Category Archives: Arab Spring

2012 world preview: no peace, no prosperity, no progress

Simon Tisdall writes: It would be fun to be upbeat, big and bouncy about 2012 – but gloomy facts get in the way. In international affairs, at least, the year ahead looks like a miserable affair, likely to be characterised, in headline terms, by the three nos: no peace, no prosperity, and no progress.

In conflict zones from the Middle East to Africa and Asia, there is scant prospect of relief in 2012 and good grounds for believing that worse is to come. Economically speaking, the monetary and sovereign debt crises affecting Europe and the US threaten to taint global markets further and trigger a general depression.

In plain political terms, resurgent nationalism, self-serving or downright corrupt electoral processes, and a growing emphasis on the politics of fear and envy – contrasting sharply with Barack Obama’s circa 2008 politics of hope – will ensure the lack of inspired global leadership evident in 2011 carries over into the coming year.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. We’ll be looking out for some bright spots, too, that may enliven 2012. As the jaunty (and apocryphal) motto of Royal Nepal Airlines put it: “When flying through the Himalayas, the aeroplane pilot should remember the old saying: every cloud has a solid lining.” [Continue reading…]

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Crackdown in Cairo

Sarah Carr writes: There was a flurry of good news last week in Egypt. Activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah was released on Christmas Day, Cairo’s Administrative Court issued a ruling banning “virginity tests,” and thousands of women took part in a spirited march in downtown Cairo to denounce the military’s brutal violence against women protesters during the breakup of a sit-in in front of the Cabinet building on Dec. 16 and 17.

That streak of good times was interrupted Thursday afternoon when public prosecution officials, assisted by armed Central Security Forces (CSF) soldiers — Cairo’s ubiquitous black-clad riot troops — raided the offices of six civil society groups.

They started just after noon, with the 12th- floor headquarters of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession (ACIJLP), and continued on to five others, including three with ties to the U.S. government.

In early December, ACIJLP’s director Nasser Amin was standing for election to the People’s Assembly. Today, he watched as computers and files being were removed and his office sealed shut, his organization targeted as part of a sweeping campaign against NGOs accused of receiving foreign funding.

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The Sunni-Shia wars

Patrick Cockburn writes: In three of the Arab countries east of Egypt – Syria, Bahrain and Yemen – protesters have challenged their governments over the past year but failed to overthrow them. The reasons for those failures are very different though they have important points in common. In each of these states protesters were frustrated because a significant part of the population had a lot to lose if the ruling elite were reformed or overthrown.

In Syria and Bahrain religious identity helps explain loyalty to the powers-that-be. Protesters in Bahrain might insist that their program was secular and democratic, but everybody knew that a fair poll would affect revolutionary change by putting the majority Shia in power instead of the minority Sunni. In Syria, similarly, democracy means that the Sunni, three quarters of the population, would effectively replace the Alawites, a heterodox Shia sect, as rulers of the state.

This does not mean that the demonstrators in both countries had a secret sectarian agenda. It was simply that political divisions already ran along sectarian lines. In Bahrain the security forces were almost entirely Sunni. As the year went on sectarian hatreds became starker.

At the height of the repression, the government demolished Shia mosques claiming it had suddenly discovered they did not have planning permission. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the sectarian homogeneity of the ruling elite in Syria and Bahrain made it impossible for senior state officials to dump an unpopular regime in order to maintain their own power and privileges. In Syria the Alawites came to believe that if President Bashar al-Assad lost so would they.

The Shia and Sunni split has other serious implications. The struggle between these two Islamic traditions, so similar to the battle between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, has been escalating since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 and Shia-Sunni civil war in Iraq in 2006-7 deepened the hatred between the two sects. Of course it was always much in the interests of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Assad clan in Syria and the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain to play the sectarian card and demand communal solidarity from their co-religionists. As far back as 1991 I remember Saddam Hussein bringing the mutilated bodies of Baathist officials back from Najaf, where they had been lynched by Shia insurgents, and the terror expressed by Sunni friends in Baghdad, previously opposed to the regime, that the same fate awaited them if Saddam was toppled.

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Activists hold mass rallies across Syria

The New York Times reports: Tens, and possibly hundreds, of thousands of people defied a continuing government crackdown to fill the streets of several Syrian cities on Friday, intent on showing visiting monitors from the Arab League the extent of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.

As thousands marched in Idlib, Homs, Hama and in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, violence flared at several of the rallies. By day’s end, activist groups said that more than two dozen people had been killed by security forces. The large crowds, while not unprecedented, underscored the resilience of the protest movement despite United Nations estimates that more than 5,000 people have died since opposition to the government galvanized in March.

A protester in Dara’a, who reported huge demonstrations, said: “We want to show the Arabs and the world that we are peaceful protesters, not criminals or armed gangs. The coming days and weeks will prove our statements, not the regime’s story.”

The government’s supporters also held rallies, according to witnesses and the Syrian state news agency, SANA, which posted photographs of large gatherings in Aleppo and Damascus. The news agency said the protesters were “demanding the Arab League observer mission to be credible and professional in conveying the facts of what the terrorist groups are perpetrating.”

The arrival of the observers has been one of the most closely watched developments in the nine-month-old Syrian conflict. For days this week, their role was heavily criticized by opposition activists, who complained about the paltry number of observers and about the mission’s leader, a former Sudanese general. The military intelligence branch he oversaw has been accused of crimes by human rights groups.

Many feared the mission was another stalling tactic by the government. Even so, everyone seemed to want a minute of the observers’ time.

By week’s end, after four hectic days of visits, the observers seemed to have ushered in a new phase of the conflict, or at the very least, altered its dynamic.

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Hamas forces ordered to cease attacks on Israeli targets, Palestinian sources say

Haaretz reports: Hamas leader Khaled Meshal has instructed the group’s military wing to cease attacks on Israeli targets, senior sources in Fatah say.

The sources say Meshal issued the order based on understandings between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Meshal during their recent talks in Cairo.

Israeli defense sources say they are unaware of such an order.

According to the sources in Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Meshal ordered a de facto cease-fire with Israel not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank. Hamas had already refrained from launching rockets from Gaza.

The sources say Meshal issued the order in late November, after the first round of reconciliation talks in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah.

After that meeting, it emerged that the two organizations agreed also to focus on a popular struggle along the lines of the Arab Spring.

Israeli defense sources say they were unaware that Meshal had issued a direct instruction to activists in the West Bank and Gaza. They add that there has been no strategic or ideological change in Hamas’ policy.

Rather, Hamas realizes that this is a bad time for terror attacks, both because of Palestinian public opinion and a fear of an Israeli reprisal that would compromise Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip.

But if the group’s terror networks in the West Bank spot an opportunity to carry out a significant attack, they are expected to take advantage of the chance, as they have done in the past.

Hamas’ leadership in Gaza said it was surprised by Meshal’s statement and that “the only way to liberate the occupied lands is through the armed struggle.” The Hamas interior minister in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, added that the group’s “internal leadership” does not necessarily intend to abide by Meshal’s policy.

Meshal reiterated late last week that popular protest had “the power of a tsunami” and has already proved itself in the Arab world. But he added that the organization would not give up the use of violence against Israel.

“We and Fatah now have a common basis that we can work on, and that is popular protest, which expresses the power of the people,” Meshal said.

The Hamas leader also expressed his support for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. “Fatah and we have political differences, but the common ground is agreement on a state within the 1967 borders,” he said.

Meshal said the decision to focus on the popular struggle was made by the Hamas advisory body, the Shura Council. This means all senior members of the organization were on board.

The Fatah sources said Hamas does not intend to officially recognize Israel or accept peace agreements with it. Rather, the focus is simply popular protest and consent to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. The sources say Hamas does not plan to stop arming itself, and will respond if attacked by Israel.

The Fatah sources say the statements by the Hamas officials in Gaza show that some leaders in the enclave might seek to undermine the move by Meshal, and that they might also launch attacks on Israel, mainly to prove their political power in the internal struggle in Hamas.

But the sources added that Meshal clearly seems interested in unity and in bringing Hamas into the PLO.

Militants from other factions in the Gaza Strip are still launching attacks, like the group that was hit Tuesday by the Israel Air Force. Islamic Jihad, one of these factions, is not expected to join Meshal’s move.

The Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the Palestinians had not proposed to renew negotiations based on a prisoner release.

Erekat said that stopping the settlements, negotiations based on the 1967 borders, and the release of prisoners are not preconditions but rather Israeli obligations. Without them, the Palestinians don’t see a renewal of talks with Israel, he said.

Meanwhile, the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Duwaik, a Hamas member, said yesterday that parliament would convene a joint session in both Gaza and the West Bank as early as the beginning of February.

Parliamentary activity has been suspended since June 2007, after Hamas’ coup in the Gaza Strip. According to Duwaik, a Palestinian unity government will be established at the end of January, and it will have no political tasks other than preparing for elections.

Duwaik denied reports that he would head the unity government.

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Assad’s Lebanese invasion

Mitchell Prothero writes: The blacked-out sport utility vehicles entered the small mountain village of Arsal, in the furthest reaches of Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, at midnight on a cold night late last month. The mostly Sunni residents of the town immediately knew what was happening: Hezbollah had come to grab someone from his bed.

The target appears to have been a Syrian relative of the dominant local tribe, the Qarqouz, who had taken refuge in the village, which lies just a few miles from the Syrian border. With close families ties on both sides of the line, as well as a central government presence that doesn’t even live up to the designation of “weak,” the tribes make little distinction between Syria and Lebanon, and many make their livings plying that most cliché of all Beqaa trades: cross-border smuggling.

Whether the wanted man is a dissident Syrian remains unclear — the family certainly denies any such thing. Nevertheless, the raid by Hezbollah’s internal security apparatus follows a pattern of harassment, kidnapping, and cross-border rendition of Syrian anti-regime activists by Syria’s many loyalists in Lebanon, which also include rogue police units, pro-Syria political movements, and even Kurdish separatists. As President Bashar al-Assad looks to squelch an astonishingly persistent nine-month revolt, Lebanon is fast becoming another battleground between supporters and opponents of his rule.

The Arsal incursion, however, did not go how Hezbollah planned. The men in black trucks didn’t impress the residents of Arsal: True to their reputation as a flinty bunch, the tribes immediately sent out men bedecked with the ubiquitous accessories of any respectable Beqaa smuggler — the AK-47 and rocket propelled grenade launcher — and ambushed the convoy before it could lay hands on the purported Syrian fugitive.

Local officials released a statement shortly afterwards, warning Hezbollah against any attempt to repeat its adventure. “Let everyone know that Arsal is not orphaned,” it read. “[A]nyone attacking Arsal or any other Lebanese town would be definitely serving the Zionist enemy and Assad’s brigades.”

Hezbollah, which tepidly denied the incident, hasn’t released any casualty figures, but the ensuing firefight was nasty enough that the Lebanese Army dispatched a team to extract the Hezbollah men from the ambush — and itself came under fire from Sunni mountainfolk with little use for either Shiite militant supporters of the Assad regime, or law enforcement of any sort.

The Lebanese army claimed in a convoluted statement the next day that an intelligence unit was in hot pursuit of a known criminal when it unexpectedly came under attack. However, that narrative unraveled over the next few days, when a collection of local officials and anti-Syrian Sunni politicians accused Hezbollah of instigating the attack — a claim confirmed to FP by multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as one prominent human rights activist.

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Bruised but defiant: Mona Eltahawy on her assault by Egyptian security forces

Mona Eltahawy describes her recent assault in Cairo: I suffered a broken left arm and right hand. The Egyptian security forces’ brutality is always ugly, often random and occasionally poetic. Initially, I assumed my experience was random, but a veteran human rights activist told me they knew exactly who I was and what they were doing to my writing arms when they sent riot police conscripts to that deserted shop. Bashar al-Assad’s henchmen stomped on the hands of famed Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat. Our dictators tailor wounds to suit their victims’ occupations.

As the nightsticks whacked at my arms, legs and the top of my head (in the week that followed, I would discover new bruises every day), two things were at the front of my mind: the pain and my smartphone.

The viciousness of their attack took me aback. Yes, I confess, this feminist thought they wouldn’t beat a woman so hard. But I wasn’t just a woman. My body had become Tahrir Square, and it was time for revenge against the revolution that had broken and humiliated Hosni Mubarak’s police. And it continues. We’ve all seen that painfully iconic photograph of the woman who was beaten and stripped to her underwear by soldiers in Tahrir Square. Did you notice the soldier who was about to stomp on her exposed midriff? How could you not?

My phone fell as the four or five riot policemen beat me and then started to drag me towards no man’s land. “My phone, I have to get my phone,” I said, and reached down to try to retrieve it. It wasn’t the Twitterholic in me that threw herself after the phone, but the survivor. For the first three or four hours of detention, I knew they could do anything and no one would know. In the event, it was near-miraculous that, while I was at the ministry, an activist with a smartphone came to discuss setting up a truce between protesters and security. As soon as he signed me in to Twitter, I sent out, “beaten arrested at interior ministry”. And then his phone battery died.

Most people detained the same week I was taken in ended up at a police station or jail, but for some reason I was taken to the interior ministry and was then handed over to military intelligence for almost 12 hours. The sexual assault couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes, but the psychic bruise remains the freshest.

The orange midnight air – a cocktail of street lights, an adjacent school on fire, and air that was more tear gas than oxygen – and the black outlines of the helmeted riot policemen invade my thoughts every day, but I feel as though I have dissociated myself from what happened. I read news reports about a journalist whose arms were broken by Egyptian police, but I don’t connect them to the splints around my arms that allow only one-finger typing on a touchpad, nor with the titanium plate that will remain in my left arm for a year, to help a displaced fracture align and fuse.

But the hands on my breasts, in between my legs and inside my trousers – that, I know, happened to me. Sometimes I think of them as ravens plucking at my body. Calling me a whore. Pulling my hair. All the while beating me. At one point I fell. Eye-level with their boots, all I thought was: “Get up or you will die.”

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Egyptian judge frees anti-junta blogger

The Guardian reports: One of Egypt’s most prominent revolutionaries has been released from jail after almost two months during which he missed the birth of his first child.

An Egyptian investigative judge ordered that Alaa Abd El Fattah, who has been at the forefront of anti-regime struggles for a decade and was a political prisoner during the Mubarak era, be freed pending investigation into charges that he incited violence against the military.

A picture posted by his sister Mona Seif showed him holding his new-born son Khaled on his release. His wife Manal Hassan, who is also an activist, gave birth to the couple’s first child while he was in detention.

Military prosecutors detained Abd El Fattah on 30 October after he refused to answer questions about their allegations that he played a role in clashes during a march by Coptic Christians on 9 October. At least 27 people, most of them Christians, were killed. Abd El Fattah was among those who spoke out against the army’s involvement in the violence, which was confirmed by multiple witness reports and video footage. But the military has accused Abd El Fattah of inciting Christian protesters to attack the soldiers. He was also accused of stealing a military weapon, deliberately destroying military property and attacking security forces.

His supporters dismissed the claims, saying the military was trying to silence a prominent critic and to deflect blame on its soldiers in the violence. Abd El Fattah wrote in newspaper articles smuggled out of jail that his arrest was motivated in large part by his insistence on autopsies to determine the cause of the protesters’ deaths.

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Whose Egypt?

Adam Shatz writes: The awakening is not over, but the heady days of the Arab Spring have come to an end. The counter-revolution, Régis Debray once observed, is revolutionised by the revolution. And so it has been. In Syria, protests have degenerated into sectarian warfare, fomented by a thuggish ruling clique that seems ready to bring the entire country down with it. In Yemen, President Saleh has agreed to stand down after nearly three decades in power, but on the northern border with Saudi Arabia, the dirty war between Shia Houthi rebels and Salafists is getting nastier. In Libya, the oil companies are doing business again, but the country’s new rulers, swept to power by Nato, are talking about restoring Sharia law, perhaps even polygamy. In Bahrain, a peaceful uprising by the Shia majority has been crushed by the al-Khalifa monarchy, with help from troops dispatched by Saudi Arabia. (Tehran, the Saudis claimed, was behind the protests, an assertion rejected by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry in November.) Never keen on popular politics, and furious with the Americans for ‘deserting’ their mutual friend Mubarak, the Saudis have been assiduously fighting the revolutionary wave, mostly with petrodollars, sometimes with guns. The Obama administration was not pleased with the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, but it barely uttered a word of criticism: the Fifth Fleet is stationed there, and preserving the special relationship with the House of Saud is paramount.

Civil strife, sectarian warfare, repression: the forces resisting revolutionary, democratic change in the Middle East are proving tenacious. The only country to have been spared such turbulence is Tunisia, where, in an extraordinarily smooth post-revolutionary segue, the moderate Islamists of the Nahda have come to power in elections, reassuring secular Tunisians that they intend to respect the country’s progressive family code. But Tunisia has the luck of being small and peripheral. It is an island of comparative tranquillity because it barely casts a shadow beyond its borders.

Egypt, by contrast, casts a very long shadow. It has the largest population of any Arab country: some 83 million citizens. It has the Suez Canal, through which American warships are accustomed to pass at short notice. It shares a border with Israel, with which it signed a peace treaty that has allowed the Israeli army great room for manoeuvre when it has invaded its neighbours. Egypt has a very close relationship with Washington, particularly when it comes to counter-terrorism, and it has provided services that dare not speak their name, such as torture. But it has never been merely a client state. Egypt is a genuine nation, with a pharaonic history of which it is understandably proud. It has memories of leading the Arab world under Nasser, and despite the many humiliations that followed Nasser’s defeat in 1967 it has never quite given up on the idea of leading it again, as if the last four decades were just a caesura. And then there is the city of Cairo, overcrowded, grimy and a bit battered but still, in its bewildering size and wounded ambition, the cultural and political capital of the Arab world: a status it lived up to, for the first time in decades, in Tahrir Square during the 25 January revolution. The stakes in Egypt are very high.

Less than a year has passed since the uprising began, but the euphoria in Tahrir Square already seems like a distant memory. The young people who launched the revolution are still protesting, but they have been outflanked by the hard men, the soldiers and Islamist politicians now calling the shots. The Mubarak regime was replaced by a military junta, the 20-member Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), headed by Field Marshal Muhammed Hussein Tantawi.The Scaf has all but declared war on Tahrir, assailing protesters calling for civilian rule as ‘enemies’ of the revolution which it perversely claims to embody. On 16 December, military police officers armed with electric prods and clubs, and assisted by thugs, moved into the square at dawn. At least 14 people were killed and hundreds injured; a woman was stripped half naked and beaten in the square. The country’s newly appointed prime minister, Kamal El-Ganzoury, blamed protesters for the violence, accusing them of an ‘assault on the revolution’. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt on the edge

Yasmine El Rashidi writes: In Tahrir on November 25 the Islamist researcher and political analyst Ibrahim El Houdaiby told a group of us: “It would have taken a completely different direction had the Brotherhood come out last weekend and put their weight behind the people.” Even Islamists and some preachers and veiled women spoke of their disappointment with the Brotherhood; they hoped that it wouldn’t win the polls of the following week.

Still, the liberal parties were not able to find much support from the underclass, whether in poor urban districts or rural Egypt. They could not penetrate the decades-old informal networks that have long been dominated by family and tribal alliances, religious affiliations, or agents of the former regime. Even if they had succeeded, the most prominent of the liberal coalitions, the Egyptian Bloc, was headed by the Free Egyptians Party, founded by the telecom tycoon Naguib Sawiris, whose popularity plummeted in June when he tweeted a cartoon of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing Muslim gowns and headdresses—Mickey with a bushy beard, and Minnie in a face veil. “Mickey and Minnie after…,” he wrote.

In the weeks following, a full-scale campaign was launched against him by Islamists, urging people to boycott his businesses. In a matter of weeks, 304,000 subscribers left his telecom provider, Mobinil, for local competitors; his company suffered losses of 96 percent for the third quarter of 2011. Even among some liberal Egyptians, Sawiris’s tweet was seen as going too far: “We are a largely Muslim country, Sawiris has to remember and respect that.” In response to the cartoon, a Coptic friend posted on Facebook a message that “the revolution was about unity, not such attacks.”

Amid all this, the Salafi Al-Nour Party has preached in favor of its puritan form of Islam, and a state governed by its principles—one with the same religious restrictions as Saudi Arabia—as the answer to the country’s social and economic woes. The Salafists swiftly followed the lead of the Muslim Brotherhood, providing free and subsidized goods and services to the poor, and focusing their campaign messages on the price of food and cost of living. We don’t know how much the party’s appeal was hurt or enhanced by the fact that its campaign posters didn’t feature pictures of its female candidates, and instead had an image of a rose above their printed names. At a political rally in a public square in Alexandria, it covered a statue of a mermaid with a cloth. But it appealed to Egyptians who spoke the language of the street and believed, among other things, that ultimately, the future of Egypt is in “the hands of Allah.”

In the days since the initial election results were released, the liberals have been discussing how to regroup and prepare for the weeks and voting rounds ahead. Many liberal Muslims and Copts are talking about what the future might hold, including immigration. The Islamist parties, for their part, are anxious not to be grouped together. The FJP has firmly stated that it will not enter an alliance with the Salafis, who themselves have said they will not walk in the shadow of the Brotherhood. (Before the elections, the two groups had agreed on a code of proper behavior during them, but they have not entered into a political alliance.)

In months to come, Egypt’s first freely elected parliament will probably be as fragmented as the political landscape that preceded it. During what will be a period of immense pressure, the Muslim Brotherhood will most likely emerge as a mediator and perhaps the ally of the parliament’s liberal coalition. The military, for its part, will undoubtedly continue to have a hand in the country’s affairs, whether overtly through a provision of the constitution, or through tactical pacts with factions in parliament. Having waited since 1928 for this moment, the Brotherhood can be expected to wait another few years before attempting to make any drastic or fundamental changes in the social and cultural life of the Egyptian state.

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Yemen’s Saleh says he is going to U.S.

Al Jazeera reports: Yemeni security forces in Sanaa have shot at protesters marching against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who on his part said he would go to the United States in order to allow an interim government to prepare for an election to replace him, but did not specify when he would leave.

Saleh, speaking to reporters after forces loyal to him fired at protesters demanding he face trial for killing demonstrators over 11 months of protests, said he had no designs on staying in power.

“I will go to the United States. Not for treatment, because I’m fine, but to get away from attention, cameras, and allow the unity government to prepare properly for elections,” he said on Saturday.

“I’ll be there for several days, but I’ll return because I won’t leave my people and comrades who have been steadfast for 11 months,” he said. “I’ll withdraw from political work and go into the street as part of the opposition.”

Forces reportedly killed at least nine protesters when they opened fire to stop the tens of thousands who set off from the southern city of Taiz on Tuesday for the 270km march to the capital.

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Is Assad’s regime behind the Damascus suicide bombings?

The anonymous Arab journalist who blogs at The Arab Digest examines those reasons that support the idea that the Assad regime is behind these bombings, versus those reasons suggesting Free Syrian Army or Islamist involvement. In his view, the regime itself is more suspect.

One could say the regime is behind it for the following reasons:

1. Friday is a day off which means more civilians will die than security services.
2. Arab League observers just arrived in town, and such operations serve the regime’s reasoning of current events, and justifies to some extent its heavy handedness.
3. Precedence. The regime has allegedly used a suicide bomber in Lebanon’s Hariri assassination.
4. The FSA has denied its involvement, and accused the regime. The Syrian National Council has previously asked the FSA, and reportedly agreed with its leader Riyadh Al-Assaad, to restrict its role to protecting civilian demonstrators.

But on the other hand, there is the following supporting the anti regime FSA/Islamists involvement:

1. The Free Syrian Army was not happy with the Arab League Observers arriving in Syria. They were counting on the Arab League increasing the international and regional isolation of Syria.
2. The Islamists have a history of attacking the Security apparatuses. These events are reminiscent of the 1980s showdown with the regime.
3. There is growing anger in the conservative cities and regions, against Damascus and Aleppo for not joining the revolution. This might be a warning.
4. The FSA is not an organised force. The Islamists have a different cell-based structure and might go about such operations without consulting anyone. In Iraq, they had no political calculations whatsoever except to ruin any political process, and promote Sectarian violence.

Both are strongly supported. Still, I see the regime blamed for the bombings due to the timing, and for it being the main perpetrator in repression and violence (the stronger side in violence, and the violent one in repressing peaceful demonstrations). Also, the fact that the regime quickly accused Al-Qaeda and had a team of media people quickly reporting and analysing this, will draw more suspicions regarding its possible involvement.

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