A whole mess of updates from all over!

Friday is always a big day in the Middle East.  Just about every single major protest or rally that has taken place from Morocco to Iran has reached its peak after Friday evening prayers.  Yesterday was no exception, and today seems like a good day to sort out some of the events from the past few days and try and make sense of where things are in the Middle East.

The first point to mention is my recent entry into the world of Twitter. I’ve been following multiple Twitter feeds for quite some time (beginning back in 2009 with the Iranian post-election protests), but I’ve been leery of going any deeper into that chaotic yammering mass.  My time at the nonprofit technology conference last week however convinced me that it was no longer something I could reasonably avoid.

My Twitter name is ixakRubicon, but if you’re not on Twitter you can also see my “tweets” on the right column feed of this blog. I’ll be mostly using the feed to share links and “re tweet” notable tweets from other people that I’m following.  I promise, I won’t be using it to talk about my new haircut (which is spiffy), what I ate for breakfast (egg sandwich), or what the guy next to me on the train yesterday smelled like (urine).

If you are among the twitterati, please follow me. It gives my life purpose and meaning.

Now on to the things that matter:

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Libya - rebels are making progress once more.  Pro-Qadhafi forces have retreated from the besieged cities of Misrata and Ajdabiya.  There have also been reports of tanks and armored trucks being abandoned by the pro-Qadhafi forces because of fuel and ammunition shortages (remember what I said the other day about supply chains?).

White House comments on America's involvement in the NFZ+ can be found here if you missed them, with a more extensive speech coming on Monday. Steve Negus has some relevant comments over at thearabist.net - "Consensus vs Clarity"

The US role in the operation has been downgraded, with NATO taking the leadership role and the majority of the sorties being flown by French and British planes as well as several miscellaneous European countries and Canada.  Fighter planes from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are also participating, though it should be pointed out that Qatar is one of the only countries in the ME that hasn’t had major protests (it is also the home of Al Jazeera), and the UAE may have committed planes in order to buy themselves some slack for their participation in the Bahrain crackdown. Nonethless, the participation in this campaign by Arab governments should not be taken lightly.

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The United Arab Emirates have also made another interesting move with some ambiguous geopolitical ramifications. They have joined the African Union as officially recognized observers.  This is notable for a few reasons, most immediately the contrast between their active participation in airstrikes on Libya and the denunciation of those attacks by the African Union. Their respective diferences over Libya, this certainly indicates a heightened degree of interest in Africa by the UAE, presumably for commercial reasons, but potentially for other reasons as well.

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In Yemen,  talks of a potential  power transfer are under way, possibly over the next few days.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/26/us-yemen-idUSTRE72M92520110326

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/03/26/yemen.president.interview/index.html

Frankly, this may be little more than a stalling tactic on the part of the current president - power would most likely be transferred into the hands of one of his supporters.  Despite the fact that nothing really seems to be happening beyond talking, it’s still too early to write off the power transfer idea. The fact that the people of Yemen have been able to push Saleh this far means that they can probably push further.

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On the topic of elections, Egypt’s Wafd party is showing its true colors, stating that they are opposed to any international election monitoring in the fall (Google translate version here). Reaction to the statement has yet to be seen on a wide scale, but initial reactions have been (predictably) outrage and anger by the youth who participated on the protest movement.

Another interesting event took place in Egypt as well.  Two of the men responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat were released from jail a few days ago. This is part of a very complex power play by the military that I’m still trying to decode. I’ll try to keep you apprised of the situation as clarity comes.

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Some interesting power struggles going on in Gaza as well, as Hamas tries to rein in the violent actions of Islamic Jihad.

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In Jordan there have been some protests calling for a transition to a constitutional monarchy, but it remains to be seen whether or not they will gain traction. There have also been robust counter-protests - The King of Jordan still enjoys strong support from certain sections of the country, and some angry rhetoric has been flying back and forth over the issue. A heartfelt and melancholy account of a March24 protest can be found here: "The Quick Death Of Shabab March 24 And What It Means For Jordan" I HIGHLY reccommend it. The author really cuts to the heart of the issue in Jordan, and why reform of the type that we are seeing elsewhere may be a long time coming in Jordan.

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The situation in Syria keeps getting more and more serious (or should I say Syrias?). Protesters burnt down a Baath party headquarters today and the protests continue to escalate in response to the governments violent attempts to suppress them.

An interesting consequence of the current situation in Syria is that Hezbollah has positioned itself very squarely on the side of Assad, a strategic decision that will probably come back to bite them in the ass later on.  The Alawite sect of Islam that Assad and his core supporters belong to is viewed with some suspicion by many of the more conventional Sunni Arabs of Syria.  The government’s close ties to the Shiites of Hezbollah and to the Iranian government have give the unhappy parts of the population ammunition for accusations of borderline heresy.

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On the topic of Iran, an additional point to mention – the US government is considering dropping Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the list of international terrorist organizations, a move that could have a serious negative impact on the homegrown Iranian green movement.  Excellent article describing the situation over at salon.com http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/26/iran_green_movement/index.html

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There is also some positive State Department news - they have developed a nifty piece of software called the “Panic Protester Button”, a phone app that can be activated if a protester is about to be arrested. If the “panic” button is pressed the phone immediately erases all saved contact information from the phone and sends an emergency alert to other activists. This useful little piece of software shows an encouraging degree of innovation and adaptability on the part of our own State Department, (though an independently developed third-party version probably has a better chance of widespread adoption in places where the US government is viewed with almost as much suspicion as the local government.

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One last thing to mention: Sudan – Protests against Omar al-Bashir are still trying to take off. I’ll keep you posted on those.

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Well, that’s all for now, thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Blogger fatigue (and more on Bahrain and Libya)

Michael Dunn, Editor in chief of the Middle East Journal, had a blog up yesterday that hits on a serious issue that resonated with me – Middle East blogger fatigue. I’ve only been doing this for the past three weeks, and the scale of what’s going on is overwhelming and shows no signs of slowing down.

As the old saying goes – If all of us are special than none of us are special – if things are blowing up (metaphorically) all over, then how do you know what to focus on? The news media is certainly getting crushed by the breadth of the events at hand. How many Arabic speakers does CNN have on hand? Or the BBC? The only news agencies that are really in a position to cover what’s going on in the Arabic-speaking world are the Arabic news agencies like Al-Arrabiya and al-Jazeera (neither of which are available on cable in much of the US).

Even these news agencies are limited in their coverage; they can only put so many people on the ground at any given time. In the case of al-Jazeera (as we saw in Egypt) their presence is unwelcome, risky, or blocked outright in some of the places where the real action is. This leads to a sort of news triage on the part of the news agencies – put the reporters in the places where the big spectacular things are at (that you can get to). Locations where the protests are small or unlikely to bear short-term fruit (i.e. Jordan, or Syria) and places where the reporters would be at serious risk (Libya and Yemen) just aren’t going to get the attention they deserve.

The length of time involved is another serious issue. None of this will be resolved anytime soon. We will be seeing the aftershocks from the Tunisia and Egypt uprisings for the rest of our lives. When the Iranian post-election protests hit their third week their coverage in the US news was starting to weaken and taper off. When the situation was at an ebb all it took was the death of an American pop icon to drag the attention of a news-fatigued public away from the events on the other side of the planet. Fortunately for Egypt, they were able to reach the point of critical mass before the world lost interest. But now, what? 20011 is going to be a year of amazing political events, will we be able to keep track of it all? It’s only February. Will we still be able to care ten months from now in December when, say, Belarus is the twenty-second country to collapse under the pressure of a populace that has grown weary of indignity?

Then there’s the issue of specialization – the sheer diversity of Middle East/North African culture is staggering. (This is one of the most frustrating aspects about listening to people who don’t know what they’re talking about as they paint the region’s inhabitants with broad brushes, “the Arabs are like this..”) Most serious Mid-east scholars, historians, political scientists, and Foreign Service specialists have a relatively good grasp of the broad facts of the region with some very specific areas of expertise. To expect a Farsi speaking Iran-focused analyst to weigh in on Tunisia is folly. To look to an Israeli/Palestine expert for insight into Bahrain is going to limit the depth of possible analysis.

There aren’t a lot of Tunisia or Bahrain experts weighing in on the events in Tunisia or Bahrain because there aren’t a lot of American experts on Tunisia or Bahrain.

You may ask, “What about you? What makes you think that you have the wherewithal to presume to blog about the Middle East? ”

Well, I’m glad you asked. I’m not really a specialist I don’t work in the Middle East right now, and my current day job doesn’t really have much to do with Middle East issues. I’m more of a new-media/social-media analyst than a Middle East expert. Despite that, I’ve got a very strong foundation in modern Middle East history, politics, and culture, as well as a few years of Arabic training, a rough handle on Hebrew, and a smattering of Farsi. This makes it easy for me to consume, filter, and assess a tremendous amount of information as it pours out of the intertubes in both traditional and new-media forms. I’m not so much a generalist as I am a synthesist – I follow everything and look for common threads and nodes. There are a few areas that I know a bit more about, but right now my main concern is to walk you (and myself) through the media fatigue.

Having said that, just two quick updates today

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Bahrain – the situation in Bahrain is getting much more serious. Nicholas Kristof is there now, probably angling for another Pulitzer. Several more protesters were killed during a middle-of-the-night military raid, and the reports from the hospitals are horrifying.

There are two larger issues that are in play that I’d like to bring your attention to here:

1. As I mentioned earlier, Bahrain is 60-70% Shi’a, but ruled by a Sunni royal family. Although the country is relatively prosperous, many of the Shi’a populace feels that their opportunities and political representation are abridged and limited by structural favoritism on the part of the Sunni leadership. This is compounded by an ongoing policy that makes it very easy for Sunnis from other Arabic-speaking countries to get jobs and citizenship in Bahrain (this is an attempt by the Sunnis to counterbalance their relative demographic weakness). As a result, many of the police responding to the protests are not native Bahraini, but rather immigrants from elsewhere in the Arab world with little respect for the Shi’a protesters.

2. The Bahraini police have (as of yesterday) been supplemented by equipment and soldiers from Saudi Arabia. This is very bad. Not only are Saudis notoriously anti-Shi’a, it shows a dramatic position of weakness on the part of the Bahraini leadership. Additionally, this could potentially create a flashpoint that inflames Sunni/Shi’a hostilities elsewhere in the gulf.

Oh, yea, also the US navy 5th fleet is stationed at Bahrain. This isn’t looking good

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Libya – Who knows. 14 dead? Maybe… probably more. Information has become even harder to get since yesterday. If you missed yesterday’s post you should go back and check it out.

I agree with Issandr el Amrani’s assessment – the protests in Libya are the most important protests now taking place in North Africa. Read his analysis, he says it better than I can.

Iran - Green Movement remobilization on Feb. 14.

“You should not come to visit - the weather here is very bad.”

These were the words of a friend’s father when she called him at their family home in Tehran last week. When pressed for details, he would not elaborate, but simply reiterated his message. “It’s very bad. The weather is very bad.”

From all reports, the weather has been clear and chilly in Tehran - about the same as Baltimore. The “weather”, on the other hand, has been terrible.

The Iranian government has taken advantage of the world’s focus on Egypt by conducting a continual spate of jailings and executions over the past two weeks. They’ve been confiscating cell phones from reformist leaders, instituting internet controls, putting prominent opposition individuals under house arrest, and making it clear that the Feb 14 protests will be greeted with swift harsh measures.

In response some internet filter workarounds are up already, posters are going up in major cities, and many prominent individuals have already spopken out in support of the protesters, (including some who didn’t take sides in 2009).

The Iranian government doesn’t trust the military to enforce the protest bans with force, so they are going to rely much more on the police, first, then the Basij (militia thugs) and the revolutionary guard if the police can’t handle it.

This will be very different than what we saw in Egypt, and probably very different than what happened in 2009 in Iran. The protesters have seen that success against a deeply entrenched regime is possible. They have had the past year and a half to reflect on their successes and failures and devise new tactics. They also know the stakes are much higher.

The government knows this as well - they cannot afford to slowly stifle the protests until the world becomes distracted, they will have to act quickly to make sure that the green movement doesn’t build up any momentum - their own legitimacy is on the line. Like the protesters, however they too have had a year and a half to develop new strategies.

It’s already tomorrow in Iran. My hopes are prayers are with the youth of Persia.

Follow the events as they unfold at the PBS Tehran Bureau liveblog.

Comments on Egypt and Algeria

No post yesterday - I needed to let it all sink in.

Three days ago I was asking the question “what now?” because Mubarak hadn’t left. today I’m asking that question again, but for the opposite reason.

What lies ahead for Egypt?

I think the important thing to recognize is that neither theocracy nor military dictatorship have much hope of succeeding at this point. This was the essential part of getting Mubarak out of the presidential palace. As long as he was able to defy the will of the Egyptian people the Egyptian people themselves were nothing. Now they’ve been successful - they are suddenly aware of their own power and acutely aware of the fact that what they accomplished was not even the full extent of their capacity. Certainly the crowds in the streets were dramatic, but they were hardly the whole of the population. Any entity that would presume to dictate to the Egyptian people must be prepared for not only their demonstrated capacity, but also their unseen potential.

The protesters faced down water cannons, tear gas, riot police, hired thugs, state propaganda, media lockdowns, and even crazy guys on camels with big sticks. It can certainly be said that they never faced down the Egyptian army itself, but it should also be pointed out that they never had the support of that same army. The Egyptian people became aware of their own capabilities by pushing beyond the what was thought to be possible, without ever reaching its boundaries.

Is it possible that the Army, confident in its capabilities and bolstered by its strengthened position of authority, will seek to establish its own status quo? Certainly.

Is it also possible that the Muslim brotherhood, sensing an opportunity, takes advantage of their own eighty year old infrastructure and mobilizes a political constituency united by the idea that faith without works is dead, transforming Egypt into a 21st-century theocratic institution? Probable, no, possible, yes.

Is it also possible that a neo-imperialist American New World order establishes a puppet state as the gatekeeper into the oil-rich Middle East? Umm… I may… for the sake of argument, let’s just say that’s another possible outcome.

What all of these scenarios have in common is this - the Egyptian people now know for a fact that they can rid themselves of a deeply entrenched 60+ year regime by going into the streets and demanding change. Although the Egyptian military, the Muslim brotherhood, and Western imperialism can certainly take advantage of the events that have taken place in the streets of cities and towns across Egypt, they certainly cannot take credit for them. And frankly, for any of them (or any other opportunist entities) to presume to seize the reins of a country that has suddenly awakened to its own potential is delusional at best.


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So, big things are afoot.

(A foot? Why are big things afoot rather than at hand? I don’t know - don’t ask questions like that.)

Everybody says, “What’s next?”

Well. I’m glad you asked.

I am a pragmatic optimist at heart, . I think things are getting better, but I’m not stupid about it. Some time ago during a conversation over potential outcomes of the 2009 Iranian election protests, a skeptical mathematician friend of mine dismissed my perspective with a wave and a grunt. “You always think the glass is half full.”

“No, Elmar,” I replied, “it’s all a matter of whether the glass is being filled or being emptied.”

So is the glass being filled or emptied?

Think about that for a minute, in the meantime I will turn our attention to the highlight of the weekend: Algeria.

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Algeria - February 12 was the scheduled “day of rage/protest” for Algeria.

So what’s been happening in Algeria?

Protests

In fact, the protests were bigger than expected by most. Hundreds, or even thousands of people were arrested. Thousands, and possibly tens of thousands were in the streets. Algeria is not Egypt, of course. Population-wise it is much smaller, despite its geographic size.

So. Protests In Algeria. What’s the outlook?

Well, as a self-proclaimed “pragmatic optimist” I have to say it doesn’t look good.

Algeria is a fascinating and beautiful country with a long and storied history. It’s very close to the top of the list of countries that I would absolutely love to go to Right. Now.

Anyway, the Algerians have had a hell of a time struggling for independence. In the early 90s they actually were able to hold democratic elections, but the establishment was uncomfortable with the projected gains that the Algerian Islamist parties were making, and so halfway through the electoral process the whole thing was suspended and the government declared a state of emergency. This kicked off a rather brutal civil war that saw several disenfranchised Islamic groups engaged in violent terrorists attacks against the established government and vicious retaliations by the military against the Islamists with the civilian population caught in the middle and paying a horrible price.

(Sidenote - I highly recommend Star of Algiers, a great piece of fiction about an aspiring Algerian pop star in the early 1990's.)

This unpleasant and protracted civil war finally found its resolution after 9/11 when the Bush administration started to give gazillions of dollars to any government that was willing to spend the money fighting Islamic terrorists.

In light of that useful cash windfall, the Algerian government (with the full and hearty support of America’s overseas counter-terrorist intelligence network) was able to pretty effectively destroy viable elements of a very unpleasant and ruthless domestic movement (largely by doing unpleasant and ruthless things).

The GSPC (a French acronym for the “Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) decided that the Algerian alliance with America’s antiterrorist program was a clear call to ratchet up their own game up as well, and so they declared themselves to be an affiliate of Al Qaeda and renamed themselves Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib* (AQIM).

*“Maghrib” is an Arabic word meaning “Where the sun sets” - it refers to North Africa west of Egypt.

Regardless, the Algerian government has been a potent weapon of stagnation when it comes to liberty and democracy in Algeria. Although AQIM is a rather weak organization at this point, conservative Islam is much more deeply entrenched in the common culture of Algeria
than it is in Egypt. I am skeptical (to the point of dismissiveness) when it comes to the potential for an Islamic revival in Egypt, I am much more concerned with the opportunity for a fundamentalist rise to power in Algeria.

Anyway. After all of that, all I’m trying to say is that the protests in Algeria are, in some ways, much more serious than those we saw in Egypt.

“Why?” You might ask.

Well, I’m glad you asked.

The Algerian army has been hard at work battling domestic terrorism for the past two decades. The Egyptian army hasn’t had to engage in combat activity since the early 70s. Here’s the crux - the Algerian army is the fist of the Algerian government. The Egyptian army never had that role.

What we see today in the streets of Cairo is people cleaning up trash. If such a thing were to happen in Algeria, they would be cleaning up bodies.

I know it’s grim, but I suspect that the Algerians are going to have to walk through a lot more ugliness than the Egyptians had to if they want to see Boutiflaka ousted.

Situational Updates - what's going on where?

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First, a point of personal frustration – the Egypt issue certainly deserves attention, but it's sucking up almost all of the news right now. Given the limits of most foreign news agencies’ Middle East division, we certainly aren’t getting the wider picture. Al Jezeera is better than many, but with finite resources. I have little doubt that the germ of similar events is being carefully extinguished in many other countries while the world watches Egypt.

That being said, events in Syria have gotten some attention - Assad  has moved from the denial stage of the Kubler-Ross model to the bargaining stage. Two days ago the Syrian state media apparatus was claiming that the Egyptian protesters were calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador - part of the classic, “when in doubt, blame Israel” strategy that is so often the norm in the Islamic sections of the Mediterranean. Today his tune has changed and his attention has shifted to domestic affairs, claiming that Arab rulers need to do more to accommodate their people's rising political and economic aspirations. Assad's obvious intention here is to appease the Syrians before thousands of them end up in the streets. His strategy is probably a sound one - dispense visible (but limited) reforms, and do his best to distinguish himself from Mubarak. It may or may not work - I think it will for the time being (i.e. the next six to twelve months).

Yemen seems to be trying the same tactic, but they’re a day late (3-5 days, really) and a dollar short. I have far less faith in their ability to pull such a thing off, and I fear that there is ugliness and long-term instability in store for the country.

Meanwhile, back in Tunisia where this whole thing started, the two highest profile Tunisian opposition leaders returning from European exile show serious promise for a positive outcome for the country - Moncef Marzouki and Rashid Al-Ghannushi. It is, of course, still too soon to tell what the response will be. (I should probably just end every paragraph with that qualifier and be done with it.)

Events in Sudan since the partition vote have gotten…interesting (for lack of a better term). As the country seeks to resolve a procedural debate over to whether it was 98% or 95% that voted for partition, some protests are popping up in the north against President Omar al Bashir. It's a small factor right now (though it spurred some violent government reaction) but stay tuned…

So -Who aren’t we hearing about?

Libya and Morocco in particular have been awfully silent for the past few days. The King of Morocco is visiting France right now, which may or may not be  a coincidence - Morocco is hardly a police state and not really capable of an Egyptian-style media lockdown, and so the lack of protest buzz is probably not indicative of something more sinister. 

Libya, on the other hand, is locked down tighter than an off-color reference to batrachian anatomy. Ghaddafi, in a rare moment of discretion, has actually shut up, which speaks volumes about how serious his situation must be at this point. 

On that note, it’s never a good sign when Ghaddafi is exercising more tact and judiciousness than your own leaders – Israel, I’m looking at you.

Israel is doubling-down on the stupid. A conflict of opinions is to be expected - arguing politics is the national sport of Israelis, but a sense of panic has begun to seep into the editorial columns and blogs. The Israeli government has been telling their diplomats to pull for Hosni in their host countries. "We must therefore curb public criticism against President Hosni Mubarak” they were told on Friday. A comment like this reeks of either denial or idiocy (or both…it can always be both).

• They’re not doing Mubarak any favors by pulling for him.
• They’re not doing themselves any good by hitching their wagon to a dying donkey.

Oh well…if the Israeli government wants my advice I’m sure they can figure out how to get a hold of me.

On that note, one more state has formally recognized Palestinian statehood within the ’67 borders, and this time it’s not a random South American country. Cyprus, one of the most popular Israeli vacation destinations in the world, sent Abbas a letter of recognition today. Frankly, if Abbas can keep pulling these in he may survive the fallout from the al Jazeera leaks.

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Well, that's it for now, I'm sure tomorrow will bring new revelations. Stay tuned for a piece on the Muslim Brotherhood and Part Two of my piece on Self-Immolation in the next few days - maybe tomorrow, if the snow cancels my other plans.