there has been a historical rivalry between Iran and Turkey over Syria dating back to the Ottoman-Safavid era.

Currently, Turkey and Saudi seem to have entered a tactical alliance against Iran by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and calling on Assad to resign. Yet it is not at all clear if this alliance will achieve its desired outcome. It could in fact crumble over time. Ankara and Riyadh have opposing interests in Egypt. Saudis prefer a strong presence of military and Mubarak-era personalities in the government, whereas Turkey favours a newly and democratically elected government in place as soon as possible. Given Cairo’s dire financial needs, Saudis are more likely to obtain the upper hand there which will almost certainly antagonise Ankara. More importantly, as US is preparing to leave Iraq, there are already reports of tension between Kurdish and Iraqi security forces along the trigger line. If the civil war in Syria and the US departure lead to the revival of independence discourses amongst the Kurds, Turkey should then be expected to join forces with Iran so to preserve Iraq and Syria’s unity even if that means supporting Bashar al-Assad.

Interestingly, as the United States reorients its foreign policy focus towards the Asia Pacific, this rivalry is the clearest indication of how the future regional order will look like: a multipolar system with Iran, Saudi, Turkey, and Egypt, once it stands on its feet again, as its poles. And as this new order takes shape, one can be certain that there will be more instability ahead, and the greatest challenge facing these would-be powers will be the regulation of their rivalries.

Nima Khorrami Assl is a security analyst at Transnational Crisis Project, London. His areas of interest and expertise include the Middle East, Political Islam and De-radicalisation, China, Caucuses, Energy Security and Geopolitics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

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Posted in Iran, Iraq, Middle East Geopolitics, Turkey, US Middle East Politics

Egypt’s Revolution Continues

Posted on November 22, 2011 | Comments Off on Egypt’s Revolution Continues

November 22, 2011- By David Schenker & Eric Trager–

New clashes between “youth protestors” and Ministry of Interior riot police in Egypt’s Tahrir Square have resulted in thirty-five dead and several hundred wounded over the past three days, jeopardizing the country’s November 28 parliamentary elections. Even before this weekend’s mayhem, the voting promised to be chaotic and, in all likelihood, marred by violence. But now, with growing public anger aimed at the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) for its undemocratic mismanagement of the transition, several secular political parties may boycott the polls. Should the elections proceed, the new crisis will benefit the Islamists, possibly widening their projected margin of victory.

Background

During the February uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, a popular Egyptian saying was “the army and the people are one hand.” Nine months on, the military’s public approval rating has dropped from an impressive 90 percent to the mid-60s. Initially, the facade of national unity was stripped away in large part because of the military’s continuance of the hated Mubarak-era emergency law and ongoing heavy-handed reliance on military courts to try civilians. Yet popular anger with the SCAF has spiked of late because the military has sought to mitigate a likely Islamist victory at the polls — and preserve its traditional status of being unaccountable to civilian authority — by changing the presumed rules of the transition.

In particular, the SCAF has sought to enshrine its status in a set of “supraconstitutional principles” that would set the military beyond the reach of legislators. And to limit the Islamists’ ability to significantly change the political system, the SCAF likewise announced that it would essentially ignore the results of the March 2011 referendum — which stipulated that whoever controlled parliament would appoint the new constitutional drafting committee — and instead select the lion’s share of the committee itself. The Islamists cried foul and threatened a mass protest on November 18 if the SCAF didn’t back down. True to their threat, they filled Tahrir Square on Friday, along with secularist protestors. At the end of the day, the Islamists departed, but the secular opposition remained.

Electoral Credibility in Question

The military is taking steps to ensure — and reassure the public — that “citizens will feel an unprecedented state of security” during next week’s scheduled elections. And the SCAF will no doubt attempt to provide tight security for the various stages of balloting slated to last until January 10. Yet between disgruntled secular protestors, former regime thugs, and routine sectarian conflicts, authorities face an uphill battle. Today, in an effort to placate the street, the military promulgated a “lustration” law banning members of the former ruling National Democratic Party from participating in the elections. In another development, the entire cabinet resigned, though the SCAF must accept the resignations in order for them to take effect.

The bloodshed and general disorder could combine to undermine the credibility of any newly elected legislature. Already, the electoral law — which combines multicandidate districts and both party-list and individual-candidate elections, with the latter divided among “farmers, laborers, and professionals” — is confusing and voter-unfriendly. Making matters worse, if non-Islamists boycott the election, a significant segment of society may view the parliament as illegitimate. Likewise, voters could stay home if security is insufficient, further eroding support for the People’s Assembly. Conversely, a heavy military presence spurred by the Tahrir clashes might also intimidate voters.

Despite Violence, Elections the Only Way Forward

Egypt’s key political players have denounced the latest violence. Secularist presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei laid the blame at the feet of the SCAF, whom he said had already “admitted they cannot run the country.” The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) likewise held the SCAF “primarily responsible,” accusing it of provoking the violence as a pretext for postponing the elections. Meanwhile, a number of key secularist political figures — including Amr Hamzawy, George Ishak, and blogger Mahmoud “Sandmonkey” Salem — have suspended their parliamentary campaigns in solidarity with the protestors.

At the same time, many of the key political parties — including those who may boycott — have echoed the SCAF’s insistence that the elections go forward. The MB’s Freedom and Justice Party, the Wafd Party, the Free Egyptians Party led by Naguib Sawiris, and the Salafist Nour Party, among others, have all released statements calling for voting to proceed as scheduled. Most important, both the MB and Free Egyptians Party have indicated that they will not participate in new Tahrir demonstrations as long as the elections are not postponed. Delaying the vote would remove their incentive to back an orderly transition and escalate a costly standoff that is already spreading to other governorates.

Both the major political parties and the Tahrir protestors appear to want the same thing: ending the SCAF’s direct involvement in politics as soon as possible and devolving power to a civilian-led executive body. Several political groups, including the Wafd, the Social Democratic Party, and the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, are now calling for the establishment of a “national salvation government” after elections. The SCAF could try to end the violence by embracing this idea and delegating responsibility for political transition to an executive body elected by the forthcoming legislature. This would require the council to relinquish its authority over the transition in April 2012, according to current proposals. Although it is difficult to imagine the SCAF agreeing to this option, the alternative — an increasingly unpopular military junta without any clear process for installing a more legitimate government — threatens further violence and severe instability.

Implications for U.S. Policy

For Washington, the current situation in Egypt is a nightmare. Contrary to popular impressions, the Obama administration did not embrace the anti-Mubarak protestors last February but rather supported the Egyptian army in facilitating a change from Mubarak’s rule to an uncertain military-led transition. Since then, Washington has vacillated on who its allies in Egypt really are. Is it the military, with whom the administration shares certain strategic understandings on key national security issues? Or the Muslim Brotherhood, which many in Washington view as both the authentic voice of the people and, given its “inevitable” electoral victory, a faction America should court? Or the secular liberals, who — despite being the most ideologically congenial to America’s democratic spirit — have shown themselves to be poor political organizers often too willing to cooperate with illiberal forces (e.g., Salafists) for short-term gain? The absence of clarity on this issue has paralyzed U.S. policymaking, and as a result, the administration now has little sway with any of these key constituencies.

In fairness, Washington’s policy options would be limited even in the best of diplomatic circumstances. The administration may feel compelled to prioritize national security issues, urging delayed elections so as to limit the likelihood of an Islamist landslide. Yet postponement may only catalyze further violence that jeopardizes the SCAF’s standing entirely, thereby threatening the very equities the administration seeks to protect. Alternatively, prioritizing the democratization process might spur the SCAF to proceed with its current election schedule despite the violence, which could increase the chances of an all-out Islamist political victory. Perhaps a wiser third option would be to urge the SCAF to speed up the presidential election process, producing a new focal point of legitimate executive leadership that would be more likely than parliament to respect the military’s prerogatives and preserve key national security interests.

Of course, none of this may work — the forces at play throughout Egypt may still be in such a revolutionary fervor that even Washington’s best ideas wind up having little impact. Therefore, although the administration should encourage the SCAF to lay out a credible path to civilian government, and in so doing protect only a limited set of the military’s interests and perquisites, it must also prepare for the possibility that chaos and uncertainty will dominate the Egyptian political scene for months to come.

 

David Schenker is the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute. Eric Trager, the Institute’s Ira Weiner fellow, is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is writing his dissertation on Egyptian opposition parties.

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Posted in Egypt, Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

Syria, Iran and the Balance of Power in the Middle East

Posted on November 22, 2011 | Comments Off on Syria, Iran and the Balance of Power in the Middle East

November 22, 2011

By George Friedman

U.S. troops are in the process of completing their withdrawal from Iraq by the end-of-2011 deadline. We are now moving toward a reckoning with the consequences. The reckoning concerns the potential for a massive shift in the balance of power in the region, with Iran moving from a fairly marginal power to potentially a dominant power. As the process unfolds, the United States and Israel are making countermoves. We have discussed all of this extensively. Questions remain whether these countermoves will stabilize the region and whether or how far Iran will go in its response.

Iran has been preparing for the U.S. withdrawal. While it is unreasonable simply to say that Iran will dominate Iraq, it is fair to say Tehran will have tremendous influence in Baghdad to the point of being able to block Iraqi initiatives Iran opposes. This influence will increase as the U.S. withdrawal concludes and it becomes clear there will be no sudden reversal in the withdrawal policy. Iraqi politicians’ calculus must account for the nearness of Iranian power and the increasing distance and irrelevance of American power.

Resisting Iran under these conditions likely would prove ineffective and dangerous. Some, like the Kurds, believe they have guarantees from the Americans and that substantial investment in Kurdish oil by American companies means those commitments will be honored. A look at the map, however, shows how difficult it would be for the United States to do so. The Baghdad regime has arrested Sunni leaders while the Shia, not all of whom are pro-Iranian by any means, know the price of overenthusiastic resistance.

Syria and Iran
The situation in Syria complicates all of this. The minority Alawite sect has dominated the Syrian government since 1970, when the current president’s father – who headed the Syrian air force – staged a coup. The Alawites are a heterodox Muslim sect related to a Shiite offshoot and make up about 7 percent of the country’s population, which is mostly Sunni. The new Alawite government was Nasserite in nature, meaning it was secular, socialist and built around the military. When Islam rose as a political force in the Arab world, the Syrians – alienated from the Sadat regime in Egypt – saw Iran as a bulwark. The Iranian Islamist regime gave the Syrian secular regime immunity against Shiite fundamentalists in Lebanon. The Iranians also gave Syria support in its external adventures in Lebanon, and more important, in its suppression of Syria’s Sunni majority.

Syria and Iran were particularly aligned in Lebanon. In the early 1980s, after the Khomeini revolution, the Iranians sought to increase their influence in the Islamic world by supporting radical Shiite forces. Hezbollah was one of these. Syria had invaded Lebanon in 1975 on behalf of the Christians and opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization, to give you a sense of the complexity. Syria regarded Lebanon as historically part of Syria, and sought to assert its influence over it. Via Iran, Hezbollah became an instrument of Syrian power in Lebanon.

Iran and Syria, therefore, entered a long-term if not altogether stable alliance that has lasted to this day. In the current unrest in Syria, the Saudis and Turks in addition to the Americans all have been hostile to the regime of President Bashar al Assad. Iran is the one country that on the whole has remained supportive of the current Syrian government.

There is good reason for this. Prior to the uprising, the precise relationship between Syria and Iran was variable. Syria was able to act autonomously in its dealings with Iran and Iran’s proxies in Lebanon. While an important backer of groups like Hezbollah, the al Assad regime in many ways checked Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon, with the Syrians playing the dominant role there. The Syrian uprising has put the al Assad regime on the defensive, however, making it more interested in a firm, stable relationship with Iran. Damascus finds itself isolated in the Sunni world, with Turkey and the Arab League against it. Iran – and intriguingly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – have constituted al Assad’s exterior support.

Thus far al Assad has resisted his enemies. Though some mid- to low-ranking Sunnis have defected, his military remains largely intact; this is because the Alawites control key units. Events in Libya drove home to an embattled Syrian leadership – and even to some of its adversaries within the military – the consequences of losing. The military has held together, and an unarmed or poorly armed populace, no matter how large, cannot defeat an intact military force. The key for those who would see al Assad fall is to divide the military.

If al Assad survives – and at the moment, wishful thinking by outsiders aside, he is surviving – Iran will be the big winner. If Iraq falls under substantial Iranian influence, and the al Assad regime – isolated from most countries but supported by Tehran – survives in Syria, then Iran could emerge with a sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean (the latter via Hezbollah). Achieving this would not require deploying Iranian conventional forces – al Assad’s survival alone would suffice. However, the prospect of a Syrian regime beholden to Iran would open up the possibility of the westward deployment of Iranian forces, and that possibility alone would have significant repercussions.

Consider the map were this sphere of influence to exist. The northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Jordan would abut this sphere, as would Turkey’s southern border. It remains unclear, of course, just how well Iran could manage this sphere, e.g., what type of force it could project into it. Maps alone will not provide an understanding of the problem. But they do point to the problem. And the problem is the potential – not certain – creation of a block under Iranian influence that would cut through a huge swath of strategic territory.

It should be remembered that in addition to Iran’s covert network of militant proxies, Iran’s conventional forces are substantial. While they could not confront U.S. armored divisions and survive, there are no U.S. armored divisions on the ground between Iran and Lebanon. Iran’s ability to bring sufficient force to bear in such a sphere increases the risks to the Saudis in particular. Iran’s goal is to increase the risk such that Saudi Arabia would calculate that accommodation is more prudent than resistance. Changing the map can help achieve this.

It follows that those frightened by this prospect – the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – would seek to stymie it. At present, the place to block it no longer is Iraq, where Iran already has the upper hand. Instead, it is Syria. And the key move in Syria is to do everything possible to bring about al Assad’s overthrow.

In the last week, the Syrian unrest appeared to take on a new dimension. Until recently, the most significant opposition activity appeared to be outside of Syria, with much of the resistance reported in the media coming from externally based opposition groups. The degree of effective opposition was never clear. Certainly, the Sunni majority opposes and hates the al Assad regime. But opposition and emotion do not bring down a regime consisting of men fighting for their lives. And it wasn’t clear that the resistance was as strong as the outside propaganda claimed.

Last week, however, the Free Syrian Army – a group of Sunni defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon – claimed defectors carried out organized attacks on government facilities, ranging from an air force intelligence facility (a particularly sensitive point given the history of the regime) to Baath Party buildings in the greater Damascus area. These were not the first attacks claimed by the FSA, but they were heavily propagandized in the past week. Most significant about the attacks is that, while small-scale and likely exaggerated, they revealed that at least some defectors were willing to fight instead of defecting and staying in Turkey or Lebanon.

It is interesting that an apparent increase in activity from armed activists – or the introduction of new forces – occurred at the same time relations between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other were deteriorating. The deterioration began with charges that an Iranian covert operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States had been uncovered, followed by allegations by the Bahraini government of Iranian operatives organizing attacks in Bahrain. It proceeded to an International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s progress toward a nuclear device, followed by the Nov. 19 explosion at an Iranian missile facility that the Israelis have not-so-quietly hinted was their work. Whether any of these are true, the psychological pressure on Iran is building and appears to be orchestrated.

Of all the players in this game, Israel’s position is the most complex. Israel has had a decent, albeit covert, working relationship with the Syrians going back to their mutual hostility toward Yasser Arafat. For Israel, Syria has been the devil they know. The idea of a Sunni government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood on their northeastern frontier was frightening; they preferred al Assad. But given the shift in the regional balance of power, the Israeli view is also changing. The Sunni Islamist threat has weakened in the past decade relative to the Iranian Shiite threat. Playing things forward, the threat of a hostile Sunni force in Syria is less worrisome than an emboldened Iranian presence on Israel’s northern frontier. This explains why the architects of Israel’s foreign policy, such as Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have been saying that we are seeing an “acceleration toward the end of the regime.” Regardless of its preferred outcome, Israel cannot influence events inside Syria. Instead, Israel is adjusting to a reality where the threat of Iran reshaping the politics of the region has become paramount.

Iran is, of course, used to psychological campaigns. We continue to believe that while Iran might be close to a nuclear device that could explode underground under carefully controlled conditions, its ability to create a stable, robust nuclear weapon that could function outside a laboratory setting (which is what an underground test is) is a ways off. This includes being able to load a fragile experimental system on a delivery vehicle and expecting it to explode. It might. It might not. It might even be intercepted and create a casus belli for a counterstrike.

The main Iranian threat is not nuclear. It might become so, but even without nuclear weapons, Iran remains a threat. The current escalation originated in the American decision to withdraw from Iraq and was intensified by events in Syria. If Iran abandoned its nuclear program tomorrow, the situation would remain as complex. Iran has the upper hand, and the United States, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all are looking at how to turn the tables.

At this point, they appear to be following a two-pronged strategy: Increase pressure on Iran to make it recalculate its vulnerability, and bring down the Syrian government to limit the consequences of Iranian influence in Iraq. Whether the Syrian regime can be brought down is problematic. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi would have survived if NATO hadn’t intervened. NATO could intervene in Syria, but Syria is more complex than Libya. Moreover, a second NATO attack on an Arab state designed to change its government would have unintended consequences, no matter how much the Arabs fear the Iranians at the moment. Wars are unpredictable; they are not the first option.

Therefore the likely solution is covert support for the Sunni opposition funneled through Lebanon and possibly Turkey and Jordan. It will be interesting to see if the Turks participate. Far more interesting will be seeing whether this works. Syrian intelligence has penetrated its Sunni opposition effectively for decades. Mounting a secret campaign against the regime would be difficult, and its success by no means assured. Still, that is the next move.

But it is not the last move. To put Iran back into its box, something must be done about the Iraqi political situation. Given the U.S. withdrawal, Washington has little influence there. All of the relationships the United States built were predicated on American power protecting the relationships. With the Americans gone, the foundation of those relationships dissolves. And even with Syria, the balance of power is shifting.

The United States has three choices. Accept the evolution and try to live with what emerges. Attempt to make a deal with Iran – a very painful and costly one. Or go to war. The first assumes Washington can live with what emerges. The second depends on whether Iran is interested in dealing with the United States. The third depends on having enough power to wage a war and to absorb Iran’s retaliatory strikes, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. All are dubious, so toppling al Assad is critical. It changes the game and the momentum. But even that is enormously difficult and laden with risks.

We are now in the final act of Iraq, and it is even more painful than imagined. Laying this alongside the European crisis makes the idea of a systemic crisis in the global system very real.

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Posted in Iran, Iran-Syria, Israel, Middle East Geopolitics, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Turkey-Syria, US Middle East Politics, US-Syria

Egypt rejects Turkey’s path to democracy

Posted on November 21, 2011 | Comments Off on Egypt rejects Turkey’s path to democracy

Egyptians refuse to go the Turkey way: a progressive democracy chaperoned by the army. They want an instant democracy. It may work in Tunisia, would it work in Egypt or Syria?

“Friday’s protest in Tahrir Square focused on the SCAF’s attempt to impose “super-constitutional principles”, with an initial draft including provisions to give the military an exemption from parliamentary oversight, as well as powers to appoint the future constituent assembly’s members and, if necessary, dismiss it. ”

Role of the military in the political life of Turkey

“From Turkey’s founding, the military assumed responsibility for guaranteeing the republic’s constitution. Article 35 of the Turkish Armed Service Internal Service Code of 1961 declared that the “duty of the armed forces is to protect and safeguard Turkish territory and the Turkish Republic as stipulated by the constitution.”[2] Indeed, such an interpretation had its roots in the constitution. Turkey’s first constitution was written in 1921, and since the formal proclamation of the republic, the country has had three additional constitutions—in 1924, 1961, and 1982. Until the constitutional amendments of 2001, each placed responsibility in the military’s hands for the protection of the Turkish state from both external and internal challenges. The constitution of 1982, for example, prohibited contestation or constitutional review of the laws or decrees passed by the military when the republic was under its rule from 1980 until 1983.”

Turkey’s path to democracy

“Successive governments of Turkey wisely did not attempt to introduce full democracy all at once, but instead went through successive phases of limited democracy, laying the foundation for further development, and, at the same time, encouraging the rise of civil society.”

“In Turkey, that was accomplished by Atatürk in a series of radical measures, including the disestablishment of Islam, the virtual repeal of the Sacred Law (Shari’a), and the enactment in their place of civil and criminal codes of a nonreligious character. Most other states in the Islamic world either have Islam in some form of words enshrined in their constitutions or else claim that Islam itself is their constitution, and that they need no other.”

Why Turkey Is the only Muslim Democracy
http://www.meforum.org/216/why-turkey-is-the-only-muslim-democracy
by Bernard Lewis
Middle East Quarterly
March 1994, pp. 41-49

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/egypts-dangerous-run-up-to-elections-is-a-necessary-risk

http://www.meforum.org/2160/turkey-military-catalyst-for-reform

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=12738&cp=7#comment-284209

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Posted in Egypt

Sunni-Shia Sectarianism and Competition for the Leadership of Global Islam

Posted on November 18, 2011 | Comments Off on Sunni-Shia Sectarianism and Competition for the Leadership of Global Islam

by David Pinault

A traditional strength of Islam as it expanded beyond the Arab Middle East in the premodern era was its syncretistic adaptation to local religious traditions, whether in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, or the islands of Indonesia. For centuries, Islamic practice was regionally based, a landscape-oriented faith linked to saints’ caves, Sufi tombs, and sacred trees (notwithstanding protests by pious-minded mullahs).

But worldwide socioeconomic changes after World War II profoundly affected Muslim communities. In a rapidly globalizing economy, farmers and other rural workers abandoned the countryside to find work in capitals such as Teheran, Cairo, and Jakarta. The suddenly wealthy Gulf emirates and Saudi Arabia drew labor migrants from throughout South Asia. Thus-to take one example-hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis migrated to the Arabian peninsula in the 1970s and 1980s in search of jobs. They returned with their earnings not to their villages of origin but to urban centers such as Karachi and Lahore. These migrants no longer found so appealing the old regionally based Islam they had once known. Deracinated Muslims, facing the challenges of modernity in unfamiliar city settings, were susceptible to evangelizing by the missionaries of a revivalist and universalist Islam, an Islam based on Qur’anic scriptural authority rather than the charisma associated with local saints’ tombs or Sufi shrines. The preachers of this revivalist Islam were quick to condemn the traditional folk rituals of the countryside as-depending on the locale-Hindu-tainted, Christian-derived, or simply pagan.

Much of the funding for such preaching came from oil revenues at the disposal of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Salafists. These are followers of a dichotomizing mentality that divides the world into mu’minin (believers) and kafirs (infidels, who are to be either converted or combated as enemies). Saudi Arabia’s religious authorities have long regarded themselves as the natural leaders of global Islam, citing their role as guardians of the haramayn (the “sacred cities” of Mecca and Medina). The Saudi government, as host of the hajj-pilgrimage to Mecca that draws millions every year, has used this opportunity to proselytize fellow Muslims, seeking to shape a unified and standardized Islam that will place all believers under Wahhabi leadership.

But since the late 1970s and the Iranian Revolution, Saudi Arabia has faced ever-increasing competition from a religious ideology long loathed by the Wahhabis and many other Sunnis. I can best illustrate the depth of this loathing via an anecdote from Pakistan.

Several years ago, while visiting the University of Peshawar in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, I was asked by a group of professors about my religious identity. Given that I was scheduled to give a guest lecture to their students on Sunni-Shia relations, they thought it appropriate to find out if I was Muslim. “No,” I replied. “I’m a Christian.”

Silence for a moment. I sensed disappointment. “Well,” said one of my hosts, breaking the tension, “at least you’re not Shia.”

I recall this incident because it reflects a prejudice I’ve encountered surprisingly often in Pakistan and elsewhere among Islamic communities-the notion that Shias (who make up some 15 percent of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims) are kafirs who really aren’t Muslims at all. This religious bigotry isn’t new, but in recent years anti-Shia propaganda has circulated among Sunnis with renewed virulence. The reason for this phenomenon has to do, I believe, with a struggle for dominance of the ummah (the global community of Islam).

Thirst, Suffering, Martyrdom: Sacred History and Shia Identity

To gain perspective on this struggle, it’s helpful to know the historical origins of Islamic sectarianism. Shiism arose in the seventh century because of a political dispute over leadership of the ummah after the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632. Most Muslims (those who ultimately became known as Sunnis) supported the principle of election in selecting the caliph (the political title of the prophet’s successor). But a minority insisted that the caliphate should be reserved for Ali ibn Abi Talib (Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law) and for the offspring of Ali and his wife Fatima. Such individuals were known as Shi’at Ali, “the adherents of Ali.” These Shias resented bitterly those Muslim leaders who tried to block Ali’s bid for the caliphate. In particular Shias condemned Abu Bakr and Umar, the first and second caliphs, who are revered by Sunnis as al-shaykhayn (the two elders). Shia partisans claimed that Abu Bakr and Umar conspired to rob Ali of his rightful throne.

Ali did manage to take power and rule as caliph for five years, only to be murdered in the year 661. Further tragedy befell his descendants. According to Shia sources, Ali’s elder son Hasan was poisoned by order of the reigning caliph. Thereupon the title of imam passed to Hasan’s younger brother, Husain ibn Ali.

The term “imam” is important for understanding doctrinal differences between Sunnis and Shias. All Muslims use the term to mean “prayer leader,” someone who leads a congregation in worship. But most Shias (especially those belonging to the Ithna-‘Ashari or “Twelver” denomination, which is by far the most common form of Shiism, as well as the state religion of the Iranian Islamic Republic) also use the term in a more restricted sense, to refer to the rightful spiritual leader of the entire ummah. Twelver Shias insist that this global imam must be from the prophet’s immediate bloodline, and that he be both ma’sum (sinless, perfect, and divinely protected from error) and mansus (chosen by Allah as leader, thereby avoiding the vagaries of any human electoral process). The first such imam, say Twelver Shias, was Ali; the third was his younger son, Husain.

In the year 680, at the urging of Shia partisans in Kufa, Husain set out from Arabia to Iraq to organize a rebellion against the reigning caliph, Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah. Husain was accompanied by the women and children of his household and only a small number of bodyguards and servants.

He never reached his destination of Kufa. Yazid’s soldiers intercepted Husain near the river Euphrates at Karbala, which today is revered as Shiism’s foremost pilgrimage site. Not wanting Husain to become a martyr and rallying point for further Shia resistance, Yazid ordered his soldiers to force Husain to surrender and offer the caliph bay’ah (an oath of allegiance). So the soldiers besieged Husain and his family, preventing them from reaching food or water. Husain and his family suffered torments of thirst under Iraq’s pitiless desert sun. Shia preachers recount these sufferings in vivid detail during annual observances of Muharram, the Islamic month during which the siege of Karbala occurred.

In the end, Husain chose death rather than surrender. On Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram (the high point of the liturgical calendar of lamentation for Shias today), Husain died in combat against Yazid’s forces. This effectively put an end to Twelver Shia hopes for reclaiming the caliphate.

The Usefulness of Revulsion: Blood and Lamentation

But it was precisely this political failure that generated the rise of Shiism as a distinctive theological tradition within Islam. Shia theologians argued that Husain had foreknowledge of what would happen at Karbala but voluntarily sacrificed himself for the good of the ummah. In exchange, Allah granted Husain the power of shafa’ah (intercession on behalf of sinners). Preachers I encountered in Pakistan and India recounted legends about how Fatima continues to lament her martyred son even while she resides in paradise, and about how she is comforted whenever mourners gather here on earth to remember the Karbala Martyrs. Husain will exert his power of shafa’ah on behalf of anyone who joins his mother in mourning and sheds tears in remembrance of Karbala.

Such mourning rituals are referred to by the term matam. During Muharram, preachers recount the sufferings of the martyrs, with the express purpose of moving their congregations to tears and loud wailing. Each year, in the days leading up to Ashura, Twelver Shias hold processions in which they chant nauhajat (lamentation poems in honor of Husain and the other Karbala Martyrs) and mark time by rhythmically slapping their chests. In countries such as Pakistan and India, many matami guruhan (Shia lamentation associations) go further, arranging public processions in which hundreds of men perform zanjiri-matam (self-flagellation involving knives, flails, or chains).

This ritual bloodshed is both controversial and popular. Theologically, matam earns practitioners intercession; but from a sociological perspective, it’s worth noting that, wherever possible, Shias tend to perform such rituals publicly. One gains access to Husain’s favor by having the courage to stand up and be identified as a Shia via conspicuously distinctive rituals. (Under Saddam Hussein’s secularist-Baathist regime, public Muharram processions were prohibited, but since his fall from power, Iraqi Shias have fervently embraced the public performance of self-scourging.)

Nevertheless the bloody forms of matam generate widespread revulsion, both among Sunnis and even among some Shias (as will be discussed below). Spurting blood is normally classed in Islamic law as najis (ritually polluting), and the extravagant weeping and displays of grief associated with matam offend Islamic notions of decorum and self-restraint. Of course it is precisely this offensive quality of matam that makes such rituals socially useful, as a means of defining and demarcating a minority community and safeguarding it from being absorbed by a dominant majority.

The “Hidden Imam” and the Purging of the World

One other distinctive Ithna-‘Ashari practice should be noted in this context: veneration for the twelfth Imam. Ithna-‘Ashari Shias believe that in the ninth century, Muhammad al-Muntazar, the twelfth Imam, was on the point of being murdered by the reigning Sunni caliph. Allah intervened, however, and protected the Imam by causing him to enter al-ghaybah (occultation): he became invisible and hidden from his persecutors. The twelfth Imam is still alive but will return to usher in Judgment Day, fill the earth with justice, and execute intiqam (vengeance or retribution) against all those who have made Shias suffer.

While looking forward to this retribution, Shias are permitted to practice taqiyah (protective dissimulation) by pretending to be Sunnis and disguising their religious identity for survival’s sake while residing among a potentially hostile non-Shia population. To this day, Shia congregational prayers include invocations to Sahib al-zaman (one of the Twelfth Imam’s titles: “the lord of time” or “lord of the age”). When this Hidden Imam returns to earth, he will bear the title al-Mahdi (“the one who is divinely guided”).

Khomeinist Politics and Iran‘s Bid for Leadership of Global Islam

The history and rituals noted above are worth knowing about because they figure in the increasingly fierce sectarian polemics linked to the Iranian Islamic Republic’s bid for leadership of global Islam. The regime in Teheran, fully aware of the widespread hostility to Shiism among Sunni populations, has pursued a policy-dating back to the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini-of downplaying its Shia identity in international pronouncements directed to the general Muslim public. Hence Iran’s support for the militant group Hamas; hence Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s frequent televised appearances featuring maps of Palestine and photos of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. Support for Palestinian militancy constitutes an attempt to gain popularity among Sunni Arabs by focusing on shared objects of revulsion: Israel, Zionism, and America.

Saudi-based Wahhabi Salafists, eager to derail Iran’s drive for leadership, have been reminding Sunnis of precisely those sectarian differences that are most likely to keep anti-Shia sentiment alive. The first of these differences (and one that Sunni informants referred to angrily, in interviews I conducted in Yemen and Pakistan) involves the centuries-old Shia practice called sabb al-sahabah (reviling the companions). As noted above, Shias to this day fault those companions of Muhammad who blocked Ali ibn Abi Talib from the caliphate; particular blame is focused on the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar. Since Sunnis revere these two figures as “rightly guided” Muslim leaders, this is a particularly sore point. Partly because of this issue, Shias are sometimes derided with the term Rafidi (rejectionist or renegade), a pejorative that recurs in present-day anti-Shia polemics.

The Dangling Corpse: Sectarian Politics in the Thousand and One Nights

“Reviling the companions” has a long pedigree that can be discerned even in the celebrated medieval collection of stories known as the Kitab alf laylah wa-laylah (the Book of the Thousand and One Nights). The story I have in mind features the famous Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid and comes from a nineteenth-century Arabic edition of the Nights published in Egypt (a country with an overwhelmingly Sunni population).

Harun wrongly suspects the story’s hero-a young man named ‘Ala al-Din-of a crime, has him arrested, and orders him killed. Unknown to Harun, the hero escapes and another prisoner is hanged instead. Thereafter the caliph announces a desire to see ‘Ala al-Din’s corpse hanging from the gallows. Accompanied by his vizier Ja’far, Harun goes to the execution ground but becomes suspicious when he sees the dangling corpse.

“Then,” we are told, “Harun ordered the corpse to be brought down from the gallows. When they brought it down, he found inscribed on the bottoms of its feet the names of the “two sheikhs” [that is, Abu Bakr and Umar]. Then Harun said, ‘O vizier, ‘Ala al-Din was a Sunni, and this fellow is a Rafidi!'”

Inscribing these names on the bottoms of one’s feet is a way of reviling Abu Bakr and Umar with every step one takes. The assumption underlying this episode, of course, is that only a Shia “rejectionist” would dishonor the first two caliphs like this. The fact that the storyteller doesn’t bother to explain this suggests how widespread among the Sunni audience of the Nights this perception of Twelver Shia attitudes and behavior was. The story may also dramatize Sunni impressions of the doctrine of taqiyah: as a crypto-Shia, this Rafidi outwardly appeared to be an orthodox Sunni, but concealed beneath his feet was his contempt for the “two sheikhs.”

“Standardized Islam” and Exporting the Iranian Revolution

The second sectarian issue that appears frequently today involves matam lamentation rituals during the annual Muharram season. Since 1994, Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader of Iran, has issued fatwas forbidding the public performance of self-flagellation. Khamenei’s stated justification? “It is not a question of individual or physical harm,” he has argued, “but of great injuries linked to the reputation of Islam.” In forbidding the public performance of bloody matam, he’s claimed that outsiders might point to this ritual in order to “present both Islam and Shiism as an institution of superstition.”

Khamenei’s fatwas represent a trend currently discernible among competing Shia and Sunni missionaries: the attempt to eradicate traditional, regionally based forms of Muslim worship and replace them with a standardized and homogenized version of Islam-a global Islam that would be easier to supervise from one centralized source.

These fatwas have encountered considerable resistance. Shias I have visited since the 1990s in Muslim locales in Pakistan and India continue to stage spectacularly bloody public performances of matam. They express resentment at what they see as attempts by Iranian outsiders to meddle in local affairs. Sunni polemicists, for their part, regard Khamenei’s decrees as a ruse to disguise Shiism’s inherently unorthodox and un-Islamic character and as a tactic to further the Khomeinist policy of tasdir al-thawrah al-iraniyah (exporting the Iranian revolution).

Rushing to the Apocalypse? Ahmadinejad and the theology of the “Hasteners”

The third sectarian difference that has drawn attention in recent years involves devotion to the twelfth Imam. Insurrectionist and militant movements have often invoked this figure. An example is Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi Shia militia known as Jaysh al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army).

Among the more notorious devotees of the Mahdi in recent years is Iran’s Ahmadinejad. For centuries many Shias have favored a theological stance known as intizar (awaiting, expectation): rather than wage war against tyrants and other earthly incarnations of injustice, faithful Shias avoid political confrontations and adopt a quietist position, piously awaiting the Mahdi’s appearance among us. But Ahmadinejad belongs to a sect known as the Ta’jiliyan (those who bring [something] about quickly, or the “Hasteners”).

This sect claims that believers can, through their actions, “hasten” the twelfth Imam’s apocalyptic return. An October 2009 BBC broadcast noted that Ahmadinejad ended a speech he gave at the United Nations with a prayer for the Mahdi’s appearance: “O mighty Lord, I pray to you: hasten the emergence of the promised one, that perfect and pure human being.” The BBC noted that Ahmadinejad has supervised the rebuilding of the Jamkaran Shrine in southern Teheran (from which the Mahdi will one day arise, according to Twelver belief) and that Iran’s president claims to be in personal contact with the Hidden Imam.

Ahmadinejad’s version of “Hastener” theology was explored at the 2009 Herzliya Conference, an annual gathering on Israeli security issues, in a presentation by the researcher Shmuel Bar. Bar remarked that “Ahmadinejad’s declared objective … is to hasten the appearance of the Hidden Imam. This is to be accomplished through the precipitation of a clash of civilizations between the Islamic world and the West.”

It should be noted that Iran’s political-clerical leadership is divided on this issue. Nevertheless, in light of Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear capability, and the very real possibility that the Islamic Republic will develop nuclear weaponry, Ahmadinejad’s Hastener devotionalism is-to put it mildly-not reassuring. This prospect, of a nuclear-armed and ever-more influential Iran, has spurred Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Salafists to do whatever they can to lessen their adversary’s prestige by portraying Iran as “Persian” and Shia, and hence as alien and heterodox in the eyes of Sunni Arabs.

Sunni-Shia Polemics, from the Palestinian Territories to Yemen

Sectarian polemics have also arisen in intra-Palestinian politics (despite the fact that almost all Palestinian Muslims are Sunni). Members of Fatah have taken to taunting their rivals in Hamas by calling them “Shia”-a derogatory reminder of the support given Hamas by Teheran.

Competition between Sunnis and Shias has also become manifest recently in the realm of religious conversion from one denomination to another within Islam. A current arena for such competition is Yemen. The target: a segment of Yemen’s population known as the Zaydis. Zaydi religious teachings, although historically derived from Shiism, occupy a doctrinal position that shares features of both Sunnism and Shiism. Zaydis I interviewed in Sanaa (Yemen’s capital) in May and June 2009 acknowledged that since the abolition of Yemen’s Zaydi Imamate in 1962 and the subsequent diminishment of Zaydi political power, many young Zaydis are ideologically adrift and uncertain of their own communal identity.

Saudi-funded missionaries have succeeded in converting some Zaydis to Wahhabi puritanism. Other Zaydis, however, are drawn to Iran’s Khomeinist propaganda. Government sources in Yemen accuse Iran of funding the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen’s Saada province, along the Saudi border (the Houthis are militant Zaydis whose leadership comes from the family of Badr al-Din al-Houthi). The Houthis deny that they are funded by Teheran, and they repudiate the claim made by many Yemeni Sunnis that Houthis have secretly converted to the Twelver Shiism that is Iran’s state religion.

But Zaydis I met in Sanaa told me that Houthis take inspiration from Iran and Hezbollah and that they like the feeling of joining a worldwide movement, a universal struggle against what are perceived as satanic forces at loose in the world. A Houthi apologist recited for me the Houthi slogan: “Allahu akbar al-mawt li-Amrika al-mawt li-Isra’il al-la’nah ‘ala al-yahud al-nasr lil-islam” (“Allah is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. May the Jews be cursed. Victory belongs to Islam.”)

Internet web postings offer further perspectives on the situation in Yemen. Twelver Shia missionaries refer to individuals who convert to their form of Islam as mustabsirun (those who have become endowed with insight). The Arabic-language website of the pro-Shia Markaz al-abhath al-‘aqa’idiyah (Office of Doctrinal Research) offers the personal testimony of former Sunnis and Zaydis who are now listed as mustabsirun.

Their backgrounds are varied. One is a journalist; another, a highly educated attorney with wide travel experience. A third is presented as a one-time Wahhabi; a fourth, as an anti-Shia zealot who originally set out to write a book refuting Twelver doctrine. But they have something in common. The website portrays them all as restless spiritual questers, who independently did research on Twelver Shiism and became so impressed with what they learned that they spontaneously became mustabsirun.

When I mentioned the mustabsirun phenomenon to a Sunni mosque-leader I met in Sanaa, he rejected any notion of the sincerity of their conversion, insisting that such individuals were no more than pawns in a Teheran-based plot to take control of Yemen secretly. “The Iranians,” he said, “will use these converts as part of their conspiracy to rule our country from afar.”

Yemen, it seems, offers a storm-warning of what is to come: increasingly polemicized competition between Sunni and Shia ideologues for the leadership of global Islam.

David Pinault is an associate professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University. His latest book is Notes From the Fortune-Telling Parrot: Islam and the Struggle for Religious Pluralism in Pakistan (Equinox Publishing).

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/jan10_sunnishia

 

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The Christians of Egypt, Part I

Posted on November 15, 2011 | Comments Off on The Christians of Egypt, Part I

Posted By Michael J. Totten On November 15, 2011 @ 12:27 am In

Egypt’s Christians are second-class citizens. They were second-class citizens during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, and they aren’t remotely likely to acquire new rights after his fall.

Sectarian clashes between Christians and Muslims are rising. The problem is nowhere near as bad as it was in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias after the removal of Saddam Hussein, but it is getting worse. The army is doing only a half-assed job protecting Egypt’s largest minority, and it even participated in the violence itself and killed dozens when the driver of an army truck rammed himself into a crowd of Coptic Christian demonstrators last month.

When I spent part of the summer in Cairo I hoped to speak with at least one Coptic leader, but I wasn’t able to land an interview. I even hired a fixer to help me, and she couldn’t secure an interview for me, either. I was however, thanks to a reader tip via email, able to meet with a Protestant Christian, Ramez Atallah, who is the head of the Bible Society of Egypt.

Most Westerners — Christian or otherwise and myself included — are bound to be uncomfortable with at least some of what he has to say, but he lives in a different world and doesn’t see things the same way Western Christians might expect.

My colleague Armin Rosen joined me in Ramez’s office.

——————-

MJT: Can you tell us a bit about Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt and what it’s like to live as a Christian here?

Ramez Atallah: The issue in Egypt isn’t Christians, it’s Muslims. Christians are incidental to the issue. There is too much focus in the West on the Christians here.

MJT: Really? You think so? Most people think there’s hardly any focus in the West on the Christians of Egypt.

Ramez Atallah: Those are selfish people who think they should be the center of the world. The real limitations on human rights in Egypt’s future will be focused on Muslims. The people here who are most afraid are the Muslims, not the Christians. If we get an Islamically-biased government — and I’m being optimistic by describing it that way — Christians won’t be persecuted. The Muslim Brotherhood is moderate at least compared with the Salafists. They won’t persecute Christians. They will limit Christians, but they won’t persecute Christians. The people who will be persecuted are Muslims.

MJT: You mean secular Muslims.

Ramez Atallah: Not just secular Muslims. Not all religious Muslims are with the Brotherhood. I just heard a speech from a religious Muslim woman — she’s veiled — and she said, “please don’t take my country away from me. Don’t take my freedom away from me.”

MJT: She was saying this to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Ramez Atallah: Yeah, yeah. She was saying this very strongly. A large number of Muslims are intellectual, educated, and liberal-minded. You have to understand that for a religious Muslim, Islam is as closely entwined with his identity and his being as your gender identity. If you had total freedom to do whatever you wanted, you would not think of changing your gender. Right?

MJT: Right. I wouldn’t.

Ramez Atallah: It wouldn’t even be on your radar screen. Westerners think religious freedom in Egypt means Muslims can opt out of being Muslims. But it’s a completely false supposition. No Muslim doesn’t want to be a Muslim. It’s part of their being. So when Egyptians talk about freedom and revolution, it has nothing to do with Islam. No Egyptian wants to be free of Islam. This is the most religious country in the entire world. According to a Gallup poll, between 99 and 100 percent of Egyptians say religion is very important to them.

So Islam is not the issue. What is the issue is the interpretation of Islam. Over the years, a large group of Muslims in Egypt have contextualized Islam in the modern world. They can practice their Islam and live as 21st century citizens. Women can dress modestly, yet also fashionably. They can go the beach in swimsuits. Maybe not bikinis, but swimsuits. They can drink alcohol from time to time. They are modern people.

Muslim society here as a whole has become more religious, but that does not mean they have all limited their lifestyle. So if and when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, they’ll say “Muslims are not allowed to show their body, so the beaches are only for Christians and foreigners.” So if Muslim women want to swim, they will have to swim fully dressed. These women will be horrified to have these sorts of restrictions put on them.

Then the Muslim Brotherhood will say, “women will have to do such and such, and men will have to do such and such.” Islam is a way of life as well as a belief, so if you don’t interpret it in an open-minded way, your life will be very hard.

The Salafist movement is violent. Imagine if the Amish ruled America and used force to make everyone else live just like them. They wouldn’t, of course, they are peaceful people, but imagine the Amish using force to rule America and require everyone in the United States to adopt their lifestyle. That’s the Salafist movement. They’re the extremists. They adopt old-school Islam and also the old-school Islamic style. The Muslim Brotherhood is less extreme. They will let men wear a tie. But when it comes to women, the Muslim Brotherhood are much more conservative than the average educated Muslim would like. They also impose a lot of restrictions on men.

Because the United States is negotiating with the Muslim Brotherhood, there’s a conspiracy theory in Egypt that says the Brotherhood, the Egyptian army, and the State Department came to an agreement a long time ago and that everything that’s happening now is just play acting.

MJT: How many people actually believe that?

Ramez Atallah: Lots of people believe that.

MJT: Because the three groups are talking to each other? Is that the only reason?

Ramez Atallah: Because they’re the three most powerful groups in Egypt, not because they’re talking to each other.

The Egyptian army is trained by the United States. During the revolution I saw Barack Obama on CNN talking about how American military officers are meeting with their counterparts in the Egyptian army. These military people are like American employees. They’re trained by America, they use American weapons, and they get financial support from America. They’re just as corrupt as Mubarak’s people.

I’d like for the Western press to fight for the rights of Muslims and forget the Christians.

MJT: Really? Why?

Ramez Atallah: Because the minute moderate Muslims are okay in Egypt, Christians can breathe. Christians can live. If there are no more moderates in power in Egypt, Christians will be very limited. But they won’t be as badly off as the Muslims. We are a sort of protected species in Egypt. We will suffer less than the Muslims.

MJT: But you currently have restrictions that they don’t have.

Ramez Atallah: We always have. And we live with them. The restrictions don’t stop us from living and building. For 125 years the Bible Society has been here. I can do anything I want. If I can’t do something, it’s only because I don’t have the resources. I can put ads on the highway, in the newspapers, and on television. I can sell the Bible. If a Muslim wants to buy a Bible, he is welcome to come into my bookshop and buy a Bible. No one will harass him. But that’s because I work carefully within the restrictions of the system. I can’t proselytize by giving out Bibles free of charge, but if someone wants to come in here and buy one, he can. We can do enough as Christians within the limitations.

The problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood will make more restrictions, but they will be tolerable. If the Salafists take over, they will start butchering us.

MJT: They’re the Taliban, basically.

Ramez Atallah: Yes, they’re like the Taliban. But that’s not really a possible scenario. The possible scenario, the likely scenario, is a Muslim Brotherhood government with a Muslim Brotherhood prime minister. The other possible scenario is having another president from the army.

The American government is not concerned about the rights of Muslims to become Christians or atheists. It’s not on the radar screen. They’re just concerned about this minority of Christians. That is seen, so transparently, as Western disdain for human rights. They’re not really human rights, they’re Christian rights. The whole big furor in the West about Christian rights ignores the average Muslim and his rights, except for political rights. The average American is not very concerned about the restrictions of freedom on Muslims as Muslims. They’re concerned about the rights of Muslims to become Christians or atheists.

They have this belief that democracy will make people happier, but in this culture a benevolent dictatorship may make us happier. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan. Are they better off? I’d say no. Millions of Christians have left Iraq since the war. The average Christian has not been protected, and neither has the average Muslim. The situation is chaos. The Americans can’t put in a benevolent dictator because that doesn’t fit their world view, but if Iraq had a benevolent dictator a lot of Iraq’s problems would be solved. Americans support dictators in Saudi Arabia, but they don’t want to deliberately install a dictator in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that’s what they need. It’s the only way to stop the Taliban. Though a dictator would kill people, torture people, and put people in prison, eventually you’d get law and order. But America won’t support this. Americans want people to vote and make their own decisions, but then you get chaos.

MJT: Okay, so what do you think about removing Hosni Mubarak?

Ramez Atallah: As they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the last decade, Mubarak and his honchos forgot that they were accountable. Since the Nasser era, the security apparatus was built on the KGB model. We were in the Russian orbit. We accepted socialism from Russia but rejected communism because we’re a Muslim nation. Communists in Egypt were tortured to death. One of my relatives was a doctor and a communist and he was tortured to death during the Nasser era. Egypt was against communism, but espoused socialism. The package that came with socialism included the KGB model of intelligence.

Sadat and Mubarak gave us more freedom and a capitalistic system, but they didn’t respond to the man-in-the-street situation. Nasser was a populist. He was a charismatic leader. People like me, when we were young, were all for him. He was like Fidel Castro in Cuba. There was a sense that he was going to liberate us from occupation, from the French and the others, and give us our dignity back. We followed the man.

Sadat brought in a regime change. The world was mesmerized by his peace with Israel, but he led such a sophisticated and high-class life that he didn’t care for the poor and the destitute. The capital he brought in was helpful on the one hand, but it didn’t help the poor people. Mubarak continued with Sadat’s philosophy, but not enough of the common people shared the wealth. Mubarak lost touch and forgot that he needed the approval of the masses to rule. He found himself way out of sync with the street. Nasser wasn’t.

Today the big challenge we have is the aspiration of the revolution for freedom and democracy in a country where people are not trained to have inner control. It’s nearly impossible.

When Egyptians go to the West, they tend to go haywire. Divorce rates are very high. Why do they go haywire? Because in Egypt, everything that is permitted is okay. Restrictions are put upon you by the society, not by religion. So if I go to a hotel today and want to register a room with a woman who is not my wife, they won’t let me.

The government here does not just protect my physical state like it does in the United States. There the government infringes on your human rights by insisting you wear a seat belt. You don’t have a choice to not wear that seat belt. Why? Because the government says it has the right to force you to do what’s best for you physically. So you wear that seat belt whether you like it or not or you will get in trouble. Maybe it saves your life.

In Muslim countries, including Egypt, the government says it’s interested in our physical well-being, but it’s more interested in our spiritual well-being. The government will not allow us to do anything that goes against God. The government wants to help you go to Heaven, so I cannot check into a hotel with a woman who is not my wife. The government restricts that. Some Westerners get up in arms and say it’s a restriction of human rights, but it’s no different than forcing you to wear a seat belt. It’s part of a government worldview that says, “we want to protect you.” So if a couple is making out in a car they’ll spend a few nights in jail to repent for their awful sin. If a homosexual declares that he’s homosexual, he’ll get put in jail until he repents. I’m not saying this is good. I’m just explaining how it works.

So the average Egyptian, when it comes to right and wrong, will push up to the limit of what is allowed. During the revolution, when people had no inner control, they went haywire. They stole property, they tore down things, they abused people. It was completely haywire. People no longer feared the police. They could spit on a policeman and nothing would happen to them. Today if you get put in jail, all your friends and family — which could be 200 people — come to the police station where there are only ten policemen, beat them all up, and they get you out. Nobody can do anything. Police aren’t allowed to shoot people anymore, especially not women and children who come and storm the prison.

When we lose the fear of authority in a country where since the time of the Pharaohs authority came from outside, we cannot have a Western-style democracy. People here don’t have the kind of inner controls that Westerners have. In the West, sin is available. Adultery is available. Here, it’s not. We have no dirty magazines. Playboy has never been sold in Egypt. The society protects my morals. Once these restrictions are gone, people go haywire.

Armin Rosen: But the social order hasn’t broken down in Egypt as badly as it could have. Most people seem pretty well-behaved. I don’t feel unsafe walking around at night.

MJT: I don’t either.

Armin Rosen: So things went haywire in what sense?

Ramez Atallah: You’re fortunate. There are some places in the city where you would not be safe.

MJT: Where, exactly?

Ramez Atallah: The places where they’ve burned churches. But a while back you would have been safe in those places. Cairo is still one of the safest cities in the world. It’s still safer than American cities, but it’s more dangerous than it was.

I don’t idolize the West. Raising my kids in a Muslim society has been healthier for them than if I would have raised them in the West. Mainstream Islamic values are close to Christian values. It’s the extreme Islamic values that aren’t. An advantage of Mubarak was that he kept the extremists at bay.

Westerners don’t understand that the Muslim government of Egypt requires my children to have a Christian education or they can’t graduate. Your Western government doesn’t even allow Christian children to study Christianity in public schools. In Egypt, it’s obligatory for Christians to study Christianity just like it’s obligatory for Muslim to study Islam. The people forcing my children to study Christianity are Muslims.

There are many things in a Muslim culture that are good even though there are also many things that are bad. I’m not an idealist about it, but we have very little rape here. Women are not afraid of being raped on the streets. You’re more likely to get raped on a college campus in the United States than in Cairo.

When I was living in Montreal a woman down the street from me was murdered for her purse which had only ten dollars in it. Here she might be robbed, but she wouldn’t be murdered. There are advantages to living in a Muslim country as long as the extremists are kept at bay. Before, women wearing swimsuits on the beach would not be harassed or accosted or spat on. Now they are harassed and spat on by young men who say they shouldn’t be dressed that way.

MJT: Where do they get this attitude? From the mosque? From the Muslim Brotherhood? From the Salafists? From all of them?

Ramez Atallah: A man was recently talking to two American ladies at the beach. They were there in their swimsuits. One was wearing a bikini. He told them he felt really sorry for Christian men. The ladies asked why. He said, “because men like me see your body. My woman would never been seen in public that way. She is only for me. I can see you half-naked, but no other man gets to see my wife half-naked.”

One of the women said, “but you can have four wives.” And he said, “yes, and this way I can be faithful. I can fool around within the four while your husband will be tempted by others.” This was an educated Muslim man. He really believes Muslim men and women are better off.

Armin Rosen: Do you think Egypt will eventually become a democracy, despite what you said about how hard it is when people lose their fear of authority? And would you think that’s a good thing?

Ramez Atallah: I think we’re going to have something like a civil war followed by a very strong hand for a while. It may loosen afterward, but we’ll get it.

MJT: What do you mean by “like a civil war?”

Ramez Atallah: National consensus is very hard to achieve. When Mohammad ElBaradei, who is a candidate for the presidency, went to vote for the constitutional referendum earlier this year, he was beat up at the polling station. When a candidate for the presidency isn’t allowed to vote in an election that had nothing to do with the presidency, how many people in his campaign do you think will be beaten up in an election that does have something to do with the presidency? It’s going to be terrible.

Now imagine an election for 500 different seats in the parliament. If three people run for each seat, that’s 1500 candidates. A lot of people are going to get beaten up.

Armin Rosen: So you have no faith in the Egyptian people’s ability to run a democratic system?

Ramez Atallah: If there was consensus, if there weren’t so many different vested interests that have been suppressed before the lid was taken off all of a sudden, then maybe. We have two or three million Salafists all of a sudden. Where did they come from? Before, a Salafist trying to speak in a mosque would have been arrested at once.

I used to tell Westerners that the only reason they’re safe on the streets is because Muslims are being tortured and jailed. They didn’t believe me. But the people being tortured and jailed were the people who wanted an Islamic regime in Egypt and to overthrow Mubarak. They were the ones in jail. Not the Christians.

The Salafists are acting like the Taliban. We need a strongman to keep the Salafists down.

If the Muslim Brotherhood gets in charge, they will torture and jail the Salafists.

MJT: You think so?

Ramez Atallah: They have to. Of course! When the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, the big opposition is not going to come from Christians or Muslims, but from the Salafists who believe the Brothers are not Muslims. The Salafists believe the Muslim Brotherhood people have sold out.

MJT: Sold out to whom?

Ramez Atallah: Sold out to materialism, modernity, and the West.

MJT: The Muslim Brotherhood is extremely anti-Western.

Ramez Atallah: Sure, but the Salafists are ten times worse. And they’re also anti-Brotherhood. The Salafists aren’t like the Sufis.

MJT: Oh, I know.

Ramez Atallah: Sufis are into peaceful mysticism. The Salafists are violent people who believe they can use the sword to accomplish God’s will. And they actually use swords. They don’t use guns. They use swords and knives when they attack people because Islam had no guns. The Salafists do not believe that the Muslim Brotherhood people are real Muslims. They will cooperate in order to get a Muslim government in.

MJT: They’re cooperating right now.

Ramez Atallah: They are cooperating. But the Muslim Brotherhood also cooperates with the remnants of the Mubarak regime. They will cooperate pragmatically. But it’s very unlikely that the Salafists won’t cause a lot of grief to the Muslim Brotherhood if the Brothers take over. The Muslim Brotherhood will have to control them. And how will it control them? The same way they were controlled. They will oppress the same way they were oppressed.

I’m pessimistic about an easy or a quick solution. We’re going to have many many years of grief in this country.

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Posted in Egypt, Religion

Syria uprising victim of outside game

Posted on November 15, 2011 | Comments Off on Syria uprising victim of outside game
By Ramzy Baroud

Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:52PM GMT
Syrians continue to be victimized, not only in violent clashes with the Syrian military, but also by regional and international players with various agendas.

Protests in Syria began on January 26, and a more inclusive uprising was set in motion on March 15. The initial demand was for serious political reforms, but this was eventually raised to a demand for full regime change, encompassing the unconditional departure of President Bashar al-Assad and his Baath Party, which has ruled Syria for decades.

Soon, there was a deadlock. The uprising failed to weaken the links between the regime, army and other security agencies. It also remained confined to areas outside the two most populated cities, Damascus, in the southwest, and Aleppo in the north. On the other hand, protests seemed extensive and prevalent enough to reflect a real sense of outrage at government practices, which grew with the reported deaths of Syrians all over the country. Despite a relentless military crackdown, and the killing of 3500 Syrians (according to a recent UN human rights office report), the government has not been able to quell the uprising, nor to provide a convincing political initiative that could spare Syria further bloodletting.

It could be argued that the impasse originated in Syria’s own political culture, espoused by the Baath Party’s legacy of shunning dialogue in times of crisis. More, those who ultimately designated themselves as Syria’s opposition remain largely divided, and often seemed to provide conflicting roadmaps for achieving democracy.

Earlier revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt were spared the terrible fate of people’s priorities becoming merely another agenda item to be decided by outside powers. Both revolutions had quickly reached the critical mass required to topple their dictators, denying outsiders the chance of meddling in the outcome. The situation in Syria, however, developed at a different pace. The uprising lacked the full support of the urban middle class. The army neither broke away from the ruling party, nor remained neutral. Additionally, months of violence – in which a successful Western military intervention in Libya toppled the regime of Mummer Ghaddafi – provided outside powers with the needed time to position themselves as the caretakers of Syria’s future. In other words, a popular uprising was decidedly hijacked and is currently being managed from Western and Arab capitals.

It was as though ordinary Syrians began realizing that their vision of achieving revolution from within was futile, and they bought into the illusion that only outside intervention could bring lasting change. These voices were emboldened by members of the Syrian National Council – seen as the lead opposition to the Baath regime – whose behavior seemed to model that of the Libyan National Transitional Council. The latter had blithely welcomed NATO to Libya, initially to ‘protect civilians’ from possible Libyan army retaliation, but eventually to carry out an airstrikes campaign that largely increased the number of deaths in Libya.

Adopting a model that rationalizes foreign intervention – which is incapable of exacting change without extreme violence – will bode horrible consequences for the Syrian people and the whole region. With the Syrian government failing to win the trust of large segments of the Syrian population, the opposition’s growing dependency on outside forces, and some Arab media networks fanning the flames of sectarianism and civil war, the Syrian deadlock is morphing into something even more dangerous: a Lebanon-style civil war or a Libyan-style foreign military intervention.

The fate of Syria is no longer likely to be influenced by the Syrian people themselves, nor by their government. All eyes are now on the United States. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton tried to clarify the US position in her recent comments. In the case of Libya, NATO and Arab countries banded together “to protect civilians and help people liberate their country without a single American life lost,” she said. But in other cases, as in Syria, “to achieve that same goal, we would have to act alone, at a much greater cost, with far greater risks and perhaps even with troops on the ground.” For now, according to Clinton, US priorities in the region would have to remain focused on “our fight against al-Qaeda; defense of our allies; and a secure supply of energy” (The Washington Post, November 7).

Russia and China, worried that another US regime change venture could jeopardize their interests in the region, remain steadfast behind Damascus and critical of the factions that oppose the Assad regime. “We are concerned with news of ongoing aggression by extremist gunmen such as those which took place in Homs, Hama and Idlib in recent days with the provocative aim of forcing security agencies and the army in Syria to retaliate, and then launching a campaign via international media outlets,” said Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov in a recent statement (The Lebanese Daily Star, November 11).

The lines are thus drawn, between US-led Western camp and Russia and its own camp, which vehemently rejects a repeat of a Libyan scenario in a volatile region of unmatched geopolitical significance.

Whatever the outcome of this tussle, the Syrian uprising is increasingly being deprived of its own initiative. Currently, the issue of Syria is being entrusted to the Arab League, which lacks both credibility (since it is too divided between regional interests) and any history of successful political initiatives. On November 2, Syria announced that it had agreed to an Arab League plan which called for the withdrawal of security forces from the streets, the release of prisoners and talks with the opposition.

However, it is very probable that some Arab countries are keen to employ the league in a similar fashion to the way it was used with the war on Libya: a mere springboard that eventually allowed NATO’s war to take place. Signs of such a scenario are becoming clearer, especially following the league’s vote to suspend Syria’s membership on November 12. Indeed, In a New York Times editorial on November 8, the role of the Arabs seems to be confined to just that. The Arab League “should eject Syria and urge the United Nations Security Council to condemn Mr. Assad and impose international sanctions against the regime,” the Times counseled. “Russia and China will find it harder to block a Security Council resolution – as they did in October – if the Arab world calls for action that goes beyond the sanctions already imposed by the United States and Europe.”

And so the saga continues. If Syria doesn’t wrestle its fate from the hands of these self-serving forces, the Syrian uprising and Syria as a whole will continue to be marred by uncertainties and foreboding possibilities.

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

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Posted in Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

Arab Spring, American winter

Posted on November 12, 2011 | Comments Off on Arab Spring, American winter

By Aaron David Miller- November 13, 2011 –

All  Gaule was divided into three parts, Julius Caesar wrote in his “De Bello Gallico.” For America, the Arab world had been divided into two: adversarial and acquiescent Arab authoritarians.

Until now.

The last eight months have witnessed profound changes. The willing and unwilling Arab autocrats have gone or are going the way of the dodo.

What remains — Arab states without strong and authoritative leaders and caught up in lengthy, messy transitions, monarchies trying to co-opt and preempt transformational change (Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan); and nonstate actors still at war with themselves (Hezbollah and the Palestinians) — guarantees a turbulent and complex environment for the United States. Few offer a hook on which to hang a set of American policies now broadly unpopular throughout the region.

The long arc of the Arab Spring may yet bring more transparency, accountability, gender equality and, yes, even some semblance of real democracy. But the short term all but guarantees a much less hospitable and forbidding place for America, whose credibility has shrunk.

For 50 years, America dealt with two kinds of Arab leaders: the adversarials (Syria, Libya and Iraq) and the acquiescents (Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan and a few key Persian Gulf states). At times, each of the adversarials also played the role of partners for brief periods: Iraq against Iran; Syria on the peace process; Libya on giving up WMD in exchange for an end to its pariah status. But leopards really do not change their spots. The violent ends of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Kadafi and perhaps at some point even the younger Bashar Assad make the case.

For the most part, these Arab authoritarians guaranteed a relatively stable and predictable region in which U.S. interests thrived: successful containment of the former Soviet Union, access to oil at fair prices, security for Israel, close relations with the acquiescents and even progress on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. This left America with a role it understood and could play rather well.

It wasn’t pretty, of course. There was that pesky Arab-Israeli conflict that drove a handful of wars, oil shocks, an Iranian revolution and Islamic extremism, and a few self-inflicted disasters such as Operation Iraqi Freedom. But by and large, the U.S. got by, its prestige high with acquiescent autocrats and low with their publics.

And why not? America had cut the devil’s bargain: In exchange for giving the friendly autocrats a pass on governance and human rights (and at times reaching out to the adversarials), it was able to enlist their cooperation on a range of issues. But Washington may now find itself in the strange position of getting neither democracy nor stability. America’s stock is lower than it’s ever been, its partners are gone, along with the familiar bad guys, and it’s not at all clear who or what will take the place of those partners. We confront not just an Arab Spring but an array of uncertainties complex enough to run many years to come.

Tunisia, where it all began, appropriately offers the best chance for a working democracy, in part because it’s small and largely irrelevant. In Egypt and Libya, where hopes have been high, you have to wonder. The former is less free, prosperous and secure than it was under Hosni Mubarak and is likely heading for a future like Turkey — but two decades ago. Libya, a country the size of Alaska with only 6 million people and a lot of oil money, should do well. But it isn’t Western Europe. Rival militias, Islamist radicals, outside meddling and just the lack of traditions and experience in self-governance guarantee that Libya will be a long slog.

Elsewhere, matters look a lot worse. In Syria, nobody has a clue: The scenarios run from more of the same to civil war to an Alawite coup against the Assads — even the possibility (now don’t shoot me) of some kind of external military intervention should the bloodletting rise exponentially. We can be pretty confident that whatever transpires, it will be long, complex and bloody. Yemen, which most people (including myself) don’t really understand, is equally opaque. But dollars to doughnuts that won’t be a polity of which Thomas Jefferson would have been proud.

Strange as it seems, the monarchies may well have the best shot at avoiding these kind of painful transitions. Where in varying degrees money, legitimacy from Islam and some enlightened leadership combine (Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Oman), reckonings have been averted. For how long is unclear. At some point, if they’re not smart on reform — and even if they are — the bell may toll for the kings too.

I know that people say, be patient, the arc of the Arab Spring is long and potentially a happy one. And for the Arabs, that may well be true. They are seizing control of their destiny and they will be allowed — as they should be, finally — to make their own beds.

But for America, it may not be such a happy experience. Our policies, opposed from one end of this region to the other, are unlikely to change. Our capacity to succeed at war and peacemaking — the real measure of respect and admiration (Libya notwithstanding ) — has diminished along with our street cred. We can’t solve the Palestinian issue, can’t stop Iran from getting the bomb, can’t find a way to achieve victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are still caught up in the devil’s bargain with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

We resemble more a modern-day Gulliver tied up by tiny tribes and by our own illusions than a smart, tough and fair superpower.

If we could disengage and spend more time and resources on our own broken house, we should; but alas, we can’t. And therein lies the conundrum for America today: stuck in a region (with fewer friends) we can’t fix or walk away from.

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, served as a Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author of “Can America Have Another Great President?” to be published in 2012.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

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Posted in Middle East Geopolitics, US Middle East Politics

Turbo State Turkey!

Posted on November 9, 2011 | Comments Off on Turbo State Turkey!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 —

This is how the German magazine Stern views Turkey on the 50th anniversary of the first arrival of (permanent) guest Turkish workers: Turbo-Staat Turkei. A vibrant economy and a remarkable transformation from the days of almost extreme poverty 50 years ago; the Bosporus now glittering with wealth and every other possible euphemism for the “Turkish miracle.”

The Germans have always been good at making cars. I trust they should know that a turbo-speeding car does not always guarantee a safe and comfortable drive for its passengers, especially when its other mechanical parts suffer major faults. Nor does the size of the car matter for a happy ride – on a ceteris paribus scale, who would wish to live in extra-turbo state India and who, in the much smaller-engined and not-so-turbo Holland?

With all due respect for the world-renowned German expertise in the motor industry, I shall try to complete the assessment of the “Turbo State Turkey” with independent facts and figures:

According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report “Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All,” released last week, Turkey stands at a not-so-turbo 92nd out of 187 countries in its human development ranking. The report notes that Turkey’s human development index is below the average for countries in the high human development group and below the average for countries in Europe and Central Asia. Central Asia!

UNDP’s gender inequality index puts Turkey at the 77th place out of 146 countries. In Turkey, the report notes, women hold 9.1 percent of parliamentary seats, and (as low as) 27.1 percent of adult women have reached a secondary or higher level of education compared to 46.7 percent of their male counterparts. Female participation in the labor market is 24 percent compared to 69.6 percent for men.

Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum’s 2011 report had put Turkey at the 122nd place out of 134 countries – the lowest ranking in Europe in women’s access to education, economic participation and political empowerment. What other “turbo” effect?

According to the World Press Freedom index issued by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, Turkey ranks 138th out of 178 countries, sporting a record number of journalists in jail, higher than in China and Iran. The Freedom to Journalists Platform, a Turkish group, lists 68 journalists in jail on charges that it says violate freedom of expression, including charges about a book not even published.

The economy may be turbo at speed, but it is not equally reliable in sustainability. Forget the huge current account deficit. According to the U.N.’s Economic Freedom Index, Turkey is the world’s 67th freest economy, and it ranks 30th out of 43 countries in the European region.

And the turbo speed comes with some motor faking, too. According to Transparency International, a leading anti-corruption organization, Turkey’s corruption ranking is at the 56th place out of 91 countries measured. Turkey’s ranking is worse than Namibia, Oman, Brunei, Bhutan, China, Botswana and the United Arab Emirates.

Not surprisingly, Freedom House has put Turkey at 116th place out of 153 countries, labeling the turbo democracy as “partly free.” And the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2010 gave Turkey 89th ranking out of 167 countries. In this list, Turkey ranks behind Lebanon, Honduras, Ecuador, Albania, Bangladesh, Mali, Ghana, Lesotho, Guyana, Benin, Namibia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, China and Botswana.

Turkey’s democratic credentials, coming under the tag “hybrid regime,” is one category below the tag “flawed democracy.” So, the turbo state is not even a flawed democracy. This is, sadly, the real motor quality behind the shining armor of the turbo state Turkey.

All the same, the choice between extreme doses of economic instability and democratic malfunctioning is entirely personal. Today, I got a sad letter from a great friend who lives on the other side of the Aegean. “Where is it better to live?” the friend was asking, now having to choose between Greece and somewhere south across the Atlantic. “In a failed democracy that does well in the economy, or in a failed economy that manages somewhat better in democracy?” Difficult question. “Now I know the answer,” he wrote. I am not sure he does.

© 2011 Hurriyet Daily News
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turbo-state-turkey-2011-11-08

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Posted in Turkey