Category Archives: Arab Spring

Jailed Egyptian blogger on hunger strike says ‘he is ready to die’

The Guardian reports: An Egyptian blogger jailed for criticising the country’s military junta has declared himself ready to die, as his hunger strike enters its 57th day.

“If the militarists thought that I would be tired of my hunger strike and accept imprisonment and enslavement, then they are dreamers,” said Maikel Nabil Sanad, in a statement announcing that he would boycott the latest court case against him, which began last Thursday. “It’s more honourable [for] me to die committing suicide than [it is] allowing a bunch of Nazi criminals to feel that they succeeded in restricting my freedom. I am bigger than that farce.”

Sanad, whom Amnesty International has declared to be a prisoner of conscience, was sentenced by a military tribunal in March to three years in jail after publishing a blog post entitled “The people and the army were never on one hand”. The online statement, which deliberately inverted a popular pro-military chant, infuriated Egypt’s ruling generals who took power after the ousting of former president Hosni Mubarak, and have since been accused of multiple human rights violations in an effort to shut down legitimate protest and stifle revolutionary change.

The 26-year-old was found guilty of “insulting the Egyptian army”. The case helped spark a nationwide opposition movement to military trials for civilians, and cast further doubt on the intentions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), whose promises regarding Egypt’s post-Mubarak transition to democracy appear increasingly hollow.

In mid-September, Saki Knafo wrote: Nabil is not the only civilian to have undergone a military trial since the revolution. An article from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting places the total number at 12,000, and says that suspects have been typically tried in three or four days and have been given sentences of between a few months to several years.

Earlier this year, Asmaa Mahfouz, a prominent Egyptian activist, wrote the following Tweet (translated from Arabic): “If the judiciary does not get us our rights, don’t be upset if armed groups carry out a series of assassinations as there is neither law nor justice.”

She was brought before the military prosecutor last month and charged with insulting the military. The case became a flashpoint in the growing movement to end the military trials, with presidential candidates and political groups criticizing the decision. The military council eventually ordered that the charges be dropped.

But Nabil is different from Mahfouz. He isn’t a star, for one thing. “Maikel isn’t a prominent public figure,” his father told the press during a recent demonstration in support of his son. “Maikel is a normal person and that is why they imprisoned him. Others who had a lot of public support and had similar charges were released. But Maikel is one of the general public and he doesn’t have anyone to defend him.”

There’s also the fact that Nabil supports Israel. He says he objected to military conscription in the first place because he refused to “point a gun at an Israeli youth who is defending his country’s right to exist,” and a section of his website is in Hebrew.

Several organizations are again calling for his release. A statement from Reporters Without Borders observed that Nabil “could very soon die” and warned that he could become “the symbol of a repressive and unjust post-Mubarak Egypt.”

In response, a military official was quoted as saying that what Nabil wrote on his blog was “a clear transgression of all boundaries of insult and libel.”

In April, shortly after Nabil’s arrest, a friend of Nabil’s and fellow blogger wrote an email to The Huffington Post in which he said that Nabil’s sentencing proved “every word Nabil has ever said about our regime.”

“The military council wants to annihilate anyone who questions what it does,” wrote the blogger, who calls himself Kefaya Punk. “That reminds me of how the Catholic church treated its opponents in the medieval ages.”

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With $53 million arms sale, U.S condones ongoing repression of Bahraini people

Last week, Josh Rogin reported: Five Democratic senators wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday to ask her to delay a planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain because of the island kingdom’s continued violence against protesters.

“We recognize the administration’s commitment to the United States’ strategic relationship with Bahrain… However, the Bahrain government’s repressive treatment of peaceful protesters during the past several months is unacceptable,” the senators wrote in their Oct. 12 letter [PDF], obtained by The Cable.

“The United States must make it clear to the government of Bahrain that its ongoing human rights violations and unwillingness to acknowledge legitimate demands for reform have a negative impact on its relationship with the United States.”

The letter’s signatories were Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The letter accuses the Bahrain government of torture and notes reporting by Human Rights Watch that states Bahrain’s government has killed 34 protesters, arrested 1,400 more, and dismissed 3,600 people from their jobs for anti-government activities.

“Completing an arms sale to Bahrain under the current circumstances would weaken U.S. credibility at a critical time of democratic transition in the Middle East,” the senators wrote.

Today, Gulf News reports: Washington has finalised a $53 million (Dh195 million) weapons deal with Bahrain, a top US diplomat has said. “Congress has expressed no opposition to this sale,” said Stephen Seche, Deputy US Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs.

The deal is part of a move to defend Bahrain from aggression, Seche said at a roundtable meeting, local media reported.

The official said that the US looked forward to the recommendations by an international panel that investigated the events that hit Bahrain in February and March and their consequences.

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), set up in June, is scheduled to announce its findings on October 30. The BICI, locally known as the Bassiouni Commission, after its leader Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni an expert in international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law, has interviewed thousands of people in its quest to appreciate what really happened.

“I think we would like to wait for the Commission report to speak for itself. We have been encouraged by the process that has ensued here since the Commission first arrived in Bahrain. They have been very thorough and Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni has spoken publicly about the response. He has been encouraged by the receptivity of all aspects of the Bahraini government to probe into the different questions, their need to get to as much information in the time they had,” Seche said.

“This is a positive development and we believe that the Commission’s findings will reflect a process which has been thorough and comprehensive and very professional. We will look forward to the recommendations,” he was quoted as saying.

This week, the “Manama Document: Bahrain’s road to freedom and democracy,” a joint document written by opposition groups, was released. It calls on the monarchy to relinquish political power.

In the presence of an unelected government under statesmanship of a single person for 40 years, some 80 per cent of public land ended being controlled by senior members from the royal family and other influential figures. Consequently, this has placed constraints on availability of lands for the purposes of developing projects for housing, municipality, education and health facilities.

Still, the country suffers from an acute poor distribution of wealth and widespread poverty notwithstanding Bahrain being an oil exporting nation, exporting some 200,000 barrels per day. Wrong policies like extending citizenship to foreign nationals have further undermined distribution of wealth in the country.

Against a backdrop of political dictatorship, economic failure and social confusion of government policies, people of Bahrain had pressed for change. Popular demands date back to 1923 with calls made for participation in decision making and 1938 for having an elected assembly with full legislator and regulatory powers. In reality, popular uprisings kept reemerging almost like those of 1954, 1965 and still 1994-2000, the largest of its kind at the time. Thus, there were the revolts of 1954 plus that of March 1965 as well as that of 1994-2000.

Still, affected primarily by events in Tunisia and Egypt as part of Arab Spring, nearly half of Bahrain’s people took to the streets in early 2011 pressing for democracy, respect of human rights and sustained human development. Yet, the demands call for retaining the royal family in terms of ruling and governing without powers, as a true constitutional monarchy.

In short, Bahrain is undergoing rivalry between two camps, one demanding democracy, comprising of people of all walks of life and diverse ideologies with another struggling to maintain the status quo despite need for addressing political, economic and social challenges.

Last month, in an editorial, the Washington Post called on Congress to block the sale of arms to a regime that continues to repress its people.

The rulers of Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf that hosts the U.S. 5th Fleet, undoubtedly worry that their harsh crackdown on a peaceful pro-democracy movement could damage vital relations with Washington. The government has hired a pricey Washington lobbying firm and regularly dispatches senior officials to stroke the administration and Congress. It has repeatedly promised to free political prisoners, reverse a mass purge of suspected protesters from government jobs and negotiate meaningful reforms of the al-Khalifa monarchy, a Sunni dynasty that rules over a majority-Shiite population.

Yet the regime hasn’t kept its promises — and its unjustified and self-defeating repression goes on. The latest brazen step came Thursday, when a special security court sentenced 20 doctors and other medical professionals to lengthy prison terms after a grossly unfair trial. The doctors were charged with stockpiling weapons and trying to overthrow the regime; in fact, their offense was treating injured protesters who arrived at their hospital and reporting what they saw to international media. A host of human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, pronounced the trial a travesty; Human Rights First said the medics had given “consistent and credible accounts of being tortured into giving confessions.”

The convictions came just a day after a court upheld the convictions of 21 opposition leaders, including clerics, members of political parties, human rights activists and bloggers. None are guilty of violence, but all were nonetheless accused of terrorism; eight received life sentences. They, too, have offered credible reports of torture. Another human rights group, Freedom House, said the rulings continued “a pattern of repression that belies any promises of meaningful reform by the government.”

Such a unanimous verdict from human rights groups ought to spell trouble for a government that depends on the United States for defense and enjoys a free-trade agreement with it. Yet there is no sign of serious friction between the Obama administration and the al-Khalifa family. Administration spokesmen have largely kept quiet as the crackdown has proceeded. On the military front, it is business as usual. This month the Pentagon notified Congress of a plan to sell Bahrain armored Humvees and anti-tank missiles worth $53 million.

The message this sends is unmistakable: The regime’s crackdown will not affect its cozy relationship with the United States. This is dangerous for the United States as well as for Bahrain, because the government’s attempt to suppress legitimate demands for change from a majority of the population is ultimately doomed to failure. Bahrain’s ruling family should be given more reason to worry about its standing in Washington. A congressional hold on the arms package would be a good way to start.

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Egypt’s military, with U.S. support, blocks transition to civilian rule

The New York Times reports: Egypt’s military rulers are moving to assert and extend their own power so broadly that a growing number of lawyers and activists are questioning their willingness to ultimately submit to civilian authority.

Two members of the military council that took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak said for the first time in interviews this week that they planned to retain full control of the Egyptian government even after the election of a new Parliament begins in November. The legislature will remain in a subordinate role similar to Mr. Mubarak’s former Parliament, they said, with the military council appointing the prime minister and cabinet.

“We will keep the power until we have a president,” Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy said. The military had pledged in formal communiqués last March to hold the presidential election by September. But the generals now say that will come only after the election of a Parliament, the formation of a constitutional assembly and the ratification of a new constitution — a process that could stretch into 2013 or longer.

A transition to civilian rule before and not after the drafting of a new constitution was also a core component of a national referendum on a “constitutional declaration” that passed in March as well. The declaration required that the military put in place democratic institutions and suspend a 30-year-old emergency law allowing arrests without trial before the drafting of the constitution to ensure a free debate. But by extending its mandate, the military will now preside over the constitutional process.

The military’s new plan “is a violation of the constitutional declaration,” Tarek el-Bishry, the jurist who led the writing of that declaration, wrote this week in the newspaper Al Sharouk, arguing that the now-defunct referendum had been the military’s only source of legitimacy.

The United States, where concerns run high that early elections could bring unfriendly Islamists to power and further strain relations with Israel, has so far signaled approval of the military’s slower approach to handing over authority. In an appearance this week with the Egyptian foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged an early end to the emergency law but called the plan for elections “an appropriate timetable.”

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The war on Copts in Egypt: its origins

As’ad AbuKhalil writes: There is a war on Copts in Egypt. It is unmistakable and state military and religious institutions are guilty in sponsoring and launching the war. It was no coincidence that the chief of Al-Azhar (a former puppet of Mubarak and his ruling party) was on an official visit to Saudi Arabia during the week of killing the Copts in the streets of Cairo.

The official statement about the visit by Al-Azhar chief and his meeting with Wahhabi clerics of the House of Saud was blatantly sectarian and spoke about protecting Sunnis, as if the majority of the world’s Muslims are under attack in the region from Muslim sects and non-Muslims. The meeting in Saudi Arabia is an example of the fanatical religious movement that leads and sponsors the industries of religious and sectarian hate in the region. But it is not only the Egyptian government which squarely bears the responsibility for the savage attacks on Copts on the streets, and for sponsoring the blatant sectarian agitation that filled Egyptian state airwaves.

The US and Saudi Arabia are also responsible. It is fair to say that the US was party to the Saudi-directed campaign of global religious fanaticism – in two stages. The first phase was during the Cold War when Saudi Arabia, in partnership with the US, unleashed international religious forces to undermine the cause of communism and leftism in general. The movement that produced Bin Laden and his terrorist organization was mid-wived by Saudi Arabia and the US during the war in Afghanistan. The goal was to defeat communism at any price, even if the regimes that followed were much worse than what prevailed under communism, especially if one cares about women’s rights. It can be argued for instance that the Soviet-supported regime in Kabul was far more reformist and enlightened than the reactionary regime that the US installed in Kabul in 2001.

The second wave of global fanaticism was unleashed by Saudi Arabia after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and with the full support of Israel and the US. The US wanted to divert the attention of Arabs from Israel and its crimes and demonized Iran, promoting it as the only danger to Arabs (only Muslims because non-Muslims don’t figure in US calculations and certainly not in the calculations of the Wahhabi clerics). Israel was not to be seen as the enemy, or so wanted the American government, and Saudi Arabia was more than happy to oblige.

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Saudi Arabia needs powerful enemies more than ever

Tariq Alhomayed, Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, advises his readers that they should develop their understanding of the Washington bombing plot by paying attention to official statements — not the media. As the editor of a publication supporting the Saudi government, I guess he sees himself as more of a mouthpiece of government than as a journalist.

Reviving one of the favorite claims of the neocons, Alhomayed insinuates that al Qaeda is a proxy for Iran:

Had the planned assassination of the Saudi Ambassador succeeded – God forbid – we would have seen a statement issued by al-Qaeda claiming that the operation was in retaliation to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the real story would be lost as usual.

Alhomayed then gets even more carried away by likening Saudi Arabia to the World Trade Center and Iran to the 9/11 hijackers:

Tehran wants to target the only high-rise building in our region, namely Saudi Arabia, more than ever before. With the consecutive impact of the Arab political earthquake upon most principal Arab states, only one Arab edifice remains intact; Saudi Arabia, with its religious, economic and political weight.

What for others is likened to Spring, for the Saudis feels like an earthquake.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia and Iran both face the same enemy: democracy. Yet each must direct attention away from this internal threat by pointing to an external and existential threat. The fact that the US government is such a willing collaborator in this counter-democratic program suggests that it too is becoming unnerved by emerging and unwelcome democratic possibilities.

The Obama administration’s willingness to support Saudi Arabia’s counter-revolutionary efforts has nowhere been more evident than in Washington’s tepid response to the brutal suppression of Bahrain’s democracy movement. This has provided part of the context in which the Saudis now feel at liberty to inject yet another twist to a story that is still being written.

McClatchy reports:

[A]n adviser to the Saudi government said that Gholam Shakuri, named in the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal complaint as the Iranian official supporting the plot, was already known to the Saudi government as one of the officers who directed Iranian support to Shiite Muslims in Bahrain when they rose up in February to demand political rights from the minority Sunni regime.

“The officer does exist, and we have known him for a while,” said the adviser, Nawaf Obeid. He said that based on telephone intercepts and other intelligence, the Bahraini and Saudi governments believe that Shakuri, a colonel, had urged protesters to go to the Saudi embassy and backed a plan to take control of Bahrain’s state television.

Like Gaddafi, the Saudis want to cast the Arab Awakening as a destabilizing force, not only as great as the threat from terrorism but intimately tied to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the people of Bahrain understand that an American president who shows much more concern about the danger posed by a scatterbrained used-car salesman than he does about the threat the Bahrain government poses to its own people, also know that the struggle for freedom is one they must continue to fight largely on their own. Obama has no tangible support to offer.

Reuters reports:

In a defiant show of unity, Bahrain opposition parties have jointly denounced the Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab island as a police state and demanded a transition to a constitutional monarchy.

Five groups, including the main Shi’ite party Wefaq and the secular Waad party, vowed to keep up a pro-democracy campaign with peaceful rallies and marches — despite a Saudi-backed government crackdown that crushed similar protests in March.

In their “Manama Document,” the first such joint statement since the unrest, the opposition groups said Bahrain was a police state akin to those that prevailed in Egypt and Tunisia before popular uprisings swept their leaders from power.

The document, issued on Wednesday, said the ruling Al Khalifa family’s role should be to “govern without powers” in a constitutional monarchy, drawing attacks from pro-government media which described it as a power grab by majority Shi’ites.

Unrest still roils Bahrain months after the ruling family brought in troops from Sunni allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help crush a protest movement they said was fomented by Iran and had Shi’ite sectarian motives.

The government says nightly clashes between police and Shi’ite villagers and other forms of civil disobedience are hurting the economy of the banking and tourism hub. Many firms have relocated elsewhere in the Gulf.

A military court has convicted 21 opposition figures, human rights campaigners and online activists who led the protests of trying to overthrow the ruling system. Eight were jailed for life. Waad leader Ibrahim Sharif, a Sunni, received a five-year sentence.

“In pursuit of democracy, opposition forces intend to fully and solely embrace peaceful measures,” the Manama Document said, calling for a direct dialogue between the government and opposition, backed by unspecified international guarantees.

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Egypt’s military more brutal than Mubarak regime, eyewitnesses say

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: A day after Egypt’s military rulers provided their account of this week’s deadly clashes between soldiers and mostly Christian protesters, activists responded with an opposing narrative that accused the army of committing brutalities hitherto unseen under former President Hosni Mubarak.

Armed with videos of the clashes, human rights activists, lawyers and victims’ families who witnessed the incident told their side of the story on Thursday at a news conference. The clashes, which happened on Sunday, left at least 26 killed and more than 300 injured.

“The performance of the military, which always took pride in never firing a bullet at the revolutionaries, surpassed that of Mubarak’s mercenaries. It shed the blood of Egyptians in cold blood and with the cruelest of means, even throwing dead bodies in the Nile in an attempt to cover up their crimes,” read a statement signed by at least 12 political parties and youth groups and distributed to local and foreign media at the conference.

On the stage, Mary Daniel, sister of Mina Daniel, who was killed on Sunday, sat in her mourning black to describe what happened in the Coptic-led march which began in Shubra and ended in tragedy once demonstrators reached the Maspero area in downtown Cairo.

“I was with Mina,” said Daniel. “We marched from Shubra until we reached Maspero. It was a long distance. If we had been armed, people would have resisted us from the beginning. We were peaceful.”

After reaching Maspero, “We saw an influx of armored vehicles, bullets, tear gas bombs and stones,” said Daniel. “The scene was horrible. Even if we were in the middle of a war, things would not have been like that.”

Mariz Tadros writes: At first, it looked like a repeat of the worst state brutality during the January 25 uprisings that unseated the ex-president of Egypt, Husni Mubarak: On Sunday, October 9, security forces deployed tear gas, live bullets and armored vehicles in an effort to disperse peaceful protesters in downtown Cairo. Joined by Muslim sympathizers, thousands of Coptic Christians had gathered that afternoon in front of the capital’s state television and radio building, known as Maspero, and in many other parts of Egypt, to protest the burning of a church in the Upper Egyptian village of al-Marinab. A few days earlier, their initial demonstrations had also been met with violence.

What happened next, however, was worse than any single incident of state violence in January and February: Captured live by the cameras of the al-‘Arabiyya satellite channel, armored personnel carriers bearing army markings sped toward the protesters, at one point bumping cumbrously over curbs and a sidewalk, and crushed several people to death underneath their massive treads. By night’s end, 17 demonstrators were dead, and 300 more injured, some in critical condition. The death toll is now at least 25 and counting. Furthermore, the army’s claim to fame during the January-February popular uprising — that it would not, under any circumstances, harm Egyptian civilians — has now been given the definitive lie.

How it all started is hotly debated. At a press conference on October 12, representatives of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt’s de facto ruling authority since Mubarak’s ouster, insisted that the army did not attack first or even engage the demonstrators. Some SCAF defenders put forward the notion that the army did engage, but only because it was provoked by the assaults of the protesters. Others argue that “thugs” of unknown provenance infiltrated the demonstration to foment chaos and invite the army’s retaliation. Yet the overwhelming thrust of eyewitness accounts, from both Muslims and Christians, is that the army initiated the violence, first throwing stones, then wielding batons, then firing live ammunition, before taking the grim final step of grinding protesters into the pavement. Certainly, several protesters threw stones as well, but eyewitnesses are adamant that they did so in response to the bullets being shot at them.

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Syria: Assad’s Alawites

A multi-part series by Al Jazeera special correspondent Nir Rosen, who recently spent seven weeks travelling throughout Syria with unique access to all sides.

Part one — The guardians of the throne: As we left the central Syrian city of Homs, Abu Laith pulled a 9mm Llama pistol from under his shirt, loaded it and placed it in the gap between our seats. He was a sergeant in Syria’s State Security and drove a small Chinese-made taxi to avoid the attention of armed men looking for members of the security forces. Heading north to his village of Rabia, in Hama, we passed shops covered in gashes from gunfire.

“There was a sniper here,” he said at one point on the road. “He shot six military buses.” We drove by a Military Security building that had been attacked by armed opposition fighters.

“Here was a statue of the late President Hafez,” he pointed at a now empty pedestal. Visibly offended, he added: “They took it down and put a live donkey there instead.”

Abu Laith belongs to the Alawite sect who make up about ten per cent of Syria’s population. Sunni Arabs comprise 65 per cent, while Sunni Kurds and Christians constitute ten per cent each. Druze, Shia, Ismailis and others make up the remainder. Since the Baathists seized power in Syria, sectarianism has been taboo, ever-present but unspoken of, with perpetrators of incitement harshly punished.

Prejudice in all its forms – racism, sexism, sectarianism – exist in all societies, but, in times of crisis, collective identity often comes to dominate social relations. Identity is complex and membership of ethno-religious sects is only one part of Syrian identity.

Social class, profession, nationalism, regional identities and other factors are all very important. But one is born into a sect and few but the wealthy elite transcend these classifications, typically revealed by one’s name and place of birth. As in the Balkans, religious identities are often cultural identities and lead to ethnic-like divisions, even within same-language groups.

In the Arab world, the Sunni exercise a hegemony which has often made minority sects feel insecure. Shia and heterodox sects – such as the Alawites – have been persecuted.

Little is known about the history of the Alawite faith – even among the Alawite community – as its beliefs and practices are available only to the initiated few. It bears little resemblance to mainstream doctrines of Islam and involves belief in transmigration of the soul, reincarnation, the divinity of Ali ibn Abi Talib – the fourth Caliph and a cousin of Prophet Muhamad – and a holy trinity comprising Ali, Muhamad and one of the prophet’s companions, Salman al Farisi.

A common theme to Alawite identity is a fear of Sunni hegemony, based on a history of persecution that only ended with the demise of the Ottoman empire. Sunni cultural hegemony, however, remains. [Continue reading…]

Part two — An entrenched community: Driving near the high-altitude resort of Slonfeh in the Alawite mountains of the Latakia region, I passed a funeral tent for a Syrian soldier killed in the region the previous week, one of two military “martyrs” Slonfeh had lost to armed opposition activists. When my driver entered the village of Mazar al-Qatriyeh, he asked to be directed towards Sheikh Khalil Khatib, a respected Alawite elder. “Ask the rocks and they will tell you,” said one man. “Everybody knows him.”

The sheikh was an intense old man who lectured me while a television behind him screened the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar satellite channel.

“You can be called a sheikh for being old or for being educated,” he explained to me. He blamed religious sheikhs for the crisis in Syria. “They aren’t sheikhs of thought,” he said. “They are sheikhs of air, that’s why Syria has all these problems. I am a sheikh of logic.”

I told him that the opposition said Alawites controlled the regime. “This is rejected,” he said. “It’s for justifying the attack against the regime.” He listed ministers, governors, and director-generals and insisted very few were Alawites and most were Sunni.

“Our president is Alawite and we suffer from this,” he said. “There are four million Alawites,” he claimed with some exaggeration. “We don’t have even one per cent of the positions in the government.” He and his guests said they believed Syria was being pressured so it would make a deal with Israel. “If Bashar signs a humiliating peace we are against him,” said Ali Janud, a professor of civil engineering. “I am not with Hezbollah because they are Shia,” he said, “only because they are resistance.”

The sheikh agreed. “We are with the devil if he fights Israel,” he said. If outside powers intervened in Syria it would lead to armageddon, the sheikh said. “If they want to destroy us,” he said, “they are welcome.”

The sheikh conflated the protesters with the armed opposition. “The armed people are ignorant and don’t have any education,” he said. “In the mountains we are all educated,” said one of his guests. “Our orientation is education.” Janud agreed: “This is a conflict between ignorance and knowledge,” he said. Bayda and Baniyas, two coastal towns that had seen demonstrations, had nobody educated in them, the sheikh said, and they were majority Sunni. “And the Alawite villages around [those towns] are all educated.”

He recommended that I read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous anti-semitic book about a fabricated Jewish conspiracy written in Russia a century ago – but still sometimes believed to be true. This would help me understand how Saudi Arabia was a chess piece in the hands of world Zionism, he said. “Jews are the cause of corruption in the world,” he told me. [Continue reading…]

The preceding parts in this series:
Syria: The revolution will be weaponised (September 23)
Armed defenders of Syria’s revolution (September 27)
Syria’s symphony of scorn (September 30)
Ghosts in the mosques (September 30)
The tides of mosques (October 2)
A conversation with Grand Mufti Hassoun (October 3)

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Inside Story – Is the promise of democracy fading in Egypt?

The Associated Press reports: A military official on Wednesday blamed a group of Christian protesters for starting violent clashes with armed troops, saying some attacked soldiers with swords and firebombs during a Christian rally earlier this week that turned into Egypt’s worst violence since Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

Gen. Adel Emara denied the troops opened fire with live ammunition on the protesters or intentionally ran over them with armored vehicles. The violence late Sunday left at least 26 people dead, most of whom where Christians and many of whom were crushed by vehicles or died from gunfire, according to forensic reports. State media said at least three soldiers were also killed.

Emara spoke at a press conference Wednesday that was clearly aimed at defending Egypt’s military rulers from heavy criticism they have come under for the violence at the protests. He gave a detailed account of the military’s version of the events, using video footage of the events culled from state TV and independent stations. One of the images showed a protester hurling a heavy stone at soldiers inside an armored vehicle.

And what about the armored vehicles which shocked the world as they were seen charging through crowds like raging bulls?

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‘This is not religious strife, this is state sponsored terrorism’

Hani Bushra describes his experience of the violence in Cairo on Sunday night and points to evidence of the ways it was choreographed by state security services intent on fomenting sectarian conflict. “Christians where are you, Islam is here,” was the chant the mobs had been fed. And as these mobs hunted down their victims, innocent people were accused of carrying concealed weapons. (H/t Issandr El Amrani.)

The people marching were chanting “Christians and Muslims are one Hand” and I was leading them in saying that. I met with Alaa of manalaa.com and we continued to march towards Maspero.

The group was peaceful, and I was taking pictures using my Ipad. We reached the point where the 6th October bridge exits towards Maspero, and there was a large cordon of police who are members of the Central Security Forces (CSF). There, I was told not take pictures by people wearing civilian clothing and I fought back saying it was my right.

I began to walk back towards Hilton Ramsis, and suddenly 5 vehicles full of CSF soldiers showed up. People began to pelt them with rocks, destroying the wind shields, and the causing the drivers of the vehicles to panic, thereby hitting into each other and the sides of the road. I and some other people were trying to calm people down into not attacking the vehicles but the people were angry.

At that point, I was alone, and so I began to walk back to Tahrir. I was tweeting at that time. Someone saw me tweeting and came to me. He asked my name and so I said Hani Sobhi, he then grabbed my wrists to see if I had a cross tattoo, and when he did not find it, he asked for my full name. I said Hani Sobhi Bushra. He asked if I was a Muslim or a Christian, and I said that I was a Christian.

At that point he began to scream for others that he caught a Christian, and people began to gather. They wanted to search me and my bag, and I said that I will not let them, and that it was best to go to an officer. At that point there was about 30 people around me, with some of them punching me on my head.

I began to walk quickly to the cordon of the police that I had just came from. At that point, someone yanked my gold chain from across my neck and took the cross. All I did was to tell him “wow, you are such a man” and I clapped for him. That pissed the people who were with me, and so someone snatched my phone from my belt.

I kept shouting at the thief to give me my phone back, and he said that he will give it to me in front of the police officer. By that time, I was being hit from many people, my ankle was sprained and I was called a “Nossrani (Christian)” dog.

We reached the officer (rank of general), and the first thing that I did was to show him my U.S. passport and told him that I am now under his protection. I told him that I was attacked because I was a Christian. One of the men who is a policeman but wearing civilian clothing began to talk to the general that I was a Christian and that I institigated the mob to attack me and that I am carrying weapons in my bag. The officer, who had seen my passport, told him to shut up. This policeman in the civilian clothing seemed to be the coordinator between the mob and the police.

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In Egypt the days of military rule are numbered

Sandmonkey writes: Today the mood in Cairo was wary & melancholic. With the reality of what went down yesterday at Maspero hitting them with its full might, the general population that yesterday found itself on the brinks of chaos is utterly terrified. The number of phone calls I received from people who were worried and horrified made me wish I could shut off my phone, with everyone looking at the future with an incredibly bleak outlook. It’s easy to fall into that mood — after all you have your army killing your people, a long oppressed minority of it at that — but if one looks beyond what happened, one sees a very different picture. What happened yesterday was the beginning of the end of the military rule over Egypt: The days of the SCAF ruling us are numbered. And not because they don’t want to, but because they will no longer have any other choice.

A quick recap over what has went down yesterday: a huge demo held by Coptic Christians & muslim supporters protesting against yet another fight over the building of a Church was attacked by the Egyptian armed forces there to protect it and plainclothed thugs. Shots were fired at protesters killing them, rocks were thrown by protesters in return, protesters were overrun by armored vehicles, the Egyptian State TV issued a plea asking Egyptian citizens to come to the Demo and “protect the army from Christian thugs”, and a street battle that resulted in over 24 dead and 150 injured. The street battle after a while turned into Egyptian citizens fighting each other, without any of them being able to figure out who was fighting who. Pandemonium, for a lack of a better word.

But the moment the dust settled the questions started presenting themselves: This was obviously planned, so what the hell was the SCAF thinking? How could they attack and kill Egyptians on the street so casually, while their sole purpose is to protect them from getting killed? How could they risk enflaming the country into a huge sectarian battle by having state Media so conscientiously attacking the Christians and promoting violence against them? How did they not see that the choice they made is an inherently flawed one that it could spell their doom? How do you explain last night?

Well, the easy explanation is that they — like every single political force in the country throughout this year — fell into the trap of thinking that they have won and asserted their power, only to have the whole thing blow up in their faces. After believing the political street to be dead, and that the revolution is almost dying, they figured they now have the power to put “people in their proper place” like the old days. So, they went down yesterday to terrorize the Christians, counting that they won’t put up a fight (because they never really did before), and that the sectarian rhetoric will cause them all to fear for their lives, stop them from causing trouble, and quite possibly scare them from participating in the elections. With every single respectable political party formed after the revolution having prominent Christians in their founders and as their candidates, they figured that threatening us with the possibility that the next election will turn into a Muslim vs. Christian election will discourage people from voting and participating, leaving the new parties with fewer seats, with the Christians being underrepresented as always in the parliament, and thus allowing the ex NDP people control of the Parliament as the only other choice against the “Islamists”. To basically return us to the pre-revolution status quo. But had they thought this through for more than 5 minutes, they might have seen the inherent flaws in their old-and-reliable plan. They, somehow, didn’t and now they have overplayed their hand and about to face the consequences.

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Egyptians call for end of military rule

Muslims and Christians unite in protest against Egypt's military council

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: In the wake of Sunday’s violence between Coptic demonstrators and military forces in Cairo, political party leaders and activists called for an immediate transfer of power to civilian authorities, the establishment of a civilian presidential council to help manage the transition period, and the dismissal of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s government.

In a conference Monday morning, politicians criticized the security vacuum as well as the state media’s deceptive coverage of the violence.

The conference drew public figures from across the political spectrum, from billionaire telecom tycoon-turned liberal politician Naguib Sawiris to Amin Iskandar, secretary general of the Nasserist Karama Party. Former Finance Minister Samir Radwan and Hossam Eissa, a constitutional law expert, were also present.

Twenty-five protesters died, according to the Health Ministry, when a march by Copts was attacked by thugs and military forces. The march started in the largely Christian neighborhood of Shubra to protest against attacks on Christians, most notably a recent attack on a church in the Upper Egyptian city of Aswan, which resulted from the construction of a dome.

The military prosecution began to investigate 25 suspects on Monday.

“We as Egyptians are facing a problem. It’s not a Coptic and Muslim problem. It’s not a military or civilians problem, but it’s a problem in Egypt’s flawed society and inter-relations. This could end up in a civil war,” said Amr Moussa, a potential presidential candidate and former foreign minister under Mubarak.

Moussa stressed the importance of ruling with an iron-fist in order to protect the country from looming chaos.

Meantime, Abdel Gelil Mostafa, leader of the National Association for Change, slammed the Mubarak-like rule of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), describing it as “semi-divine.”

Speakers at the conference issued calls for a civilian council to serve as Egypt’s executive authority, instead of SCAF, echoing demands made by Mohamed ElBaradei and other secular political figures shortly after Mubarak stepped down in February.

Ursula Lindsey writes: The automatic goverment agit-prop on this is almost as bad as the deaths. Every single (Arabic language) Egyptian newspaper with the exception of Tahrir newspaper led with stories and images today that emphasized the violence on the part of the demonstrators, not the army. Al Ahram’s disingenuous headine reads: “Twenty-Four Soldiers and Demonstrators Dead.” It really is a full return to the days of the revolution.

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Killing of opposition leader in Syria provokes Kurds

The New York Times reports: Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of a Syrian city on Saturday for the funeral of a celebrated Kurdish opposition leader whose assassination the day before unleashed fury in the country’s Kurdish regions and threatened to open a new theater of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The crowds attending the funeral of the Kurdish leader, Mashaal Tammo, a prominent figure who had escaped an attempt on his life only a month before, constituted some of the biggest gatherings in weeks in the nearly seven-month uprising against Mr. Assad.

Activists said at least five people were killed when security forces opened fire on the funeral in Qamishli, a city in northeastern Syria, igniting anger among a long restive Kurdish community that the government had tried to avoid provoking.

The government has demonstrated little political strategy in coping with the revolt so far, relying almost exclusively on violence since August, deepening opposition in virtually every region of the country, and provoking extended clans in eastern and southern Syria.

Yet picking a full-fledged fight with the Kurdish minority would add a new, dangerous facet to a revolt that has ebbed but remained resilient despite a crackdown that, by a United Nations count, has killed more than 2,900.

“My father’s assassination is the screw in the regime’s coffin,” said Fares Tammo, who spoke by telephone from the Kurdish city of Irbil in neighboring Iraq. “They made a big mistake by killing my father.”

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Eyewitness account of the violence in Cairo

Sarah Carr writes: The march from the Cairo district of Shubra was huge, like the numbers on 28 January. In the front row was a group of men in long white bibs, “martyr upon demand” written on their chests. A tiny old lady walked among them, waving a large wooden cross: “God protect you my children, God protect you.”

The march started down Shubra Street around 4 pm, past its muddle of old apartment buildings, beat up and sad but still graceful compared with the constructions from the Mubarak era next to them – brutish and unfinished-looking.

A man explained why there were bigger numbers than the march last week in response to the attack on the St. George’s Church in Aswan: the army had hit a priest while violently dispersing Coptic protesters in front of the Maspiro state TV building on Wednesday. A video posted online showed a young man being brutally assaulted by army soldiers and riot police.

At a traffic underpass at the end of Shubra Street, at around 6 pm, there was the sudden sound of what sounded like gunfire. Protesters at the front told those behind to stop – the march was under attack. Rocks rained down from left and right and from the bridge, underneath which protesters were taking shelter.

Some threw stones back. Behind them, protesters chanted, “The people want the removal of the Field Commander.” The stone throwing eventually stopped sufficiently for the march to continue. A teenage boy crossed himself repeatedly as he moved forward toward the rocks.

Darkness fell just as the march reached Galaa Street. “This is our country,” protesters chanted, led by a man on a pickup truck full of speakers. An illuminated cross floated through the darkness. At the headquarters of state daily newspaper Al-Ahram, a single rock was thrown at the door, likely a comment on its coverage of violence against Copts.

Outside the Ramsis Hilton Hotel, the chanting stopped momentarily – the exuberance of having escaped the attack in Shubra faded as the march rounded the corner toward Maspiro.

It was immediately met with gunfire in the air. As protesters continued moving forwards, the gunfire continued.

Suddenly, there was a great surge of people moving back, and something strange happened. Two armored personnel carriers (APCs) began driving at frightening speed through protesters, who threw themselves out of its path. A soldier on top of each vehicle manned a gun, and spun it wildly, apparently shooting at random although the screams made it difficult to discern exactly where the sound of gunfire was coming from.

It was like some brutal perversion of the military show the armed forces put on for the 6th of October celebration three days before. The two vehicles zigzagged down the road outside Maspiro underneath the 6th of October Bridge and then back in synchronicity, the rhythm for this particular parade provided by the “tac tac tac” of never-ending gunfire, the music the screams of the protesters they drove directly at.

And then it happened: an APC mounted the island in the middle of the road, like a maddened animal on a rampage. I saw a group of people disappear, sucked underneath it. It drove over them. I wasn’t able to see what happened to them because it then started coming in my direction.

Later, as riot police fired tear gas at another small attempt at a demonstration and fires burned around Maspiro, I found on the floor part of one of the white “martyrs upon demand” bibs the men had been wearing, and took it home. It had been ripped in half.

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Egypt army and police massacre protesters in Cairo — updated

The New York Times reports: A demonstration by Christians angry about a recent attack on a church touched off a night of violent protests here against the military council now ruling Egypt, leaving 24 people dead and more than 200 wounded in the worst spasm of violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The sectarian protest appeared to catch fire because it was aimed squarely at the military council that has ruled Egypt since the revolution, at a moment when the military’s latest delay in turning over power has led to a spike in public distrust of its authority.

When the clashes broke out, some Muslims ran into the streets to help defend the Christians against the police, while others said they had come out to help the army quell the protests in the name of stability, turning what started as a march about a church into a chaotic battle over military rule and Egypt’s future.

Nada el-Shazly, 27, who was wearing a surgical mask to deflect the tear gas, said she came out because she heard state television urge “honest Egyptians” to turn out to protect the soldiers from Christian protesters, even though she knew some of her fellow Muslims had marched with the Christians to protest the military’s continued hold on power.

“Muslims get what is happening,” she said. The military, she said, was “trying to start a civil war.”

Issandr El Amrani sees the turn of events as worrisome for multiple reasons.

This marks the first time that the army has taken such an aggressive posture against a predominantly Christian protest, which will easily lead the framing of today’s events as the first time that the military chooses to kill protesting Christians.

Worrisome because state television has behaved thus far tonight much as it did during the 18 days of the Egyptian uprising this winter. In other words, it has deployed propaganda, unverifiable allegations, talk of “foreign agendas” and “outside hands”, and extremely partial reporting. It has repeatedly used sectarian language, with presenters referring to protestors as “the Copts” and using sentences such as “The Copts have killed two soldiers.” On top of this, the military cut off the live TV feeds of several satellite TV stations, including 25TV, al-Hurra, and at a later point al-Jazeera, reducing the independent reporting of an unfolding event. And most of all because TV presenters were urging Egyptians to “protect the army from the Copts.”

Worrisome because many appear to have responded to that call, and tonight on one of Cairo’s main thoroughfares you could see young men marching to that chant of “There is no God but God”, or a woman being attacked simply because she was wearing a cross, or simply because sectarianism has reared its ugly head again after last May’s Imbaba church arson.

Worrisome because this is all happening at a time when the political class is in crisis, its confidence in the SCAF at an all-time low, and the general population is so fed up of all the uncertainty and chaos that it is having buyer’s remorse about the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

Most worrisome of all because, taken altogether, this paints a picture of the Egyptian military as resorting to sectarian impulses almost reflexively. It is the flipside of its continued unwillingness, after the sectarian clashes (between civilians as well as between police, military and civilians once fighting had already broken out) of earlier this year, to end once and for all the official discrimination that Copts face when building, expanding or renovating places of worship. SCAF, which rules by decree, could have acted, but did not — and acted weakly in the face of the arson of a church in Aswan last week, which was the cause of today’s protests. And because from so many sides we are getting the old passing of the buck to “foreign agendas” and “foreign hands” in what was.

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Al Jazeera’s chief extols virtues of ‘journalism for the people’

Roy Greenslade writes: The revolutionary fervour of the Arab Spring came alive last night at City University London in a lecture by Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al-Jazeera.

In describing his reaction to the various uprisings, particularly in Egypt and Libya, he illustrated just what is meant by a journalism of attachment or commitment.

Exhibiting an unashamed passion throughout his talk, he told a packed audience:

“In our search for a fixed pivotal point around which our editorial mission is centred we find nothing better than the people with their collective mind and their instinctive opposition to oppression, arbitrariness and corruption…

I learned from my experience as a reporter, and then as director of a media institution, an important basic fact: that we should always posit people at the centre of our editorial policy.

I don’t say this simply to reiterate a beautiful slogan with which we decorate our literature or market our institutions. I truly believe this to be a moral commitment, a scientific approach and an essential interest.”

Khanfar, the first non-Western journalist to deliver the James Cameron memorial lecture, cast Al-Jazeera’s journalism as a sort of democratic mission.

He told how the Egyptian regime’s early response to the gatherings in Tahrir Square was to close down the network’s offices and to ban its reporters and crews from working.

So the broadcaster sent a message to its Egyptian viewers telling them: “If the authorities have banned our reporters from working, then every single one of you is an Al-Jazeera reporter.”

That led, he said, to hundreds of activists supplying the network with a stream of news and video clips via social network sites.

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Liberian, Yemeni women win Nobel Peace Prize

Reuters reports: Three women who have campaigned for rights and an end to violence in Liberia and Yemen, including Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Another Liberian, Leymah Gbowee, who mobilized fellow women against the country’s civil war including by organizing a “sex strike,” and Tawakkul Karman, who has worked in Yemen, will share the prize worth $1.5 million with Johnson-Sirleaf, who faces re-election for a second term as president on Tuesday.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told reporters.

“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 is to be divided in three equal parts between Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Johnson-Sirleaf, 72, is Africa’s first freely elected female president. Gbowee mobilized and organized women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the war in Liberia, and to ensure women’s participation in elections.

The Committee added: “In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the Arab Spring, Tawakkul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen.”

In April, Tawakkul Karman wrote: The revolution in Yemen began immediately after the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia on 14 January. As I always do when arranging a demonstration I posted a message on Facebook, calling on people to celebrate the Tunisian uprising on 16 January.

The following day a group of students from Sana’a University asked me to attend a vigil in front of the Tunisian embassy. The crowd was shouting: “Heroes! We are with you in the line of fire against the evil rulers!” We were treated roughly by the security forces, and we chanted: “If, one day, a people desires to live, then destiny will answer their call,” and “The night must come to an end” – the mantra of the revolutionaries in Tunisia.

The demonstration was astonishing; thousands turned up, and Sana’a witnessed its first peaceful demonstration for the overthrow of the regime. “Go before you are driven out!” we cried.

That night student and youth leaders visited me, along with the human rights activist Ahmed Saif Hashid and the writer Abdul Bari Tahir. We agreed that we could not let this historic moment pass us by, and that we too could spark a peaceful revolution to demand an end to a despotic regime. We decided there was to be no backing down, despite the repression we knew would come. The rallies grew daily, even though the government deployed thugs against us.

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