Category Archives: Arab Spring

News roundup — May 10

Bin Laden sons say U.S. violated international law

The adult sons of Osama bin Laden have lashed out at President Obama over their father’s death, accusing the United States of violating its basic legal principles by killing an unarmed man, shooting his family members and disposing of his body in the sea.

The statement said the family was asking why the leader of Al Qaeda “was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world.” Citing the trials of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, the statement questioned “the propriety of such assassination where not only international law has been blatantly violated,” but the principles of presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial were ignored.

“We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems,” the statement said, adding that “justice must be seen to be done.”

The statement, prepared at the direction of Omar bin Laden, a son who had publicly denounced his father’s terrorism, was provided to The New York Times by Jean Sasson, an American author who helped the younger Bin Laden write a 2009 memoir, “Growing Up bin Laden.” A shorter, slightly different statement was posted on a jihadist Web site Tuesday. (New York Times)

India strengthens accusations of ISI Mumbai link

India is ratcheting up pressure on Pakistan ahead of next week’s terrorism trial in the U.S., releasing a document that alleges the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency was directly involved in the attacks on Mumbai in 2008.

The move comes as Pakistan is facing accusations from the U.S. and India that some element of the military must have helped hide al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed last week in a secret raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on a house only four kilometers from the elite Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.

A court in Chicago will begin hearings this month in the trial of seven men alleged to have aided David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American who has pleaded guilty of scouting sites for the Mumbai attacks, which led to the deaths of more than 160 people, including six Americans. (Wall Street Journal)

India begins wargames on Pakistan border

India kicked off war games involving thousands of troops on Monday along its border with arch-rival Pakistan, which is still smarting from the US operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

A military spokesperson told reporters the six-day exercise, codenamed Vijayee Bhava (Be Victorious) was being held in the Thar desert region in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

“This exercise envisages sustained massed mechanised manoeuvres,” S D Goswami said, adding the drill involved an array of weaponry that India has acquired as part of its ongoing military modernisation programme.

More than 20 000 combat troops were taking part. (AFP)

WikiLeaks: ISI allowed terrorists to attack India, says Gitmo detainee

In revelations that could further embarrass Pakistan, WikiLeaks has released a fresh set of US diplomatic cables that show how the country’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), allowed militants to go to India to carry out strikes on targets chosen by the Pakistan army.

The revelations are part of nearly 800 interrogation reports of suspects held in Guantanamo Bay prison.

WikiLeaks, in one of the several cables that exposes ISI’s links to terror groups, quotes a US cable as saying that an Algerian Al Qaeda militant arrested in 2002 said that his mission was to “kill Indians in India”. (NDTV)

Osama bin Laden mission agreed in secret 10 years ago by US and Pakistan

The US and Pakistan struck a secret deal almost a decade ago permitting a US operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil similar to last week’s raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, the Guardian has learned.

The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.

Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.

“There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him,” said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations. “The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn’t stop us.” (The Observer)

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Aircraft carrier left us to die, say migrants fleeing Libya

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned. Two of the nine survivors claim this included a Nato ship.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. “Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard,” said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. “By the final days, we didn’t know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying.”

International maritime law compels all vessels, including military units, to answer distress calls from nearby boats and to offer help where possible. Refugee rights campaigners have demanded an investigation into the deaths, while the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has called for stricter co-operation among commercial and military vessels in the Mediterranean in an effort to save human lives. (The Guardian)

U.N. urges ships to help migrants in Mediterranean

The United Nations refugee agency has urged the crews of ships in the Mediterranean to keep watch for unseaworthy vessels carrying migrants from war-torn Libya after a report that a ship with 600 people on board broke up just off the port of Tripoli on Friday.

Witnesses in Tripoli said the ship was only 100 yards from shore when it broke up, Sybella Wilkes, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based organization, said Monday. “It’s not clear how many people died or drowned,” she said, but 16 bodies — including those of two babies — had been recovered.

Refugees who left on another vessel later on Friday said they saw bodies and pieces of a ship in the water, said Laura Boldrini, a spokeswoman in Italy for the agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Ms. Wilkes said there had been a “dramatic increase in the number of boats making this terrible journey,” as migrants, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa, tried to flee Libya’s turmoil, heading for sanctuary on the Italian island of Lampedusa. (New York Times)

Here they stood, until they ran

The family photo albums, abandoned on the sand, lay open and fluttering in the desert wind. Around them were the personal items with which they had been packed: heaps of clothing, sandals, DVDs, combs, bottles of perfume, cooking utensils, razors, toothbrushes, several teapots, bundled blankets and a few biscuits, broken and dry. Every several yards a dropped suitcase rested on the dirt, looted bare.

War can strip those caught in its path to almost nothing, which is what happened to the people who had gathered here last Wednesday. They were African migrants caught in the conflict in Libya. They had long ago winnowed their meager possessions down, first to leave their small flats to move into tents, then to leave the tents to stand in line with a suitcase or two at this plot of bare desert, where they were told to wait for a ride to a ship. Here they stood until they ran. They dashed away so quickly and with such panic that they left behind the last things to which they had clung.

Like more than 10,000 other migrant workers in Misurata, they had been idled from work by the outbreak of war, and then cut off from routes overland toward home when the military of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi put this city under siege. They had waited two months for an evacuation vessel to arrive in the city’s harbor and carry them out. (New York Times)

Libyan rebels gain ground in Misurata

Rebel fighters made significant gains Monday against forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in both the western and eastern areas of the country, in the first faint signs that NATO airstrikes may be starting to strain the government forces.

In the besieged western city of Misurata hundreds of rebels broke through one of the front lines late on Sunday, and by Monday afternoon were consolidating their position on the ground a few miles to the city’s west.

The breakout of what had been nearly static lines came after NATO aircraft spent days striking positions and military equipment held by the Qaddafi forces, weakening them to the point that a ground attack was possible, the rebels said.

While not in itself a decisive shift for a city that remained besieged, the swift advance, made with few rebel casualties, carried both signs of rebel optimism and hints of the weakness of at least one frontline loyalist unit. (New York Times)

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Syria proclaims it now has upper hand over uprising

The Syrian government has gained the upper hand over a seven-week uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, a senior official declared Monday, in the clearest sign yet that the leadership believes its crackdown will crush protests that have begun to falter in the face of hundreds of deaths and mass arrests.

The remarks by Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Mr. Assad who often serves as an official spokeswoman, suggested that a government accustomed to adapting in the face of crises was prepared to weather international condemnation and sanctions. Her confidence came in stark contrast to appearances just two weeks ago, when the government seemed to stagger before the breadth and resilience of protests in dozens of towns and cities.

“I hope we are witnessing the end of the story,” she said in an hourlong interview, for which a reporter was allowed in Syria for only a few hours. “I think now we’ve passed the most dangerous moment. I hope so, I think so.” (New York Times)

Is Asma Assad in London?

The wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad may have fled to London with the couple’s three young children, it has been claimed.

Asma Assad, 35, was said to be living in a safe house in or near the capital.

British-born Mrs Assad, who is considered to be one of the most glamorous first ladies in the world, has not been seen in public since the start of the Arab Spring. (Daily Telegraph)

Assad’s brother tops Syria sanctions list

The European Union has listed 13 Syrian officials on the bloc’s sanctions list, including a brother and a wealthy and influential cousin of Bashar al-Assad, the president, and intelligence chiefs.

Maher al-Assad commands Syria’s Republican Guard and is considered the second most powerful man in the country.

The EU’s official journal, in which the full list was published on Tuesday, described Maher al-Assad as the “principal overseer of violence against demonstrators”.

The measures, asset freezes and travel bans, are part of a package of sanctions, including an arms embargo which went into effect on Tuesday, as part of EU efforts to try to force Syria to end violence against anti-government protesters. (Al Jazeera)

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Blindfolded, beaten and tortured: grim new testimony reveals fate of Bahrain’s persecuted doctors

Harrowing testimony of torture, intimidation and humiliation from a doctor arrested in the crackdown on medical staff in Bahrain has revealed the lengths to which the regime’s security forces are prepared to go to quash pro-democracy protests.

Interviews obtained by The Independent from inside Bahrain tell of ransacked hospitals and of terrified medical staff beaten, interrogated and forced into signing false confessions. Many have been detained, their fate unknown.

Inspired by the pro-democracy protests which swept Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, Bahrainis took to the streets in their thousands in February, demanding greater political rights and more equality for the Shia Muslim majority, ruled over for decades by a Sunni monarchy. (The Independent)

As Bahrain’s abuses grow, U.S. stays on sidelines

At least 30 people have died in Bahrain, protesters and medical workers are being put on trial, and prominent opposition politicians are being arrested—but the United States has yet to toughen its talk or impose sanctions on its Gulf ally.

Bahrain, a predominantly Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, plays host to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. McClatchy reports today that the government has bulldozed dozens of Shiite mosques. Shiite women and girls have also been detained and abused, according to McClatchy. The State Department has said little about these matters publicly, except to tell McClatchy it’s “concerned by the destruction of religious sites” and is “extremely troubled by reports of ongoing human rights abuses” in Bahrain.

The Bahraini government announced last week it would charge nearly 50 doctors and nurses for treating injured pro-democracy protesters. We’d previously noted the government’s detention of medical workers along with protesters, activists and journalists. (ProPublica)

Violence in Cairo and beyond

Wendell Steavenson writes: Last week an activist I know came to see me and showed me a series of pictures on his mobile phone: men throwing Molotov cocktails, blurred fireballs, and debris-strewn streets.

“Where was this?” I asked him, thinking they were pictures taken during the revolution. “Moski,” he said, naming a downtown area of Cairo known for its street traders, “a half an hour ago.” “I was nearly stabbed,” he added. Apparently two rival streets had gone to battle over some kind of shop-to-shop dispute, using rocks, bricks, and shotguns. Sixty people were injured. It happened the same day as a smallish crowd of pro-Mubarak supporters tried to celebrate his birthday outside of the state TV building (a favorite spot for demonstrations; soldiers use the first-floor balconies as watchtowers in case of serious trouble) and clashed with a rival crowd.

Yesterday, I went to a conference for parties and people hoping to form a broad umbrella committee to begin to address issues like the economy and the constitutional process during this interim period. I met Dr. Mohamed Ghonim, a wise, tortoise-looking man who is a famous kidney specialist and elder statesman of sorts for the liberal front of the revolution. He ruminated on the role of the Army, currently the de facto ruling authority. “As you know, security in general is bad. Every day there are two or three major things happening and nothing serious is done to contain these incidents. The economy is going in a negative way, downhill…”

I asked him if he thought that these incidents were being deliberately allowed to erupt.

“Of course. How can people stop the railway?” he asked, referring to the disruption in the upper Egyptian town of Qena at the end of April, when local people cut rail lines that link the north and south of the country, to protest the imposition of an unpopular governor. Ghonim said that law and order, in the hands of the military since the police are still not deployed in anything like their pre-revolutionary numbers, was being allowed to disintegrate, “Until you get to a critical point and then people say ‘oh please step in politically!’” (The New Yorker)

The warning bells are ringing

Hassan Nafaa writes: The tragedy at St. Marmina church in Imbaba on Saturday is not a new story. A young Muslim man from Asyut claims he married a Christian woman who converted to Islam five years ago, and that his wife’s brothers kidnapped her in recent months. The young man then claims he received a phone call that his wife is detained at an Imbaba church. The young man then goes to Imbaba and gathers a group of Muslims, most of them Salafis, from nearby mosques. Together they head to the church and instigated yet another incident of sectarian strife.

When the police learned of the gathering in front of St. Marmina church, they sought the assistance of Sheikh Mohammad Ali, a prominent local Salafi leader and a preacher at the nearby Toba mosque. Along with other religious leaders, Sheikh Ali went to the gathering outside the church and listened to the young man recount his story in the presence of some police officers. The sheikh did not buy the story and was especially skeptical about the fact that the young man did not file a police report immediately after the kidnapping. To Sheikh Ali, it appeared that someone was trying to incite sectarian tensions.

Sheikh Ali immediately told the protesters that the young Muslim man was lying. “Because they trust me, they believed me and began to chant: ‘Muslims and Christians are one,’” he said. Ali added that he accompanied an interior ministry official to the church to inform church leaders that the conflict was over.

“But Copts residing in nearby apartment buildings thought we were entering the church to search it, so they started to throw bottles at us. Then I heard gun fire and things escalated from there.”

Rumors quickly spread through the media and a group of young men in the area headed to an adjacent church and set it ablaze. Clashes broke out and by the end of the evening 12 people were dead and over 100 were injured.

There will be more rumors tomorrow about imaginary incidents of rape, theft, marriage, and divorce that will provoke both sides to engage in more violence to avenge the dignity of their religious group. Many will fail to see that their anger is unwarranted.

In all these cases, the solution is that suspected criminal – regardless political, sectarian or class affiliation – be subjected to a fair trial. Taking the law into our own hands to avenge crimes committed against our family, or sect deals a serious blow to the idea of a civilized society. (Al-Masry Al-Youm)

US freezes Chicago Palestinian leader’s bank accounts

The US government has frozen the bank accounts belonging to Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian community organizer and director of a social service organization serving the Arab community in Chicago, and his wife, Naima.

Meanwhile, several members of Congress have written to the Obama administration to express their concerns about violations in civil liberties as a result of earlier government actions toward Abudayyeh and other activists.

The freezing of the Abudayyeh family’s bank accounts on Friday, 6 May is the latest development in a secret grand jury investigation that has been launched by US District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office in Chicago. The freezing of the accounts has raised concerns that criminal indictments in the case may be imminent. (Electronic Intifada)

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News roundup — May 9

Bin Laden’s death doesn’t end his fear-mongering value

Glenn Greenwald writes: On Friday, government officials anonymously claimed that “a rushed examination” of the “trove” of documents and computer files taken from the bin Laden home prove — contrary to the widely held view that he “had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future Qaeda operations” — that in fact “the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks.”  Specifically, the Government possesses “a handwritten notebook from February 2010 that discusses tampering with tracks to derail a train on a bridge,” and that led “the Obama administration officials on Thursday to issue a warning that Al Qaeda last year had considered attacks on American railroads.”  That, in turn, led to headlines around the country like this one, from The Chicago Sun-Times:

 

The reality, as The New York Times noted deep in its article, was that “the information was both dated and vague,” and the official called it merely “aspirational,” acknowledging that  “there was no evidence the discussion of rail attacks had moved beyond the conceptual stage“  In other words, these documents contain little more than a vague expression on the part of Al Qaeda to target railroads in major American cities (“focused on striking Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago,” said the Sun-Times):  hardly a surprise and — despite the scary headlines — hardly constituting any sort of substantial, tangible threat.

But no matter.  Even in death, bin Laden continues to serve the valuable role of justifying always-increasing curtailments of liberty and expansions of government power. (Salon)

Bin Laden killing in legal gray zone

David Axe writes: The early-morning raid that killed Osama bin Laden was, according to CIA Director Leon Panetta, “the culmination of intense and tireless efforts on the part of many dedicated agency officers.” Panetta also thanked the “strike team, whose great skill and courage brought our nation this historic triumph.”

But it’s unclear who was on the strike team — the 25 people aboard two specially modified Army helicopters. Most of the “trigger-pullers” were, apparently, Navy commandos from the famed SEAL Team Six.

At the “pointy end” — a Beltway euphemism for combat — the operation targeting bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, looked overwhelmingly military. But the months-long process of gathering intelligence and planning had a CIA flavor.

Indeed, President Barack Obama described it as agency-led. The intelligence community pinpointed bin Laden’s location. Panetta monitored the raid in real time from Langley. The assault team may have included CIA operatives. Senior administration officials called it a “team effort.”

But did the CIA have people on the ground in Abbottabad? It’s not an academic question. Exactly who was on the strike force that killed bin Laden has major policy implications.

CIA presence places the operation on one side of an increasingly fuzzy legal boundary between two distinct U.S. legal codes: one exclusive to the military and another that defines the terms of open warfare for the whole U.S. government.

The extent of the CIA’s involvement also has serious implications with regard to a chain of presidential executive orders that prohibit Americans from participating in the assassination of foreign leaders. (Politico)

US spy in Pakistan outed as White House demands intelligence from bin Laden raid

White House has demanded that Pakistan hand over intelligence seized from Osama bin Laden’s compound as relations between the two allies hit a new crisis over the outing of America’s top spy in Islamabad.

Mark Carlton, the purported CIA station chief, was named by a Pakistani newspaper and a private television news network over the weekend, the second holder of that post in less than a year to have his cover blown by the media, presumed to have official consent.

The reports documented a meeting between Mr Carlton and the head of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter- Services Intelligence, suggesting that the information came from them.

Washington has refused to comment on the development, which comes amid worsening relations between the US and Pakistan over how bin Laden came to be sheltering in a fortified compound in a garrison town.

Anger is mounting in Pakistan over how the US was able to carry out the raid in Abbottabad without detection, with calls for the Government to resign. (The Times)

Leak of CIA officer’s name is sign of rift with Pakistan

The prime minister’s statements, along with the publication of the name of the C.I.A. station chief, signaled the depths of the recriminations and potential for retaliation on both sides as American officials demand greater transparency and cooperation from Pakistan, which has not been forthcoming.

The Pakistani spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, gave the name of the station chief to The Nation, a conservative daily newspaper, American and Pakistani officials said.

The name appeared spelled incorrectly but in a close approximation to a phonetic spelling in Saturday’s editions of The Nation, a paper with a small circulation that is supportive of the ISI. The ISI commonly plants stories in the Pakistani media and is known to keep some journalists on its payroll.

Last December, American officials said the cover of the station chief at the time was deliberately revealed by the ISI. As a result, he was forced to leave the country. (New York Times)

U.S. raises pressure on Pakistan in raid’s wake

President Obama’s national security adviser demanded Sunday that Pakistan let American investigators interview Osama bin Laden’s three widows, adding new pressure in a relationship now fraught over how Bin Laden could have been hiding near Islamabad for years before he was killed by commandos last week.

Both the adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and Mr. Obama, in separate taped interviews, were careful not to accuse the top leadership of Pakistan of knowledge of Bin Laden’s whereabouts in Abbottabad, a military town 35 miles from the country’s capital. They argued that the United States still regards Pakistan, a fragile nuclear-weapons state, as an essential partner in the American-led war on Islamic terrorism.

But in repeatedly describing the trove of data that a Navy Seal team seized after killing Bin Laden as large enough to fill a small college library, Mr. Donilon seemed to be warning the Pakistanis that the United States might soon have documentary evidence that could illuminate who, inside or outside their government, might have helped harbor Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, who had been the world’s most wanted terrorist.

The United States government is demanding to know whether, and to what extent, Pakistani government, intelligence or military officials were complicit in hiding Bin Laden. His widows could be critical to that line of inquiry because they might have information about the comings and goings of people who were aiding him. (New York Times)

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The forgotten frontline in Libya’s civil war

It is the unknown frontline in Libya’s civil war, a rebel town besieged by Gaddafi’s forces but almost ignored by the outside world.

Rockets and Scud missiles pour down. Water is running short. Tens of thousands are desperately trying to flee.

But transfixed by the horrors of Misurata, the international community – and the Nato military alliance – have all but overlooked the closely parallel drama in the mountain towns of Zintan and Yafran, little more than an hour’s drive from the capital.

“We have been under fire for about an hour and a half now,” said one Zintan resident, Mustafa Haider, by telephone from the town on Friday afternoon.

“From the south, from the north, from the east, from everywhere. They fire with Grad missiles, Scud missiles, anything. They have tried to enter Zintan many times but they couldn’t.” Homes, schools, and the town’s main hospital had been hit, causing panic, he said. (Daily Telegraph)

Libya: end indiscriminate attacks in western mountain towns

Human Rights Watch says: Libyan government forces have launched what appear to be repeated indiscriminate attacks on mountain towns in western Libya, Human Rights Watch said today.

Accounts from refugees who fled the conflict say the attacks are killing and injuring civilians and damaging civilian objects, including homes, mosques, and a school. Human Rights Watch called on Libyan forces to cease their indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas.

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 50 refugees from Libya’s western Nafusa mountains in Tunisia from April 26 to May 1, 2011, as well as doctors and aid workers assisting those in need. The refugees gave consistent and credible accounts of indiscriminate shelling and possible rocket attacks in residential areas of the rebel-controlled towns of Nalut, Takut, and Zintan. Human Rights Watch could not confirm the refugees’ accounts due to government restrictions on travel in western Libya but, taken together, they describe a pattern of attacks that would violate the laws of war.

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Syria death toll rises as city is placed under siege

Amnesty International says: At least 48 people have been killed in Syria by the security forces in the last four days, local and international human rights activists have told Amnesty International, as the crackdown on the coastal city of Banias intensified.

More than 350 people – including 48 women and a 10-year-old child – are also said to have been arrested in the Banias area over the past three days with scores being detained at a local football pitch. Among those rounded up were at least three doctors and 11 injured people taken from a hospital.

“Killings of protesters are spiralling out of control in Syria – President Bashar al-Assad must order his security forces to stop the carnage immediately,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Amnesty International has compiled the names of 28 people who were apparently shot dead by security forces on Friday and those of 12 others killed over the last three days.

The organization now has the names of 580 protesters and others killed since mid-March, when protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad began.

‘House-to-house raids’ in Syrian cities

The Syrian government is continuing its weeks-long crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, arresting opponents and deploying troops in protest hubs.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said security forces were carrying out house-to-house raids targeting demonstration organisers and participants.

He said Monday’s raids were focused in the central city of Homs, the coastal city of Baniyas, some suburbs of the capital, Damascus, and villages around the southern flashpoint city of Deraa.
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Another activist said gunfire was heard in the town of Moadamiya, just west of the capital, Damascus, as troops carried out arrests. (Al Jazeera)

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Money, power and law-twisting: The makings of the real Ezz empire

Ten years ago, as the main thrust of Egyptian society and the legal sphere was moving towards amending the constitution to make it more democratic and just, the collective brain of the regime’s inner circle was working in the opposite direction: twisting laws to fit the interests of the inner few — the oligarchs who had both wealth and political influence.

Steel magnate Ahmed Ezz, who is facing trial Today, Saturday, on charges of illegal profiteering and misuse of public funds, along with dozens of businessmen and officials considered to be close to the ousted regime, perfectly represents the marriage of wealth, party politics and undue power. Ezz became one of the first symbols that the Egyptian people decided to bring down after the January 25 Revolution.

On the night of 28 January, the headquarters of Ezz Steel in the Mohandeseen district was destroyed, along with other government headquarters and police stations, symbolising the downfall of the old regime.

“At the time he came to buy Alexandria National Iron and Steel Company (now Al-Ezz Al-Dekheila Steel Company) we had never heard of Ahmed Ezz,” said Ali Helmy, former chairman of the National Iron and Steel Company.

“The first time I met Ezz was in 1999 when Atef Ebeid, minister of the public enterprise sector at that time, invited managers of steel companies for a business dinner at a small factory in Sadat City producing galvanised iron,” recounted Helmy. “We were introduced to Ezz, a young engineer and owner of the factory.”

A few months later, continues Helmy, Ezz has already bought three million shares, accounting for LE456 million ($76.7 mln), of the Alexandria National Iron and Steel Company, and after a few months, he was appointed chairman of the company: first base for what would later become a great empire.

Ezz was born in 1959 to a family that was wealthy but not overly rich. After having graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University in the mid-1980s, he worked as a percussionist in one of the most famous music bands at that time, Moudy and Hussein. At the time, Ezz had shown no interest in business until in 1995 his father, a steel trader, bought him a small plot of land in Sadat City and helped him build a steel factory.

His friendship with Gamal Hosni Mubarak, son of Egypt’s then president, helped to make his fortune, culminating in the buying of a huge amount of shares in Gamal’s 1998 Future Generation Foundation (FGF), a non-profit organisation that provided courses for young people to prepare them for entry to the workforce.

Several leading figures in Egypt‘s private sector, including Ahmed El-Maghrabi, former minister of tourism, and Rachid Mohamed Rachid, former minister of trade and industry were involved, and both now face trial.

From that point on, Ezz accompanied Gamal to all meetings and despite being a newcomer to politics, gradually became a familiar political face.

In 1999, the Alexandria National Iron and Steel Company faced a financial crisis due to dumped steel imports from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries coming into Egypt. Ezz quickly offered to buy shares in the troubled joint stock company. “For some reason, the biggest figures in the government helped Ezz finalise this deal,” said Helmy.

According to a 2007 report on Strategic Economic Trends by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, In 1999, Ezz bought some 540,000 shares in less than a month. Ezz had seized more than three million shares of the company, accounting for 27.9 per cent of total shares.

By the late 1990s, Ezz started his acquisition move in the steel market, through a strategy of taking loans from the biggest banks to buy shares in steel companies.

In 1999, Ezz was appointed chairman of the National Iron and Steel Company, despite the fact that he hadn’t paid back the loans he had taken from Egypt’s major banks, according to the same report.

“The National Bank of Egypt and Bank of Cairo (Egypt’s largest public banks) favoured Ezz because of his relationship with Gamal Mubarak and helped him get the loans, while denying credit to viable businesspeople who lacked the right political pedigree; they had for instance refused to issue loans for the same company bought by Ezz (Alexandria National Iron and Steel Company) a few months earlier to help it get out of its devastating financial crisis,” said Helmy.

“Ezz’s strategy from that time on was to take loans from Egyptians banks, buy shares and take a greater role in the steel market, but the thing is, he never gave a loan back. He would pay older loans by getting new loans,” elaborates Helmy. (Ahram Online)

Hollow ‘reconciliation’ in Palestine

Ali Abunimah writes: By deciding to join the US-backed Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas risks turning its back on its role as a resistance movement, without gaining any additional leverage that could help Palestinians free themselves from Israeli occupation and colonial rule.

Indeed, knowingly or not, Hamas may be embarking down the same well-trodden path as Abbas’ Fatah faction: committing itself to joining a US-controlled “peace process”, over which Palestinians have no say – and have no prospect of emerging with their rights intact. In exchange, Hamas may hope to earn a role alongside Abbas in ruling over the fraction of the Palestinians living under permanent Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Whether Hamas realises it or not, it has effectively entered into a coalition with Israel and Abbas to manage the Occupied Territories, in which Hamas will have much responsibility, but little power. (Al Jazeera)

Ahmadinejad fights to preserve his dwindling power

Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes: No Iranian president has ever dared to challenge the supremacy of Ali Khamenei’s two-decade-long leadership as publicly as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did recently in an extraordinary power struggle between him and the ayatollah.

The unprecedented confrontation at the top of the Iranian regime began only a month ago when Khamenei, the supreme leader, intervened in a cabinet appointment by reinstating a minister who had initially resigned “under pressure from Ahmadinejad”.

In reaction to the reinstatement of Heydar Moslehi, the intelligence minister at the centre of the row, Ahmadinejad apparently staged an 11-day walkout from the presidential palace and refused to chair cabinet meetings.

At first glance, Ahmadinejad’s feud with the ayatollah seemed like a conventional disagreement between two leaders of one country but in Iran, where Khamenei is described as “God’s representative on Earth”, Ahmadinejad’s opposition was extremely serious. (The Guardian)

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News roundup — May 8

Bin Laden vows no US security in final tape

Osama bin Laden warned in his final audio tape recorded before being killed by American commandos there will be no US security before the Palestinians live in security, an Islamist website reported Sunday.

Addressing US President Barack Obama, he said: “America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity.”

“Accordingly, and with the will of God, our attacks will continue against you as long as your support for Israel continues,” he warned in a message posted on Shamikh1.net, a conduit for Al-Qaeda communications.

The founder of Al-Qaeda said he had tried to send a “message” to the United States through Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to explode a bomb on a Detroit-bound US airliner in December 2009.

“If it were possible to send you messages by way of words, we would not have had to use planes to send them to you,” he said.

“So the message we wanted to convey through the plane of our hero, the fighter Umar Farouk, may God be with him, confirms a previous message which had been sent to you by our heroes of September 11,” he said in a clear reference to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

The audio recording lasting 1.02 minutes had no reference to the recent popular Arab uprising.

However, jihadists had said that the tape, made a week before bin Laden’s death, would have a message for the Arab Spring.

Another branch of the terror network, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), gave bin Laden credit for the popular Arab revolutions and asked followers to turn their “grief into action” against the West.

“Do not cry for him… Instead rise and go on his path… Rise and thwart the American Zionist Western unjust aggression with all of your power and energy,” the AQIM said in a statement.

“These events that are storming through the Arab region are only a fruit among the fruits of jihad in which the Sheikh (bin Laden) had a prominent role,” the AQIM said. (AFP)

NATO official: more progress than meets eye in Libya

There’s little sign of an end to the conflict in Libya, nearly two months after Western fighter jets began bombing leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. The disorganized anti-Gadhafi rebels have been unable to break out of their stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya despite the air support.

With signs of a military deadlock, some in the West are calling for a renewed focus on isolating the Libyan dictator financially and politically. But NATO commanders leading the war effort caution patience and insist there has been more progress than meets the eye.

Everything points to a prolonged stalemate in Libya. In the east, the front is static: Gadhafi’s forces are dug in near the important oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf. In the west, the dictator’s forces are shelling the town of Zintan and are in firm control of Tripoli, the capital. In Misrata, the rebel’s main western enclave, Gadhafi’s forces still control the airport and all access to the city except the port, which Gadhafi has tried to mine and which he sporadically shells with heavy artillery.

But to U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Ramsay, the glass is half full. NATO’s chief of operations and intelligence says Gadhafi now is unable to effectively command his forces in the field. Take communications: Gadhafi, he says, now has to use unsecured phones and couriers.

“He has to resort to all sorts of measures that no military professional wants to resort to,” Ramsay says. “I wouldn’t say he’s in the 1860 cavalry mode, but it’s getting pretty close to that.” (NPR)

Libya strikes fuel supply in Misrata

Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi struck the fuel terminal of this rebel-controlled city early Saturday with ground-to-ground rockets, igniting a fire that threatened the city’s fuel supply.

The barrage struck shortly after midnight, when rockets began landing and exploding in several areas of the terminal, officials there said.

At least one rocket hit a set of three mammoth tanks, which ruptured and burst into a fireball. The fire settled into a leaping blaze that towered overheard, visible for miles. Its glow illuminated the eastern section of the city throughout the night. Residents woke to a thick, drifting cloud of black smoke.

The attack on the terminal was another escalation against the besieged city, and the second pinpoint attack by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in two nights.

Residents woke Friday to the news that Misurata’s port, its only lifeline to the outside world, had been peppered with antitank land mines.

At the fuel terminal, a small contingent of firefighters worked throughout the night and the day trying to contain the fire, which had destroyed all three storage tanks in one section of the terminal, but had not spread.

“We want to protect the other tanks from exploding,” said Mufta Youssef, one of the firefighters, after backing away from the containers’ blackened remains for a break from the heat.

No one was wounded in the attack or the firefighting effort, officials said.

The tanks contained diesel fuel and gasoline — each roughly 6,000 cubic meters, or 1.5 million gallons — said Muftah Bazina, the terminal’s director.

The effect on the city’s energy supply was not immediately apparent. Misurata has been cut off from new sources of fuel since the uprising against the Qaddafi government began in February. But it began the siege with large reservoirs of diesel fuel and gasoline, and so far there have not been shortages. (New York Times)

Libya rebels remake schools for Gaddafi-free thought

How do you teach in schools where history books omitted revolutions, geography books had few maps and children learned never to question authority?

Libyan rebels are having to come up with responses to those and related issues as they try to reopen schools in rebel-held Benghazi where in the past much of the curriculum was devoted to the wisdom of longtime ruler Colonel Muamma Gaddafi.

Before the uprising against him began in February, “Mushtama” and “Fikr-al-Jamahiri” weekly lessons based on the Gaddafi doctrine were mandatory and the leader’s thinking permeated everything from history to Arabic textbooks, rebels say.

Schoolchildren studied insights from Gaddafi’s Green Book, which famously includes lines like “Women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not” and were quizzed on topics like “Why was Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution successful?”

The correct answer to that, students learned, lay in four points, the first point being that it was planned in secret.

“It was really shameful that you had to memorise and repeat all the things it said as if you were convinced of it,” said Brayka Tarhouni, a doctor who was told to repeat her second year of university after passing all her medical subjects but failing Fikr-Al-Jamihiri.

Those subjects will no longer be taught when schools reopen, but rebel officials said there is much more to overhaul.

“My son in fourth grade was being taught about the Stone Age in history class,” said Hanal el-Gallal, who oversees education issues for the local council in the rebel base of Benghazi.

“History was completely distorted. If you ask any Libyan about historical events, they wouldn’t know about it.

“They don’t know anything about World War One, World War Two or the French Revolution. He (Gaddafi) was scared of any story that might make people stand up for their rights.” (Reuters)

Scores held in Egypt after sectarian clashes

Egypt’s military rulers have detained 190 people in connection with the clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo in which at least 12 people have been killed and more than 230 others wounded.

The situation remained tense on Sunday, a day after violence first erupted in the Egyptian capital’s northwestern neighbourhood of Imbaba.

Witnesses said the clashes broke out after a mob of ultraconservative Muslims marched on a Coptic Christian church in Imbaba.

The march began over an apparent relationship between a Coptic woman and a Muslim man, amid reports that the woman was being held inside against her will and prevented from converting to Islam.

The verbal clash soon developed into a full-fledged confrontation where the two sides exchanged gunfire, firebombs and stones, and another church nearby was set on fire. (Al Jazeera)

Muslim clerics en route to conference on Islamophobia get kicked off flight by pilot

Two Muslim religious leaders were asked to leave a commercial airliner in Memphis – and were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard.

Masudur Rahman and another imam had already been allowed to board their Delta Connection flight from Memphis, Tennessee, to Charlotte, North Carolina before they were asked to get off the plane.

Ironically, the two men were headed to a North American Imams conference discussing Islamophobia or fears of Islam and discrimination against American Muslims.

Racism? Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were removed from a flight to North Carolina because the pilot did not want to fly with them

‘It’s racism and bias because of our religion and appearance and because of misinformation about our religion.’ Mr Rahman said. ‘If they understood Islam, they wouldn’t do this.’

Mr Rahman said he and Mohamed Zaghloul, of the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis, were cleared by security agents and boarded the plane for an 8.40am departure.

The aircraft pulled away from the gate, but the pilot then announced the plane must return, Mr Rahman said.

When it did, the imams were asked to go back to the boarding gate where they were told the pilot was refusing to accept them because some other passengers could be uncomfortable. (Daily Mail)

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Arab Awakening – Libya: Through the fire

The New York Times reports:

Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi scattered antitank land mines on the port of this besieged city late Thursday night, threatening once more to close the city’s only route for evacuation and supplies, according to accounts of witnesses, photographs and physical evidence collected on the ground.

The land mines were delivered by a Chinese-made variant of a Grad rocket that opens in flight and drops mines to the ground below, each slowed slightly and oriented for arming by a small green parachute, according to an identification of the sub-munitions by specialists who were provided photographs and dimensions of the weapons.

The mines hit the port at 9 or 10 p.m. Thursday, after rockets were heard being fired on the city from the southeast. A short while later, a truck driven by rebels who were patrolling the harbor struck two of them. Both men inside were wounded, according to a port supervisor and one of the victims, Faisal el-Mahrougi, the driver.

Officials and guards said more than 20 mines were distributed in the attack, and remains of at least 13 were observed firsthand. It was not possible to verify an exact number, as many had been destroyed by rebels who, to clear the mines, shot them with rifles, causing them to explode. By nightfall on Friday, the port appeared to have been cleared.

Amnesty International says:

Attacks by forces loyal to Colonel al-Gaddafi on civilian and residential areas of Misratah may amount to war crimes, Amnesty International said today in a new report on the bleak situation in the besieged city.

Misratah: Under Siege and Under Fire [PDF] accuses al-Gaddafi forces of unlawful killing of civilians due to indiscriminate attacks, including use of heavy artillery, rockets and cluster bombs in civilian areas and sniper fire against residents.

It also documents systematic shooting at peaceful protesters and enforced disappearance of perceived opponents, which can amount to crimes against humanity.

Mansour M Elbabour writes:

Of all the generalizations commonly made by foreign observers and subjectively augmented by Gaddafi about Libya, especially during the people’s present remarkable quest for freedom and democracy, one of the least valid is that tribalism is pervasive in the Libyan society and its politics.

Characteristically, Libya is the most homogeneous, both culturally and religiously, in Africa and the Arab world. The tribal structure is merely a social phenomenon and has no fundamental importance aside from being only a thing of the past, a part of the cultural lore of the people and their history.

There is no lack of effective sense of national unity in Libya. This unity has been formally initiated by Independence and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and subsequently preserved by astute political awareness on the part of the citizens and a deep sense of common destiny. Thus, conscious of their identity as an independent political unit, the Libyan people all over the liberated regions of the country are relentlessly and genuinely sounding their voice in their peaceful demonstrations nowadays that “Libya is one nation, one clan, one family” and that the myth of tribalism exists only in the mind of the dictator and his few deceived followers.

Furthermore, the appearance and amazing proliferation of the constitutional flag, the symbol of national independence, fluttering almost everywhere in great numbers and shapes, bear unmistakable witness to such unity.

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Syria’s ‘Day of Defiance’ ends in bloodshed

Anthony Shadid reports:

Security forces fired on demonstrators in six Syrian towns and cities in a day of protests that activists declared a “Friday of Defiance.” Twenty-six people died, but a withering crackdown subdued the most restive town and prevented many protesters from gathering in larger demonstrations, activists and human rights groups said.

The worst violence was reported in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, where activists described a chaotic, bloody day, as tanks entered the town. The government said 10 soldiers had been killed there by what it described as “terrorists,” while activists said at least 9 soldiers had defected to their side. Sixteen protesters were killed, they said.

“We answered the call to protest today, but the intelligence forces attacked us right away by opening fire on us,” said a resident in Homs, reached by telephone.

Another resident there said the security forces fired without provocation.

“They took us by surprise,” he said by phone, over the sound of gunfire.

Both sides in the seven-week struggle claimed victories of sorts on Friday. Thousands of demonstrators gathered again in dozens of towns and cities, despite the government’s deployment of security and military forces from the Mediterranean coast to the steppe in southern Syria. But the crackdown seemed to have slowed the force of the protests, and even some of the government’s opponents acknowledged that crowds may have been smaller than on past Fridays.

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Gaddafi targets relief ship as it evacuates Misrata wounded

Channel 4 News reports:

Troops loyal to Colonel Gaddafi continued to shell the port of Misrata on Wednesday as a British-funded rescue ship docked to deliver 180 tons of relief supplies.

Passengers quickly boarded the Red Star One, which left Misrata carrying about 800 migrants, journalists and wounded Libyans. At least four people were reportedly killed in the latest attack on the port.

C J Chivers reports:

When the bloody siege of this isolated city began, the rebels who rose against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s conventional army had almost no firearms. Many of them relied on hands, knives and stones.

Now they roam the streets as a paramilitary force built around hastily armored trucks that have been fitted with captured machine guns set on crude turrets and mounts.

The transformation, evident in an offensive late last month that chased many of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces from Misurata’s center to its outskirts, is in part the result of a hidden side of this lopsided ground war: a clandestine network of rebel workshops, where these makeshift weapons have been designed, assembled and pushed out.

The workshops are officially a rebel secret. But for three days journalists for The New York Times were granted access to two of them, on the condition that their exact locations not be disclosed and that no photographs be taken of their entrances.

On display inside were both the logistics and the mentality of the seesaw fight for Libya’s third-largest city. In Misurata, an almost spontaneously assembled civilian force has managed, alone along Libya’s central and western stretch of Mediterranean coast, to withstand a sustained conventional attack from an army with all the arms and munitions an oil state can buy.

In these places — the fledgling war industry for a force that regards itself as a democratic insurgency — weapons manufactured in cold war-era factories to be operated remotely on aircraft and tanks have been modified for manual use.

Four-door civilian pickup trucks have been converted to sinister-appearing armored vehicles. And conventional munitions designed for one thing — land mines and tank shells, for which the rebels have little use — have been converted to other types of lethal arms.

The rebels remain ill equipped and materially outmatched. Some of their production is of questionable value. But they have acquired a collective sense that, to drive back the Qaddafi troops, any contribution matters.

The New York Times reports:

In his harshest comments to date on the situation in Libya, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a regional power broker, told reporters here on Tuesday that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had chosen “blood, tears, oppression” and that he must “immediately step down.”

Turkey has historic and business ties to Libya, and during more than two months of conflict it has tried to act as an intermediary between Colonel Qaddafi’s government and the rebels seeking his ouster. As a result, each side has accused Turkey of favoring the other, or of hedging its bets.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan appeared to draw a line, saying during a televised news conference that Colonel Qaddafi had violently resisted calls for change and that he must leave power for the good of the country and the Libyan people.

“Muammar Qaddafi, instead of taking our suggestions into account, refraining from shedding blood or seeking for ways to maintain the territorial unity of Libya, chose blood, tears, oppression and attacks on his own people,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Now, at this stage, the thing that needs to be done is Muammar Qaddafi to immediately step down from power that he holds in Libya.”

About 25,000 Turkish workers were engaged in major construction projects in Libya at the beginning of the unrest in February, and Turkey led an extensive evacuation operation for its citizens and others. The two countries began a visa agreement last year, allowing Libyan citizens to stay in Turkey for at least three months without a visa and signaling a turn in diplomatic and business relations.

A Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Mr. Erdogan had spoken with Colonel Qaddafi three times in private, “urging him to step down peacefully and allow establishment of an administration to reflect people’s demands,” but that Colonel Qaddafi had refused.

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Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring

Premature death offers the surest path to immortality.

No, that isn’t a metaphysical statement; just a rather prosaic observation.

Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, John F Kennedy, Malcolm X and now Osama bin Laden — all will forever be remembered through iconic images that capture their vitality, untarnished by age and infirmity.

The war on terrorism made pitifully little sense other than in symbolic terms, yet even in these terms the US has consistently been the loser.

9/11 was an offense to American pride — how could the greatest, most powerful nation on earth be brought to its knees by a small band of young men armed with box cutters?

Apparently, the only way to restore American pride and reinvigorate American power was to go on a rampage across the Middle East, kill hundreds of thousands of people and then, in what most Americans would gladly see as the final act, execute America’s archenemy. If we bankrupted ourselves along the way, it was all in the name of the most noble cause: the war between good and evil.

But evil can only be effectively externalized and symbolically vanquished if we simultaneously indulge in the willful suppression of awareness. The destruction of al Qaeda has only been a plausible objective for as long as we remain dreamily wedded to our own sense of innocence.

Elliot Abrams, a man still guided by his own dream images of the Middle East, writes:

The timing of Osama bin Laden’s death is perfect, coming during the Arab Spring. Al Qaeda’s message that violence, terrorism and extremism are the only answer for Arabs seeking dignity and hope is being rejected each day in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and throughout the Arab lands.

Al Qaeda and its view of the world are being pushed aside in favor of demands for new governments, free elections, freedom of speech and assembly and an end to corruption. Bin Laden’s death weakens Al Qaeda and Salafi movements further by taking away their most powerful symbol.

But on the contrary, what bin Laden’s death has achieved is to terminate the real life of a fugitive and leave behind nothing but the powerful symbol.

While in the eyes of Americans bin Laden came to symbolize violence, in the eyes of those who looked up to him as “Sheikh Osama” he symbolized a beacon of defiance in a region where for too long subservient populations had acquiesced to authoritarian rule by leaders who were themselves subservient to American interests.

As a political awakening now erupts across the region, a narrow violent Islamist movement has not so much been rejected as it has been superseded by a broad, youthful, partially non-violent, popular movement.

Even if the Middle East’s young revolutionaries have no organizational links or ideological sympathies with al Qaeda and its affiliates, the jihadists can nevertheless be viewed as a historical precursor to the Arab Spring in as much as they too rejected the political legitimacy of the region’s American-backed autocratic rulers.

To the extent that commentators portray the uprisings as ideologically non-violent, this seems to say more about the way Americans across the political spectrum have in the post 9/11 era been conditioned to view political violence, than it says about the nature of the Middle East’s ongoing revolutions. If one wants to praise the uprisings it is only politically correct to do so if one also praises their ostensible non-violent character.

Nowhere has this image of non-violence been held up more frequently than in the coverage of the Egyptian revolution, but as Egyptian journalist and blogger, Hossam el-Hamalawy, writes, this image is a fabrication.

One of the biggest myths invented by the media, tied to this whole Gene Sharp business: the Egyptian revolution was “peaceful.” I’m afraid it wasn’t. The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters.

But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back. We fought back the police and Mubarak’s thugs with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives. The police stations which were stormed almost in every single neighborhood on the Friday of Anger–that was not the work of “criminals” as the regime and some middle class activists are trying to propagate. Protesters, ordinary citizens, did that.

Egyptians understand well what a police station is for. Every family has a member who got abused, tortured or humiliated by the local police force in his/her neighborhood. And I’m not even talking here about the State Security Police torture factories. I’m talking about the “ordinary police.”

Other symbols of power and corruption were attacked by the protesters and torched down during the uprising. Revolutionary violence is never random. Those buildings torched down or looted largely belonged to Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.

In a number of provinces like in N Sinai and Suez, arms were seized by protesters who used them back against the police to defend themselves. State Security Police office in Rafah and Arish, for example, were blown up using RPGs, hand grenades and automatic rifles, while gas pipelines heading to Jordan and Israel were attacked.

Am I condemning this violence? Totally not. Every single revolution in history witnessed its share of violence. The violence always starts on the hands of the state, not the people. The people are forced to pick up arms or whatever they can put their hands on to protect themselves.

Along with dispelling the myth of non-violence, maybe it’s time we stopped calling this an Arab Spring — or at least remember that spring brings tornadoes and storms and not just flowers and birdsong.

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News roundup — May 1

Gaddafi’s son’s killing puts Nato in line of fire

The Libyan regime’s claims that Nato is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi have intensified following the apparent death of one of the leader’s sons and three of his grandchildren in an air strike on Tripoli.

Gaddafi was at the one-storey house in a residential area of Tripoli when the missile struck late on Saturday, according to the government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim.

In a rare acknowledgement that security around Gaddafi may not be watertight, Ibrahim told reporters that intelligence about Gaddafi’s whereabouts or plans must have been leaked to Nato. (The Guardian)

Qaddafi’s claims that NATO strike killed three grandsons appears false, but son is dead

The claim that Muammar Qaddafi’s three grandchildren were killed in an airstrike conducted by NATO late Saturday is not true, an Al Arabiya source has revealed. A source close to the Qaddafi family has confirmed the death of Colonel Qaddafi’s youngest son, Saif al-Arab, in the airstrike but has denied the story that Mr. Qaddafi’s three grandsons were killed. (Al Arabiya)

Death of Saif Al-Arab Gaddafi may backfire for Nato

Shashank Joshi writes: The death of Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, if confirmed, is likely to have come as a consequence of Nato’s increasingly aggressive tactics, undertaken by the alliance to shake up a stalemate in the conflict.

But his killing in an air strike is a grievous strategic error – militarily insignificant but diplomatically disastrous.

Towards the end of April, Nato states made a number of operational innovations. Three member states – Britain, France, and Italy – injected military advisers into rebel-held eastern Libya. Another, the US, began continuous patrols of armed drones.

Third, and most important, air strikes began to target command, control, communications and intelligence networks (known, in military parlance, as C3I). The Bab al-Aziziya compound includes all three such networks, and it was presumed that their disruption would disorient regime soldiers on the front line, cut off field commanders from Tripoli, and sow confusion in the ranks.

But was the strike also an assassination attempt?

Assassination of a head of state is illegal under international law, and forbidden by various US presidential orders. On the other hand, the targeted killing of those woven into the enemy chain of command is shrouded in legal ambiguity. (BBC News)

Britain expels Libya ambassador

Britain has ordered the expulsion of the Libyan ambassador to London, Omar Jelban, in retaliation for an attack on the British embassy by a pro-Gaddafi crowd in Tripoli.

Jelban has been given 24 hours to leave the country.

“I condemn the attacks on the British embassy premises in Tripoli as well as the diplomatic missions of other countries,” said the foreign secretary, William Hague. “The Vienna convention requires the Gaddafi regime to protect diplomatic missions in Tripoli. By failing to do so that regime has once again breached its international responsibilities and obligations. I take the failure to protect such premises very seriously indeed.” (The Guardian)

Libya: ‘UN to quit Tripoli’ amid mob attacks

The UN is withdrawing all its international staff from the Libyan capital Tripoli following a mob attack on its offices, the BBC understands.

UN buildings and some foreign missions were targeted by angry crowds following a Nato air strike that reportedly killed a son of Col Gaddafi.

A UN official told the BBC its staff would withdraw from Libya and the decision would be reviewed next week. (BBC News)

Inside a city running on fear

Sometimes they reveal themselves in a gesture.

They sniff with contempt at a passing car filled with Moammar Kadafi’s supporters. They turn up the volume on Al Jazeera just when a report chronicling the government’s attacks on civilians in rebel-held Misurata comes on.

Or they make a cryptic remark, like the driver working with the government minders assigned to monitor foreign reporters.

“God willing, spring will come soon,” he said.

But spring began weeks ago.

“God willing, in two weeks,” he said with a smile.

“Two weeks” is the time in which Libyans have been assuring themselves that their nightmare will come to an end. (Los Angeles Times)

Pro-regime troops seen ‘wearing gas masks in Misurata’

Pro-Gaddaffi forces have been seen roaming the streets of Misurata wearing gas masks, contacts in Libya’s besieged city have reported to timesofmalta.com .

Sources at the hospital confirmed that pro regime troops were wearing gas masks. An independent source said there were reports that thousands of gas masks had been distributed to troops yesterday. (Times of Malta)

Libya disabled children school hit in NATO strike

Shattered glass litters the carpet at the Libyan Down’s Syndrome Society, and dust covers pictures of grinning children that adorn the hallway, thrown into darkness by a NATO strike early on Saturday.

It was unclear what the target of the strike was, though Libyan officials said it was Muammar Gaddafi himself, who was giving a live television address at the time.

“They maybe wanted to hit the television. This is a non-military, non-governmental building,” said Mohammed al-Mehdi, head of the civil societies council, which licenses and oversees civil groups in Libya. (Reuters)

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‘Tanks firing’ in Syria protest city of Deraa

Syrian soldiers and tanks have been firing in the city of Deraa, a centre of protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, residents say.

They say soldiers have made arrests and fired to keep people indoors.

Opposition websites are showing footage purportedly of a soldier who says he deserted after being ordered to fire on unarmed protesters in Damascus.

Activists say nearly 600 people have died in the crackdown on protests, which began in mid-March. (BBC News)

Who’s who in the Syrian opposition

David Kenner writes: Bashar al-Assad never saw it coming. In a Jan. 31 interview with the Wall Street Journal, the Syrian autocrat boasted that his regime was immune from the revolutionary wave spreading across the Middle East because it “very closely linked to the beliefs of the people.”

Over the past month and a half, Syrians have made a liar out of their president. Small protests broke out in Damascus on March 15 and have slowly spread to towns and cities throughout the country. And as the movement has gained strength, Assad’s crackdown has increased in brutality. The Syrian regime has killed at least 450 people since the uprising began, according to human rights groups, and this week sent tanks into the mutinous southern town of Daraa to quell the protests.

So far, the regime’s attempts to quash the demonstrations have only caused them to increase in size. Tens of thousands of Syrians came out to the protests this Friday, with crowds demonstrating in more than 50 towns throughout the country. The protests’ growing strength has produced a reaction in Washington: Following days of escalating statements, President Barack Obama issued new sanctions today against three of the regime’s most notorious officials, including Bashar’s brother, Maher al-Assad. The U.N. Human Rights Council also denounced Assad’s use of violence against peaceful protesters on Friday, calling for a team to visit Syria in order to “ensur[e] full accountability” for those who perpetrated the attacks.

So who’s leading the charge against Assad? The president has accumulated no shortage of enemies over his decade-long rule, many of whom have little in common besides their enmity toward the Syrian president. If he continues his ruthless crackdown, however, it just may be enough to unite them. (Foreign Policy)

Syrian businessman becomes magnet for anger and dissent

When protests erupted in March in the forlorn Syrian border town of Dara’a, demonstrators burned the president’s portraits, then set ablaze an unlikely target: the local office of the country’s largest mobile phone company, Syriatel, whose owner sits at the nexus of anger and power in a restive country.

Syriatel is owned by Rami Makhlouf, first cousin and childhood friend of President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s most powerful businessman. In the past decade, he has emerged as a strength and a liability of a government that finds its bastions of support shrinking and a figure to watch as Mr. Assad’s inner circle tries to deal with protests shaking his family’s four decades of rule.

Leery of the limelight, he is alternatively described as the Assad family’s banker or Mr. Five Percent (or 10, or whatever share gets the deal done). His supporters praise him for his investment in Syria, but they are far outnumbered by detractors, who have derided him in protests as a thief or worse. Sometimes more than Mr. Assad himself, he has become the lightning rod of dissent.

“We’ll say it clearly,” went a chant in Dara’a. “Rami Makhlouf is robbing us.”

Egypt had Ahmed Ezz, the steel magnate who favored tight Italian suits (and now faces trial in white prison garb). In Tunisia, it was Leila Traboulsi, the hairdresser who became the president’s wife, then a symbol of the extravagance of the ruling family. Mr. Makhlouf, 41, is Syria’s version, a man at the intersection of family privilege, clan loyalty, growing avarice and, perhaps most dangerously, the yawning disconnect between ruler and ruled that already reshaped authoritarian Syria even before the protests. (New York Times)

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Gaza is a symbol of occupation, thanks to Israel

Zvi Bar’el writes: Israel’s Pavlovian response to Palestinian reconciliation, which included the usual threats of boycott, is the result of the ingrained anxiety of people who no longer control the process. For five years, Israel has done everything to change the outcome of Hamas’ watershed victory in the elections in the territories. It did not recognize the Hamas government or the unity government, and of course, it did not recognize the Hamas government that arose after that organization’s brutal takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Gaza became a synonym for Hamas; that is, for terror, and the West Bank stood for the land of unlimited possibilities. Israel made an enormous contribution toward building up Hamas into an institution, not only an organization. The cruel closure of Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, turning Gaza into a battle zone and the saga of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, with Israel continuing to negotiate with Hamas while striking out against it – all this has transformed Gaza into a symbol of the occupation and a focus of international empathy.

Israel, in its diplomatic blindness, saw the product it helped manufacture as a huge diplomatic achievement. Its working assumption was that the split between Gaza and the West Bank would allow Israel to pursue the appearance of negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, while fighting another part of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel interpreted the political conflict between Abbas and Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and Khaled Meshal in Damascus as an unsolvable ideological conflict and a reality in which, in Israel’s thinking, Palestine is divided not only into two regions, but into two mutually hostile peoples. Israel tortures one side while celebrating with the other at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the opening of a shopping center. (Haaretz)

Israel halts cash to Palestinians after Hamas deal

Israel has suspended tax transfers to the Palestinians, its finance minister said on Sunday, fearing the money will be used to fund Hamas after President Mahmoud Abbas struck a unity deal with the Islamists.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), led by U.S.-backed Abbas, asked foreign powers to stop Israel from blocking the transfers, which make up 70 percent of its revenues. A senior Palestinian official said Israel, by its action, had “started a war.”

Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said he had suspended a routine handover of 300 million shekels ($88 million) in customs and other levies that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians under interim peace deals. (Reuters)

‘Differences’ emerge in top Iran leadership

Serious differences have emerged within Iran’s top leadership, media reports suggest, pitting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, against Aytollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

Ahmadinejad has boycotted cabinet meetings since Heider Moslehi, the intelligence minister, was reinstated after he was forced out of the government.

Moslehi was restored to the powerful post by Khamenei after Ahmadinejad had forced him to resign on April 17.

Ahmadinejad’s opponents, meanwhile, have seized the opportunity.

According to the Shargh newspaper, a group of 216 lawmakers, more than two-third of the 290 members in the Iranian parliament, have issued a letter to Ahmadinejad, urging him to call off his cabinet boycott for the good of the country.

“You are expected to follow the supreme leader,” the lawmakers wrote.

On Friday, a hardline cleric used his nationally broadcast sermon to indirectly warn Ahmadinejad that he would be moving into dangerous territory by escalating his challenges to Khamenei.

“Obedience to the supreme leader is a religious obligation as well as a legal obligation, without any doubt,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said. He did not mention Ahmadinejad by name, but it was clear he was referring to the president. (Al Jazeera)

Five myths about foreign aid

John Norris writes: In poll after poll, Americans overwhelmingly say they believe that foreign aid makes up a larger portion of the federal budget than defense spending, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or spending on roads and other infrastructure. In a November World Public Opinion poll, the average American believed that a whopping 25 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. The average respondent also thought that the appropriate level of foreign aid would be about 10 percent of the budget — 10 times the current level.

Compared with our military and entitlement budgets, this is loose change. Since the 1970s, aid spending has hovered around 1 percent of the federal budget. International assistance programs were close to 5 percent of the budget under Lyndon B. Johnson during the war in Vietnam, but have dropped since. (Washington Post)

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News roundup — April 30

Syrians escaping violence flee to Turkey

About 250 people raced across the Syrian border into Turkey, government officials said Saturday, a flight that reflects the fear and violence gripping the Arab nation.

The people hustled to the southern Turkish Yaylidagi district in Hatay province on Friday afternoon, according to local and federal government officials.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said the government is trying to determine more about the people and how and why they chose to leave Syria.

“They just came to the border post and want to go in without passports. They were let in,” Unal said. “We are trying to figure out whether this is an individual event or the tip of the iceberg.” (CNN)

Syrian army units ‘clash over crackdown’

Members of two Syrian army units have clashed with each other over carrying out orders to crack down on protesters in Deraa, the southern city at the heart of an anti-government uprising, according to a witness and human rights groups.

More than 500 people have been killed across Syria – about 100 in Deraa alone – since the popular revolt against the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad began in mid-March, according to human rights groups.

While the infighting in Deraa does not indicate any decisive splits in the military, it is significant because the army has always been seen as a bastion of support for the regime. The Syrian military has denied that there have been any splits in the military. (Al Jazeera)

Syrians under siege

“L.A” writes: Syria is known for its complicated sectarian mix. The Assad government and ruling Baath party are run by Alawites, a Shia sect followed by around 12 percent of the population. The majority of Syrians are Sunnis, but there are also Christians of all denominations (10 percent), other Shia, Druze, and a tiny Jewish minority. In recent weeks, the government has cited the threat of Islamist extremism as a reason to crack down on protesters. However, despite the veils and niqabs I encountered, there was little evidence in Douma of either an Islamist or sectarian element to the political demands being made.

“We don’t have Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) in Douma,” one man told us. “They’re just conservative around here.” Later, Alaa said the same thing, explaining that much of the local population belongs to the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam, the most conservative of the four Sunni schools. But there were also Shia and more secular people in the crowd. One young man I met, “Imad,” was secular, university-educated, and worked for a large company. He had been demonstrating alongside laborers wearing dusty clothes and the red and white keffiyeh, and religious conservatives. The diversity was also apparent in the different colored ribbons worn as armbands by the mourners—green for the Shia, red for the Sunni.

In other protest cities, such as Latakia and Baniyas, the demonstrations have been even more mixed, with many Shia and Christians participating. Protests in different parts of the country have generally cut across both religious and ethnic divisions: Ismailis (a Shia sect) in Salamiya near Hama, Kurds in the north, Armenians in Latakia, and Druze in Suweida. (NYRB Blog)

Thousands protest in Damascus after Syrian crackdown

Syria’s loosely organized pro-democracy movement drew tens of thousands of people into the heart of Damascus and cities across the country Friday, a major victory against a government campaign of violence that has killed hundreds of peaceful protesters.

Activists said security forces, who have deployed tanks in some cities, killed 64 people Friday as they tried to crush the 6-week-old protest movement.

In Washington, the White House said President Obama had signed an executive order imposing sanctions on three Syrian officials the United States believes engaged in human rights abuses. (Los Angeles Times)

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Libyan rebel forces reject Muammar Gaddafi’s ceasefire offer

Libyan opposition forces have rejected a ceasefire offer by Muammar Gaddafi and dismissed his regime’s claims that loyalist forces had cut off access to the crucial seaport in the besieged city of Misrata.

In a rambling, defiant speech on state television on Saturday, in which he declared that he was “more sacred [to Libyans] than the emperor of Japan is to his people”, Gaddafi called for talks with Nato, which is conducting air strikes against his forces.

“The door to peace is open,” Gaddafi said. “You are the aggressors. We will negotiate with you. Come, France, Italy, UK, America, come, we will negotiate with you. Why are you attacking us?”

More than two months into the Libyan revolution, loyalist forces are becoming increasing stretched. In the east, they are preventing the rebel advance near the town of Ajdabiya; in the far west, they are trying to quell a more recent uprising near the border with Tunisia. And just 130 miles from Tripoli, the battle for the industrial city of Misrata continues, with at least six people killed before noon on Saturday. (The Guardian)

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In shift, Egypt warms to Iran and Hamas, Israel’s foes

Egypt is charting a new course in its foreign policy that has already begun shaking up the established order in the Middle East, planning to open the blockaded border with Gaza and normalizing relations with two of Israel and the West’s Islamist foes, Hamas and Iran.

Egyptian officials, emboldened by the revolution and with an eye on coming elections, say that they are moving toward policies that more accurately reflect public opinion. In the process they are seeking to reclaim the influence over the region that waned as their country became a predictable ally of Washington and the Israelis in the years since the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

The first major display of this new tack was the deal Egypt brokered Wednesday to reconcile the secular Palestinian party Fatah with its rival Hamas. “We are opening a new page,” said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry. “Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated.”

Egypt’s shifts are likely to alter the balance of power in the region, allowing Iran new access to a previously implacable foe and creating distance between itself and Israel, which has been watching the changes with some alarm. “We are troubled by some of the recent actions coming out of Egypt,” said one senior Israeli official, citing a “rapprochement between Iran and Egypt” as well as “an upgrading of the relationship between Egypt and Hamas.” (New York Times)

Egypt warns Israel: Don’t interfere with opening of Gaza border crossing

Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces General Sami Anan warned Israel against interfering with Egypt’s plan to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on a permanent basis, saying it was not a matter of Israel’s concern, Army Radio reported on Saturday.

Egypt announced this week that it intended to permanently open the border crossing with Gaza within the next few days.

The announcement indicates a significant change in the policy on Gaza, which before Egypt’s uprising, was operated in conjunction with Israel. The opening of Rafah will allow the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza without Israeli permission or supervision, which has not been the case up until now. (Haaretz)

Ending the rift between Hamas and Fatah

Adam Shatz writes: The agreement is arguably one of the first diplomatic fruits of the Egyptian revolution. But Barack Obama also deserves some of the credit. Abbas has been humiliated by Obama, and he is clearly angry. As he told Newsweek, ‘It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder, and he removed the ladder and said to me: “Jump.” Three times, he did it.’ The Obama administration also urged Abbas to oppose a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding that Israel ‘immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory’. ‘It’s better for you and for us and for our relations,’ Obama told Abbas by phone, before enumerating the sanctions Palestinians would suffer if the vote went ahead, and warning that Congress might not approve $475 million in aid. In fact, there was little the PA could do to advance Palestinian interests that wouldn’t have put US aid at risk: soon after the unity agreement was announced, Washington chimed in with Tel Aviv’s denunciations of Hamas as a ‘terrorist organisation’, and three members of Congress, led by the House foreign affairs chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, threatened to cut off aid.

But Obama may have done Abbas a favour: by revealing in the starkest terms the unconditional nature of US support for Israel – and how slender the rewards are for being America’s man in Ramallah – he has forced Abbas to do something that, for once, may win him some Palestinian goodwill. And he may just be able to sell the agreement – in other words, the inclusion of a party that has not renounced violence or recognised Israel – to the EU, which has become increasingly exasperated with Obama’s timidity on Palestine. The unity agreement may turn out to be a bluff, Abbas’s way of reminding his patrons that he has other options, and that they can’t simply ignore Palestinian interests. But perhaps Abbas and the old men in Fatah are at last rediscovering the virtues of self-reliance. (LRB Blog)

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News roundup — April 29

Scores killed on Syria’s ‘day of rage’

Dozens of people have been shot dead by Syrian security forces, activists claim, as tens of thousands took part in anti-government rallies dubbed a “day of rage”.

Activists said at least 50 protesters were killed across the country on Friday, although Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the death toll.

At least 15 people were reported killed near Deraa where security forces fired on thousands of protesters trying to enter the besieged southern city, sources told Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin.

Deraa has been the scene of regular demonstrations since protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s rule began last month, but the city has also borne the brunt of weeks of government repression.

The government claims its forces are battling “extremist and terrorist groups in the town” and said two soldiers were killed on Friday.

“Deraa has been under siege since Monday morning. Residents from the surrounding villages were trying to break the siege as they tried to get supplies,” our correspondent said. (Al Jazeera)

Crunch-time for the Syrian regime

Peter Harling writes: Seen from Damascus, the crisis that is gripping Syria is fast approaching crunch-time. The regime appears to have stopped pretending it can offer a way out. More than ever, it portrays the confrontation as a war waged against a multifaceted foreign enemy which it blames for all casualties. This narrative, which informs the security services’ brutal response to protests, has cost the authorities the decisive battle for perceptions abroad, at home, and even in central Damascus — a rare bubble of relative calm that has now entered into a state of utter confusion.

The primary benefit of observing events from the Syrian capital is to measure just how unreliable all sources of information have become. Local media tell a tale of accusations and denials in which, incredibly, security services are the sole victims, persecuted by armed gangs. Where the regime initially acknowledged civilian martyrs and sought to differentiate between legitimate grievances and what it characterized as sedition, such efforts have come to an end.

For its part, the foreign media, denied access by the regime, relies virtually exclusively on material produced by on-the-ground protesters, the dependability of which has proven uneven. The novel phenomenon of “eye-witnesses” further blurs the picture. Outside observers have sought to counter the state-imposed blackout by recruiting correspondents, often haphazardly, flooding the country with satellite phones and modems. Several cases of false testimonies have cast doubts on such procedures but, for lack of an alternative, they largely continue to shape coverage of events. (Foreign Policy)

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The Arab Spring reaches Palestine

Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, the siege of Gaza about to be lifted, and Washington’s favorite Palestinian, Salam Fayyad, directed to vacate his position as prime minister — these aren’t the changes Obama believes in. But since all that the US and Israel have been intent on doing in the name of the so-called peace process is preserving the status quo, they have effectively consigned themselves to the roles of political spectators in the New Middle East. Expect a great deal of huffing and puffing from the Israel Lobby and its representatives on Capitol Hill over the coming days.

In an editorial, The Guardian says:

The Arab spring has finally had an impact on the core issue of the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It came in the form of a draft agreement between Fatah and Hamas which took everyone by surprise. There are three chief reasons why, after four years of bitter and violent conflict between the rivals, Fatah acceded to all of Hamas’s political conditions to form a national unity government.

The first was the publication of the Palestine papers, the secret record of the last fruitless round of talks with Israel. The extent to which Palestinian negotiators were prepared to bend over backwards to accommodate Israel surprised even hardened cynics. The Palestinian Authority found itself haemorrhaging what little authority it had left. The second was the loss to the Palestinian president, Abu Mazen, of his closest allies in Hosni Mubarak and his henchman Omar Suleiman. While they were still around, Gaza’s back door was locked. But the third reason had little to do with either of the above: Abu Mazen’s faith in Barack Obama finally snapped. For a man who dedicated his career to the creation of a Palestinian state through negotiation, the turning point came when the US vetoed a UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlement-building. In doing so, the US vetoed its own policy. To make the point, the resolution was drafted out of the actual words Hillary Clinton used to condemn construction. Fatah’s frustration with all this has now taken political form.

Israel’s politicians reacted darkly to the news of reconciliation. From right to left, they shared an assumption which is out of date. It is that they retain the ability – and the right – to dictate what sort of state Palestinians will build on their borders. Having spent years fashioning the environment, the penny has yet to drop that a future environment composed of free Egyptians, Jordanians and even possibly Syrians could well fashion Israel’s borders. Even after Mubarak fell, the consensus was that Cairo was so preoccupied with internal problems that it lacked the energy to make foreign policy.

Not so. Yesterday foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi announced that Egypt would shortly be lifting the siege of Gaza. These events pose a direct challenge to the status quo that Israel, the US and the EU have fashioned. Do they now subvert the will of the Egyptians they claim to champion? Does the US do what it did the last time Fatah and Hamas reconciled at Mecca, and pull the plug on the unity government? Do the Quartet threaten to withdraw the PA’s funds, because, as is very likely, Salam Fayyad will no longer be there to disburse them? The US could twist Fatah’s arm, but Fatah might just sign on the dotted line all the same.

Jack Shenker reports:

The emergence of a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah on Wednesday took most observers by surprise, but behind the scenes a new cast of players had been moving the relevant pieces into place ever since a popular revolution ousted the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

His regime had long declared publicly that Palestinian unity was a key foreign policy objective, and the rhetoric made sense. Hamas was proving a troubling neighbour in the Gaza Strip on Egypt’s north-eastern border and Cairo had every interest in locking the political Islamists down into a more moderate political framework. Moreover, Egypt’s stewardship of the negotiations boosted its flagging regional status and helped to ensure US political support – and money – kept flowing towards Cairo.

Egypt’s hated spymaster Omar Suleiman was placed in charge of the unity drive, but below the surface Egypt was more interested in the appearance of reconciliation talks than it was in the reality. Israel and Washington had no genuine desire to see a unified Palestinian government, and Egypt’s thinking followed suit – until, that is, nationwide protests erupted against the regime in late January, and Suleiman was promoted to vice-president in a failed attempt to shore up Mubarak’s position.

Given the country’s internal chaos, few expected his replacement, Murad Muwafi, to devote much energy to the issue of Palestinian factionalism, but in fact Muwafi took the issue seriously – so seriously, in fact, that no fewer than five Israeli delegations were dispatched to his offices in the space of a few weeks in an effort to ward off any unity deal.

Muwafi’s stance was shaped partly by the ascendancy of the career diplomat Nabil el-Arabi to the position of foreign minister in Egypt’s interim government. Arabi had a reputation for saying some decidedly undiplomatic things regarding Egypt’s close alliance with Israel under presidents Mubarak and Sadat, and as part of an internal battle to wrest control of some policy issues away from the secret services – where they had drifted under Mubarak – and back under the auspices of the foreign ministry, he began making loud and relatively critical noises about Israel, marking an important shift in rhetoric. “It is time to stop managing the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, it’s time to end the conflict,” he said earlier this month.

Egypt, in short, was now ready to take Palestinian reconciliation seriously, and that shift in mindset coincided with further regional turmoil: the uprising in Damascus, where most of Hamas’s leadership is based. With the long-term future of their host – Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad – in doubt, the group’s top brass knew it could not risk alienating the Egyptians at the very moment Cairo was finally mounting a genuine push to bring Hamas and Fatah together.

Haaretz reports:

Egypt’s foreign minister said in an interview with Al-Jazeera on Thursday that preparations were underway to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on a permanent basis.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi told Al-Jazeera that within seven to 10 days, steps will be taken in order to alleviate the “blockade and suffering of the Palestinian nation.”

The announcement indicates a significant change in the policy on Gaza, which before Egypt’s uprising, was operated in conjunction with Israel. The opening of Rafah will allow the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza without Israeli permission or supervision, which has not been the case up until now.

The Guardian reports:

Hamas has insisted on the departure of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister favoured by Israel and the west, under a deal agreed with its rival faction Fatah for a unity government, according to sources in Gaza.

The Islamist organisation also said it would keep control of the Gaza Strip under the accord, which is expected to be formally signed by leaders of the two factions in Cairo next week.

The plan drew further criticism on Thursday from Israel, which has said it would not deal with a Palestinian government that included members of Hamas.

However, the interim Hamas-Fatah government will have no involvement in negotiations with Israel. Talks will still be conducted by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, headed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

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Out of Syria’s darkness come tales of terror

Robert Fisk writes:

In Damascus, the posters – in their tens of thousands around the streets – read: “Anxious or calm, you must obey the law.” But pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez have been taken down, by the security police no less, in case they inflame Syrians.

There are thieves with steel-tipped rubber coshes on the Damascus airport road at night, and in the terminal the cops ask arriving passengers to declare iPods and laptops. In the village of Hala outside Deraa, Muslim inhabitants told their Christian neighbours to join the demonstrations against the regime – or leave.

And they are true. Syrians arriving in Lebanon are bringing the most specific details of what is going on inside their country, of Fifth Brigade soldiers fighting the armed units of Maher Assad’s Fourth Brigade outside Deraa, of random killings around Damascus by the ever-growing armed bands of Shabiha (“the mafia”) from the Alawite mountains, of massive stocking up of food. One woman has just left her mother in the capital with 10 kilos of pasta, 10 kilos of rice, five kilos of sugar, box after box of drinking water.

In Deraa – surrounded, without electricity or water or supplies – the price of bread has risen 500 per cent and men are smuggling food into the city over the fields at night.

But it is the killings which terrify the people. Are they committed by the Shabiha from the port city of Lattakia – created by the Assad family in the 70s to control smuggling and protection rackets – or by the secret police to sow a fear that might break the uprising against Assad? Or by the murderers who thrive amid anarchy and lawlessness? Three men carrying sacks of vegetables outside Damascus at night were confronted by armed men last week. They refused to stop. So they were executed.

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News roundup — April 28

Gaddafi arms Libyan ‘home guard’ – minimum age 17

Muammar Gaddafi is arming Libyan 17-year-olds to build a “home front” against Nato military intervention and the possibility of rebels from the east of the country reaching largely loyalist towns and cities in the west.

As part of the drive towards an unofficial civilian army, the government is releasing thousands of AK-47 assault rifles into communities and is organising classes in the use of weapons.

At a women’s training centre in the town of Sbia, 30 miles south of Tripoli, young women crowded round a trestle table as a soldier wearing camouflage fatigues and thick red lipstick demonstrated how to field-strip and reassemble the guns.

Officials said the minimum age for weapons training was 17, although the centre was crowded with girls as young as seven who were schooled in loyalist chants and waving portraits of Gaddafi. (The Guardian)

EU scorns Bahrain over death penalties

The death sentence imposed on four Bahrainis caught up in the Shiite uprising is a “deplorable” act, the president of the European Parliament said Thursday.

Bahraini authorities announced via the state-run news agency that four men were sentenced to death and three others were given life-in-prison terms for the reported killing of two police officers during demonstrations in March.

Bahrain is facing international scrutiny for its response to the Shiite uprising. Opposition leaders accuse the ruling Sunni minority of cracking down on healthcare workers and hospital patients in order to downplay the severity of the violence. (UPI)

Bahrain ‘torture service’ official to attend royal wedding

The former head of an agency accused of torture and human rights abuses is expected to be a guest at Friday’s royal wedding, the Guardian has learned.

Sheikh Khalifa Bin Ali al-Khalifa is a former head of Bahrain’s National Security Agency (NSA) and will attend the wedding in his role as the current Bahraini ambassador to London.

British sources confirmed he had been invited and a spokesperson for the Bahraini embassy in London said he was expected to attend. (The Guardian)

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The post-Islamist revolutions

Asef Bayat writes:

How should we make sense of the revolts that have engulfed the Arab world? Some observers see them as postmodern revolutions, diffused and leaderless, with no fixed ideology. Others view them as the next wave of democratic and liberal revolutions. Most commonly, they are described as youth revolutions, since young people played a key role in initiating them. Still others argue that they may be Islamist revolutions and will turn the region into a theocracy resembling Iran. In the United States, this is the position that many Republicans hold. The Iranian hard-liners concur, insisting that the Arab revolts are inspired by Iran’s 1979 Islamic takeover.

Religious factions have been involved in the Arab protests to an extent — al-Nahda has in Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood has in Egypt and Syria, and the Islamic opposition has in Yemen, for example. But in truth, the revolutions transcend the Islamist politics that reigned in the region just a few years ago. In a 2008 essay on the future of Islamic revolutions, I suggested that the Iranian experience “may well remain the first and the last Islamic Revolution of our time,” for the “growth of democratic sensibilities and movements [in the Middle East] is likely to push Islamism into the ‘post-Islamist’ course, paving the way for a democratic change in which an inclusive Islam may play a significant role. The outcome may be termed ‘post-Islamist refo-lutions’ [a mix of reforms and revolutions].”

Post-Islamism is not anti-Islamic or secular; a post-Islamist movement dearly upholds religion but also highlights citizens’ rights. It aspires to a pious society within a democratic state. Early examples of such movements include the reform movement in Iran in the late 1990s and the country’s Green Movement today, Indonesia’s Prosperous Justice Party, Egypt’s Hizb al-Wasat, Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD), and Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Each was originally fundamentalist but over time came to critique Islamist excess, its violation of democratic rights, and its use of religion as a tool to sanctify political power. They all eventually opted to work within the democratic state.

The protest movements underlying the current revolutions seem set to follow these earlier post-Islamist experiments. So far, religious rhetoric has been remarkably absent, even though the participants of the Middle East’s many uprisings remain overwhelmingly people of faith. In Tunisia, protesters’ central objective was to establish a democratic government. Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the founder of Tunisia’s main Islamist party — Islamic Nahda — has publicly rejected a Khomeini-style state and has declined to run for president in future elections. Similarly, in Egypt the revolution demanded “change, freedom, and social justice” and was broadly secular. In fact, the major religious groups — Gamaiyya Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, a Salafi movement that controls 500 mosques and scores of schools and associations; al-Azhar, the main establishmentarian Islamic institution; and the Coptic Church did not initially back the revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood’s old guard joined reluctantly and only after being pushed by the group’s younger members.

Libya’s rebel movement and provisional government, the National Council, is composed not of Islamists or al Qaeda members but of a mix of the secular and faithful, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, regime defectors, and activists working to end Muammar al-Gaddafi’s oppression. According to their spokesman, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, a human rights lawyer, Islamist presence is minimal, since the country’s Islamists were, for the most part, crushed by Qaddafi long ago. And in Yemen and Syria, where protesters are also demanding democracy, there has also been no evidence of a major Islamist presence. In Bahrain, of course, the protests have taken on a sectarian dimension, since the monarchy is Sunni and the population is Shia, but the mainstream opposition still has largely secular demands: an elected government, a free press, the right to establish organizations, and the end to religious discrimination.

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God save the Arab kings?

Brian Whitaker writes:

One of the less-discussed facts about the wave of uprisings in the Middle East is that the Arab monarchies are still relatively unscathed. The regimes most seriously challenged by popular protests – in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria – have all been republics. This may seem odd to Europeans whose revolutions over the centuries have been mainly about overthrowing kings.

To some extent, the apparent resilience of Arab monarchies may be a matter of luck. Most of them are in the Gulf and they have oil, which means they can (and do) use their money to buy off discontent. That does not apply to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, however, and oil wealth has not saved the Gaddafi regime from trouble in the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Another possible explanation is that Arab monarchs, in the eyes of many of their citizens, have a stronger claim to legitimacy than republican leaders who came to power – or clung on to it – in dubious circumstances.

The monarchies base their legitimacy on religious or tribal roots. The rulers of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the Emirates all came from old and prominent tribes and the “right” to rule was derived from their families’ status.

The Sabah family, for instance, was a clan of the Anizah tribe which migrated from Nejd – the central plateau of Saudi Arabia – to Kuwait in the 18th century and has ruled locally ever since. The Khalifa family was another clan from the same tribe that had arrived in Bahrain about the same time. The Thani family that rules Qatar is a branch of the Bani Tameem tribe and also arrived from Nejd in the 18th century.

The Saudi royal family has tribal roots too, though its main claim to legitimacy today is religious – so much so that the king’s religious title, Guardian of the Two Holy Shrines (Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam) takes precedence over his royal title.

Similarly, the king of Jordan is official guardian of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, regarded as Islam’s third holiest site. Jordan’s current monarch, Abdullah II, also boasts of being a “43rd generation direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad”. Meanwhile the king of Morocco embodies both “spiritual and temporal authority” and is known as Amir al-Mu’mineen – the prince (or commander) of the believers.

Although rule by birthright might seem an inherently objectionable form of government, the tribal and religious background makes it difficult to challenge in what are often highly traditional and patriarchal societies. In the monarchies where there have been significant protests, such as Morocco, Oman and Jordan, demonstrators have been demanding reform but without questioning the ruler’s right to govern – which is still very much a taboo. (Bahrain is a special case, where a Sunni Muslim minority rules over a Shia majority, making the legitimacy question much more obvious.)

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News roundup — April 27

Fatah and Hamas reconciliation agreement

The rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas agreed Wednesday to reconcile and form an interim government ahead of elections, after a four-year feud, in what both sides hailed as a chance to start a fresh page in their national history.

Israel said the accord, which was brokered in secrecy by Egypt, would not secure peace in the Middle East and urged Abbas to carry on shunning the Islamist movement, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 after ousting Fatah in a civil war.

Forging Palestinian unity is regarded as crucial to reviving any prospect for an independent Palestinian state, but Western powers have always refused to deal with Hamas because of its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence.

“We have agreed to form a government composed of independent figures that would start preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections,” said Azzam al-Ahmad, the head of Fatah’s negotiating team in Cairo. “Elections would be held in about eight months from now,” he said, adding the Arab League would oversee the implementation of the agreement. (Reuters)

A separate peace

Zvi Bar’el writes: For the past four years, it has been clear to Fatah and Hamas that they had no alternative but to reach a reconciliation. The controversy was over the price. Even now, when the draft agreement is signed, the portfolio allocation, the type of election, the date of the election and the designated ministers and prime minister have yet to be agreed on.

The successful implementation of the reconciliation agreement is largely dependent on both sides recognizing that they will have to make decisions and cooperate without outside help. There is no certainty that Assad, who navigated Hamas’ diplomatic moves, is in a position to continue setting the Middle Eastern agenda, as he had hoped after Mubarak’s fall. It is clear to Fatah, and especially Mahmoud Abbas, that General Tantawi’s Egypt is not Mubarak’s Egypt and the Egyptian public pressure to open the Gaza border and the regime’s readiness to respond would deprive him of the main leverage over Hamas.

The reconciliation has direct bearing on Abbas’ intention to ask the United Nations to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Such a state would include the Gaza Strip, as had been agreed in the Oslo agreement and as Abbas reiterates constantly. Abbas will not be able to pass himself off as one who represents the Palestinian people without reconciling with Hamas, especially when Gaza has played such a major role in evoking international sympathy, perhaps even more than Abbas’ infrastructure in the West Bank.

Operation Cast Lead, the Turkish flotilla and the prolonged blockade of Gaza, as well as Israel’s settlement policy, helped Abbas persuade world leaders to remove their support from Israel’s position and adopt the Palestinian-state idea.

The reconciliation was enabled, among other things, by the fact that Hamas will not be obliged to recognize Israel, because if the United Nations recognizes the Palestinian state, Hamas’ specific recognition would be meaningless. Hamas will be part of a Palestinian government making sovereign decisions. Hamas has already said in the past it was willing to recognize all the agreements and decisions accepted by the Arab League, including the Arab Initiative.

Even the United States will not be able to object to a united Palestinian government, in which Hamas is a partner. After all, it had agreed to accept and even support, economically and militarily, a Lebanese government in which Hezbollah was partner. Nor will the United States and Europe be able to object to general elections in the territories, or deny their results, when the West is demanding Arab leaders implement democratic reforms.

Israel could find itself isolated yet again if it objects to the reconciliation or the election. (Haaretz)

* * *

Shock in Syria: the messy and unlikely alternatives for Bashar

David W. Lesch writes: Early this year, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad portrayed his country as being different, almost immune from the uprisings that had beset Tunisia and Egypt. The mouthpieces of the Syrian regime consistently echoed this arrogance, even to the point of siding with the protestors in their Arab brethren countries. They pointed out that the septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders of these states were out of touch with their populations. They were also corrupt lackeys of the United States. The implication, of course, was that Asad, a relatively young 45, was in touch with the Arab youth. He also confronted the United States and Israel in the region and supported the resistance forces of Hamas and Hizbullah, thus brandishing credentials that played well in the Arab street.

This may have bought him some time, but it was a misreading of the situation—or denial of it. Having met with Asad a number of times over the past 7 years, I can almost guarantee that he was absolutely shocked when the uprisings in the Arab world started to seep into his own country. I believe he truly thought he was safe and secure…and popular beyond condemnation. But not in today’s new Middle East, where the stream of information cannot be controlled as it has been in the past. The perfect storm of higher commodity prices, Wikileaks, and the youth bulge—and their weapon of mass destruction, the social media—have bared for all to see widespread socio-economic problems, corruption, and restricted political space, and authoritarian regimes can no longer shape or contain this information. In this Syria was no different.

One might recognize the stages of shock in Asad, similar to the five stages of grief. Following his denial, Asad displayed incredulity, even anger that fueled a blatant triumphalism, apparent in his initial speech of March 30 that incorrectly placed the bulk of the blame for the uprisings in Syria on conspirators and foreign enemies, thus ignoring the very real domestic problems that lay at the root of public frustration and despair.

Asad then reached the bargaining stage, where one attempts to do anything possible to postpone one’s fate. There is recognition of problems and attempts to address them, apparent in Asad’s speech to his new cabinet on April 16, when he announced the lifting of the almost 50-year state of emergency law, among other proposed reforms. But the protests and associated violence continued. The most dangerous phase could be if Asad withdraws into seclusion, trying to come to grips with the reality of the situation. This is dangerous because Bashar might cede his leadership role to others, and filling the void could be hardliners who advocate an even harsher crackdown. This may be what is happening now. One hopes that Asad passes through this stage very quickly and reasserts himself toward the final one, that of acceptance. (Syria Comment)

Syrian regime sends tanks to Deraa in further toughening of crackdown

Dozens of tanks have been reported to be en route to Deraa, the Syrian city at the centre of protests against President Bashar al-Assad, as a series of EU nations protested at the increasingly bloody government crackdown that is now believed to have killed more than 450 people.

Deraa remained largely cut off to outside communications but sources reported gunfire again on Wednesday. Amnesty International quoted eyewitnesses who said army snipers were shooting at injured people on the streets and those who tried to reach them.

Witnesses reported seeing a convoy of at least 30 army tanks leave an area near the Golan Heights front line with Israel and head south, apparently towards Deraa, where the protests against Assad’s authoritarian regime began six weeks ago. (The Guardian)

Quelling the revolt: will the opposition take up arms?

Joshua Landis writes: Bashar al-Assad is determined to quell the Syrian revolt, which is why he has sent in the military with tanks and is now arresting the network of opposition activists and leaders that his intelligence agencies have been able to track.

There is an element of “shock and awe” to the operation. Tanks are clearly not useful for suppressing an urban rebellion, but they demonstrate the superior firepower of the state and the determination of the president. It is a classic military strategy – go hard and quick. Take out the opposition before t has a chance to harden and develop a durable command a reliable cell structure. This is precisely what the US military tried to do in Iraq. It is what it failed to do in Libya, when it allowed Qaddafi to regroup and regain control of Tripoli and Western Libya after his initial confusion and weakness.

I do not believe that the regime will be able to shut down the opposition. Unlike the Iranian opposition, which was successfully put down, the Syrian opposition is more revolutionary, even if, perhaps, not as numerous in the capital. The Green movement did not call for the overthrow of the regime and an end to the Islamic republic, but only reform. The Syrian opposition is revolutionary. Although it began by calling for reform, it quickly escalated to demand an end to the regime. It is convinced that reform of the Baathist regime is impossible and Syria must start over. It wants an end to the Baath Party, an end to Assad dynasty, an end to domination of the presidency and security forces by the Alawite religious community, and an end to the domination of the economy by the financial elite which has used nepotism, insider trading, and corruption to monopolize the ramparts of trade and industry. In short, the opposition abhors most aspects of the present regime and is working to uproot it. It is more determined and revolutionary than was the Iranian Green movement that Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei successfully suppressed. (Syria Comment)

European leaders threaten Syria with sanctions

Moved by escalating violence in Syria, European leaders warned Tuesday that they will impose new sanctions on Damascus unless President Bashar al-Assad halts his bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The warnings reflected a growing sense of outrage in European capitals since Assad sent tanks and armored personnel carriers into the rebellious southern city of Daraa on Monday, firing at youths in the street and inflicting a death toll estimated by human rights activists at two dozen. (Washington Post)

More than 230 ruling Baath members resign in Syria

Another 203 members of Syria’s ruling Baath party announced their resignation Wednesday in protest of the deadly crackdown on protesters, raising the number to 233, according to lists seen by AFP.

The latest group to step down were members from the Houran region, which covers the flashpoint town of Daraa in the south of the country. Earlier 30 members resigned from the restive city of Banias in northwest Syria. (AFP)

* * *

NATO says it is stepping up attacks on Libya targets

NATO plans to step up attacks on the palaces, headquarters and communications centers that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi uses to maintain his grip on power in Libya, according to Obama administration and allied officials.

White House officials said President Obama had been briefed on the more energetic bombing campaign, which included a strike early on Monday on Colonel Qaddafi’s residential compound in the heart of Tripoli, the capital.

United States officials said the effort was not intended to kill the Libyan leader, but to take the war to his doorstep, raising the price of his efforts to continue to hold on to power. “We want to make sure he knows there is a war going on, and it’s not just in Misurata,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity in discussing military planning.

The NATO campaign, some officials said, arose in part from an analysis of Colonel Qaddafi’s reaction to the bombing of Tripoli that was ordered by President Ronald Reagan a quarter-century ago. Alliance officials concluded that the best hope of dislodging the Libyan leader and forcing him to flee was to cut off his ability to command his most loyal troops.

“We don’t want to kill him or make a martyr out of him in the Arab world,” said a senior NATO diplomat familiar with the evolving strategy. “But if he sees the bombing happening all around him, we think it could change his calculus.” (New York Times)

All the tribes of Libya are but one

A statement in French by 61 Libyan tribal leaders, delivered to Bernard-Henri Levy. Automated translation by Google Translate.

We, heads or representatives of the tribes of Libya, met today in Benghazi, around Daihoum Doctor, member of the National Transition Council. Faced with threats to the unity of our country, facing the maneuvers and propaganda of the dictator and his family, we solemnly declare this.

Nothing can divide us.

We share the same ideal of a Libya free, democratic and united.

Every Libyan has certainly had its origins in a particular tribe. But he has complete freedom to create family ties, friendship, neighborhood or fellowship with any member of any other tribe.

We train, we, the Libyans, a single tribe, the tribe of Libyans free, fighting against oppression and the evil spirit of division.

It is the dictator, trying to play the Libyan tribes against each other, dividing the country and rule. There is truth in this myth, it has fed an ancestral opposition today to a rift between tribes of Fezzan, of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.

Libya tomorrow, once the dictator gone, will be a united Libya, including the capital Tripoli and will be where we are finally free to form a civil society according to our wishes.

We take this message, told a French philosopher, to thank France and through France, Europe: it is they who have prevented the bloodshed that we had promised Gaddafi, it is thanks to them and with them that we build Libya free, and one tomorrow.

Rare view from Libya’s western mountains shows rebel gains against Qaddafi

Evidence of the ferocity of the fighting in Libya’s western mountains was clear Monday at the Nalut central hospital. One young rebel lay dead under a shroud; nobody yet knew his name. Some were too badly injured to talk. One said a battle that day – in which loyalist troops were forced to retreat six miles with heavy losses – was a “big victory.”

“It is the heart that is fighting,” said the fighter as he lay in a hospital bed. He refused to be pictured wearing an oxygen mask “because they will say Qaddafi is winning.”

Few journalists have so far crossed into these western mountains, but the picture now emerging is that of a heavily outgunned militia – perhaps better organized than the rag-tag rebels in the east – that has leveraged local knowledge, international support, and deep-seated anger at Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi into unlikely victories. (Christian Science Monitor)

Gadhafi’s grip on western Libya may be slipping

Moammar Gadhafi has suffered military setbacks in recent days in western Libya, a sign that his grip may be slipping in the very region he needs to cling to power.

His loyalists were driven out of the center of the city of Misrata, a key rebel stronghold in Gadhafi-controlled territory. A NATO airstrike turned parts of his Tripoli headquarters into smoldering rubble. And rebel fighters seized a border crossing, breaking open a supply line to besieged rebel towns in a remote western mountain area.

Front lines have shifted repeatedly in two months of fighting, and the poorly trained, ill-equipped rebels have given no evidence that they could defeat Gadhafi on the battlefield. The Libyan leader has deep pockets, including several billion dollars in gold reserves, that could keep him afloat for months. And his forces continue to bombard Misrata from afar, unleashing a fierce barrage Tuesday on the port – the city’s only lifeline to the world. (AP)

NATO initiatives not seen decisive in Libya war

The Western bombing campaign in Libya is now in its sixth week but despite a series of eye-catching NATO initiatives there is little sign of a decisive military shift that will bring a quick end to the war.

And there are few signs either of significant divisions within Muammar Gaddafi’s government that would hasten a political solution to the conflict.

NATO, which took over the air campaign from a coalition led by France, Britain and the United States a month ago, can point to some successes in protecting civilian populations in eastern Libya from attack including in Benghazi and Ajdabiyah.

But the siege of Misrata continues and the commander of the NATO operation, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, conceded on Tuesday that the alliance had yet to remove the threat posed to civilians by Gaddafi’s forces. (Reuters)

From a Qaddafi daughter, a glimpse inside the bunker

Aisha el-Qaddafi, the daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, likes to tell her three young children bedtime stories about the afterlife. Now, she says, they are especially appropriate.

“To make them ready,” she said, “because in a time of war you never know when a rocket or a bomb might hit you, and that will be the end.”

In a rare interview at her charitable foundation here, Ms. Qaddafi, 36, a Libyan-trained lawyer who once worked on Saddam Hussein’s legal defense team, offered a glimpse into the fatalistic mind-set of the increasingly isolated family at the core of the battle for Libya, the bloodiest arena in the democratic uprising that is sweeping the region.

She dismissed the rebels as “terrorists” but suggested that some former Qaddafi officials who are now in the opposition’s governing council still “keep in touch with us.” She pleaded for dialogue and talked about democratic reforms. But she dismissed the rebels as unfit for such talks because of their use of violence, hurled personal barbs at President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and, at one point, appeared to disparage the basic idea of electoral democracy. (New York Times)

* * *

Secret case against detainee crumbles

The secret document described Prisoner 269, Mohammed el-Gharani, as the very incarnation of a terrorist threat: “an al Qaeda suicide operative” with links to a London cell and ties to senior plotters of international havoc.

But there was more to the story, as there so often is at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba. Eight months after that newly disclosed assessment of Mr. Gharani was written by military intelligence officials, a federal judge examined the secret evidence. Saying that it was “plagued with internal inconsistencies” and largely based on the word of two other Guantánamo detainees whose reliability was in question, he ruled in January 2009 that Mr. Gharani should be released. The Obama administration sent him to Chad about five months later.

The secret assessment of Mr. Gharani, like many of the detainee dossiers made available to The New York Times and other news organizations, reflected few doubts about the peril he might have posed. He was rated “high risk,” and military officials recommended that he not be freed. But now, a comparison of the assessment’s conclusions with other information provides a case study in the ambiguities that surround many of the men who have passed through the prison at Guantánamo Bay. (New York Times)

These Guantánamo files undo the al-Qaida myth machine

Jason Burke writes: Hidden deep in the leaked Guantánamo files is a small but important trove of information, too historical and too technical to have commanded much space in newspapers keener on hyperventilating about “nuclear al-Qaida hellstorms” this week. Each of the 700-plus files includes a short biography of its subject. These cover his “prior history” and “recruitment and travel” to wherever he became fully engaged with violent extremism and, with brutal if unintended efficiency, demolish three of the most persistent myths about al-Qaida.

The first is that the organisation is composed of men the CIA trained to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan who then turned on their mentors. In fact among the bona fide al-Qaida operatives detained in Guatánamo Bay there are very few who are actually veterans of the fighting in the 1980s, and none of these were involved with groups that received any substantial technical or financial assistance from the US, even indirectly via Pakistan.

The second is that an “international brigade” of Islamist extremists was responsible for the Soviet defeat. The records make it clear that their combat contribution was negligible.

The third myth is that most of those currently waging “jihad” against the Crusader-Zionist alliance or the “hypocrite, apostate regimes” of the Muslim world were actively recruited by al-Qaida and brought, brainwashed, to Afghanistan to fight or be trained. The descriptions of almost all those in Guantánamo genuinely associated with al-Qaida shows that in fact they spent much time and money overcoming many difficulties to find a way to reach al-Qaida. They were not dumb or vulnerable youths “groomed” to be suicide bombers; they were highly motivated, often educated and intelligent, men. (The Guardian)

Sinai explosion cuts Israel gas supply

An explosion early Wednesday on a gas pipeline in the northern Sinai Peninsula cut supplies of Egyptian natural gas to Israel for the second time this year, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials, in what many here suspected was an act of sabotage by local Bedouin or possibly Palestinians.

The blast came as the authorities in Cairo began to investigate public suspicions of corruption and mismanagement by the former Mubarak government in its gas export deal with Israel. It also prompted renewed calls in Israel for the country to reduce its dependency on outside sources and speed up development of its own newly found gas fields.

“Regional instability is likely to continue in the near term, and we must attain energy independence,” Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister of Israel, said in a statement.

Details of who carried out the attack remained unclear. Egyptian security officials said a package containing TNT caused the blast. There were no immediate reports of casualties and it was not known how long repairs would take. (New York Times)

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News roundup — April 26

The epic Arab battle reaches Syria

Rami G. Khouri writes: Syria is now the critical country to watch in the Arab world, after the homegrown regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the imminent changes in Yemen and Libya.

The Syrian regime headed by President Bashar Assad is now seriously challenged by a combination of strong forces within and outside the country. His current policy of using force to quell demonstrators and making minimal reform promises has lost him credibility with many of his own citizens, largely due to his inability to respond to his citizens’ reasonable demands for democratic governance. His downfall is not imminent, but is now a real possibility.
The next few weeks will be decisive for Assad, because in the other Arab revolts the third-to-sixth weeks of street protests were the critical moment that determined whether the regime would collapse or persist. Syria is now in its fourth week. Having lost ground to street demonstrators recently, the Assad-Baathist-dominated secular Arab nationalist state’s response in the weeks ahead will likely determine whether it will collapse in ruins or regroup and live on for more years.

Assad should recognize many troubling signs that add up to a threatening trend. The number and size of demonstrations have grown steadily since late March, making this a nationwide revolt. Protesters’ demands have hardened, as initial calls for political reform and anti-corruption measures now make way for open calls for the overthrow of the regime and the trial of the ruling elite. Some portraits and statues of the current and former president are being destroyed, and government buildings attacked. More protesters openly call for the security services to be curbed – an unprecedented and important sign of the widespread popular loss of fear of security agencies that always bodes ill for such centralized systems of power.

Syria intensifies crackdown on protests

Syrian security forces have arrested at least 500 pro-democracy activists, a rights group said, as the government continues a violent crackdown on anti-government protests across the country.

The arrests followed the deployment of Syrian troops backed by tanks and heavy armour on the streets of two southern towns, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah said on Tuesday.

The group said it had received reports that at least 20 people were killed in the city of Deraa in the aftermath of the raid by troops loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Monday. But communications have been cut in the city, making it difficult to confirm the information. (Al Jazeera)

European leaders urge Syria to end violence

European governments urged Syria on Tuesday to end violence against demonstrators after President Bashar al-Assad sent tanks to crush opposition in the city of Deraa where an uprising against his rule first erupted.

“We send a strong call to Damascus authorities to stop the violent repression of what are peaceful demonstrations,” Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Rome.

International criticism of Assad’s crackdown, now in its sixth week, was initially muted but escalated after the death of 100 protesters on Friday and Assad’s decision to storm Deraa, which echoed his father’s 1982 suppression of Islamists in Hama. (Reuters)

NATO says it is stepping up attacks on Libya targets

NATO plans to step up attacks on the palaces, headquarters and communications centers that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi uses to maintain his grip on power in Libya, according to Obama administration and allied officials.

White House officials said President Obama had been briefed on the more energetic bombing campaign, which included a strike early on Monday on Colonel Qaddafi’s residential compound in the heart of Tripoli, the capital.

United States officials said the effort was not intended to kill the Libyan leader, but to bring the war to his doorstep, raising the price of his efforts to continue to hold on to power. “We want to make sure he knows there is a war going on, and it’s not just in Misurata,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity in discussing military planning.

The NATO campaign, some officials said, arose in part from an analysis of Colonel Qaddafi’s reaction to the bombing of Tripoli that was ordered by President Ronald Reagan a quarter-century ago. Alliance officials concluded that the best hope of dislodging the Libyan leader and forcing him to flee was to cut off his ability to command his most loyal troops. (New York Times)

Libyan mountain refugees tell of fearsome assault

Refugees fleeing Libya’s Western Mountains told of heavy bombardment by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces as they try to dislodge rebels in remote Berber towns.

The capture of the Dehiba-Wazin crossing on the Tunisian border by rebels last week has let refugees flee in cars or on foot along rocky paths, swelling the numbers of Libyans sheltering in southern Tunisia to an estimated 30,000 people.

While the world’s attention has been on the bloody siege of the western rebel stronghold of Misrata and battles further east, fighting is intensifying in the region known as the Western Mountains.

“Our town is under constant bombardment by Gaddafi’s troops. They are using all means. Everyone is fleeing,” said one refugee, Imad, bringing his family from Kalaa in the heart of the mountains. (Reuters)

Egypt ex-minister put on trial for shootings

Habib al-Adly, Egypt’s ex-interior minister, has gone on trial in Cairo for the second time.

He is accused of having ordered the shooting of demonstrators during protests that toppled the former regime.

Adly has been charged along with six former aides, the state news agency reported on Tuesday. His case has been adjourned until late May.

He is also being held responsible for insecurity that prevailed after police disappeared from the streets of Cairo in the early days of the protests.

According to an official toll, 846 people were killed and several thousand wounded during 18 days of massive nationwide street protests that forced president Hosni Mubarak to quit on February 11. (Al Jazeera)

Yemen’s opposition ‘agrees to Gulf plan’

Yemen’s opposition has agreed to take part in a transitional government under a Gulf-negotiated peace plan for embattled leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step aside in a month in exchange for immunity for him and his family.

A spokesman for an opposition coalition said on Monday that his group had received assurances in order to accept the deal.

“We have given our final accord to the [Gulf] initiative after having received assurances from our brothers and American and European friends on our objections to certain clauses in the plan,” Mohammed Qahtan said.

He added that the Common Front, a Yemeni parliamentary opposition coalition, had notified Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) secretary-general Abdullatif al-Zayani of the decision.

But many pro-democracy protesters, who are not members of the coalition that agreed to the peace talks, appear to be unconvinced by the Gulf-proposed deal and have called for fresh demonstrations, as security forces continued their crackdown. (Al Jazeera)

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