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!

Another week begins.

What now?

Quite a weekend for me.  Yesterday my page had some 400 hits in a 24-hour period, a pretty dramatic record, considering I was averaging about a hundred hits a day previous to that (though I’ve only been doing this seriously for less than a month).

I’m pretty happy with my coverage of the situation with Libya, given that much of what I was reporting on the 19th is finally making it into the mainstream news.  This raises a point (or two) I’d like to clarify for the sake of my reading audience - I am not a journalist.  In this current situation that is something of an advantage.  The situation on the ground is so chaotic that by the time a single event can be confirmed and verified, the larger situation has already changed dramatically.  In Libya, the news that was three hours old might as well have been news that was a day old, and news that was a day old was still being vetted for accuracy by the international news agencies.

For me to rely on insider commentary, twitter feeds, uploaded YouTube videos, and hastily posted messages and audio files on poorly put together webpages is rather dangerous.

Hyperbole, confusion, mistranslation, panic, misinformation, wishful thinking, personal bias, and deliberate propaganda are all factors that must be taken into consideration when relaying information from the sources.  I am, essentially, flying by the seat of my pants and hoping that my own knowledge and critical thinking capabilities are sufficient to the task at hand.  Only time will tell how right or wrong I’ve been in my assessments (although frankly, I think I’ve been doing pretty well all things considered).

Fortunately, no one’s making policy decisions based on my read on the Middle East (I hope).

Frankly, I don’t think anybody’s making any policy decisions at all at the moment.  Right now, everyone’s in tactical mode rather than strategic mode, and that’s not likely to change until the situation becomes a wee bit less volatile.

Anyway, thanks for reading. By the way, while on the topic, I know that many of you are educated and intelligent people - if you read  something here that strikes you as being  questionable, or flat out wrong, please, please, please feel free to address i.  I’d rather be publicly corrected than publicly wrong.

Now, on to the material at hand:

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Libya - I really think this is the end of the line for the Libyan regime.  As I mentioned yesterday, al-arrabiyya reported that Qaddafi had left the country for South America (Brazil or Venezuela). Unfortunately, no one else is supporting it, so I can't vouch for its accuracy at this point.

One of Qaddafi's sons, Seif al-Islam, gave an unintentionally hilarious off-the-cuff speech last night (I hope it was off-the-cuff, if those were his prepared remarks then that boy needs help). Several translations can be found, and I highly recommend that you read it in full, it’s full of crazy little gems like,

We all now have arms. At this time drunks are driving tanks in central Benghazi. So we all now have weapons. The powers who want to destroy Libya have weapons. There will be a war & no future. All the firms will leave, we have 500 housing units being built, they won't be completed. Remember my words. 200 billion dollars of projects are now underway, they won't be finished.

or this one:

The army said that some protesters were drunk, others were on hallucinogens or drugs. The army has to defend its weapons. And the people were angry. So there were deaths, but in the end Libyans were killed.

There are thee parts behind this

1- Political Activists whom we agree with,
2- What happened in Bayda are Islamic elements. Bayda is my town, my mother is from there. People called me. They stole weapons and killed soldiers. They want to establish an Islamic Emirate in Bayda. Some people took drugs & were used by these protesters.
3. The third part are these children who took the drugs and were used. These are facts like it or not.

Ayyad elBaghdadi did a real-time translation of the speech on the fly via twitter and at the end of it said, “I feel stupider just for having written it down”.

The level of denial is a full magnitude higher than Mubarak’s was during his final speech, but as funny as the whole thing may be for us abroad, the situation on the ground for Libyans is incredibly grim. As I said before, it is impossible to overstate the bravery of the Libyan people at this point. After the past three days of conflict, everyone in the streets knows that death is a strong likelihood.


Although the general populace, large numbers of the tribally affiliated population, and many members of both the army and the police have joined with the uprising, the Libyan government has three pillars of support:
The Elite military, led by one of Qaddafi’s sons, and heavily staffed with regimes loyalists, these people are not merely fighting at the whim of the leadership, they are likely fighting for their own lives, and as such will not be pulling punches when it comes to combat (this is no longer crowd control, this Is all-out combat)

The Libyan Air Force, which draws heavily from the Qadhadfa (Qaddafi’s own tribe) for its pilots and officers. Family loyalty is essential here as are old tribal rivalries. Unsurprisingly, nepotistic favoritism has been very good to Qaddafi’s tribe, but very problematic for inter-tribal relations. (Short article on this here)    Additionally, it’s a lot easier to kill people from a fighter plane than it is with a machine gun. Bombing of major urban areas has already been reported, and I just don’t know how long it will take to get the situation under control.  If the ground crews to stop supporting sorties, then it could end sooner than later, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what the likelihood of something like that is.

The mercenary forces who have been confirmed in Benghazi and several other places are the third pillar of regime support, and the most unpredictable.  They are reportedly from places like Chad, Bangladesh and (?  Niger), and they don’t stand a chance of survival if captured.  Many of the worst atrocities witnessed in Benghazi and other eastern cities have been attributed to the mercenaries, and they have shown their contempt for the general populace through their ruthless violence.  At this point they probably just want to escape with their lives, and there’s a good chance that many of them won’t.  Well armed, terrified man with few options are capable of truly horrific things.

That being said, I don’t think the government’s resistance is sustainable.  The only question is how much damage will they unleash on the populace before they are taken down? (Check out Dirk Vanderwall’s analysis here) Plus his book is right there on the sidebar ---->

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Yemen - I’m sorry to say I haven’t had a lot of time to follow Yemen, given the situation in Libya, but a few things should be mentioned: The president has refused to step down.  The violence has been steadily escalating, though not nearly to the same degree as Libya. Good ongoing analysis here.

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Iran - Hard to say.  The green movement Is no longer concerned with the president, at this point they’ve set their sights on being supreme leader himself, Kahmeini.  This implies a restructuring of the entire Iranian political system, rather than just political reform, and the chances for success are anyone’s guess at this point.

The protests have continued steadily, with building intensity, but nothing on the scale that we witnessed back in 2009.  Thousands in the streets at times, but not hundreds of thousands.

An interesting rumor has been circulating, saying that Hezbollah members have been supporting the Iranian regime during crackdowns on protesters.  Similar rumors were circulating in 2009, but were never confirmed.  It should be mentioned here that such a thing is possible but, it is also quite possible that the rumor is a piece of targeted propaganda intended to drive a wedge between the green movement protesters and the regime’s support for militant Shiite activity abroad.

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This is particularly interesting because in Bahrain the government is accusing Hezbollah of giving support to the protesters in the Pearl roundabout (now being called martyr's roundabout). While on that topic, the situation in Bahrain doesn’t seem to be moving towards resolution yet.  The protesters continue to occupy the roundabout, and the government continues to make unsuccessful overtures towards resolution along with halfhearted moves towards another round of crackdowns.  The acts of violence of the past few days seem to have quieted down, but there are still reports of a strong Saudi presence on the ground.

Nicholas Kristoff has a good piece up in the NYT today

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Saudi Arabia has been awfully quiet lately.  As Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy when he is busy making a mistake.  Libya and Egypt and Iran have all been longtime competitors and/or opponents of the Saudi regime, and the Saudi royal family is doubtless watching these events extremely closely as they unfold.  Although their position is not nearly as precarious as that of the various North African regimes, the events in Bahrain must be incredibly worrying to them.  Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have very close relationships, and although Saudi Arabia does not share Bahrain’s large disenfranchised Shiite population, they do, nonetheless, have a significant concentration of Shiites in their Eastern oil producing territories.  Actions by the Bahraini government against its Shi’a population, particularly with the support of the Saudi military, could create serious tensions within Saudi Arabia’s small but defiant Shiite population.

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One last point (I may post another update later today) Morocco was the scene of several major protests yesterday - some good recap and analysis can be found here.  The vast majority of these protests were peaceful, with the exception of one in Tangier that degenerated into rioting and looting.  I suspect that if the Moroccan government is able to mitigate the response in show clear signs of attentiveness and responsiveness to the needs of their citizens, they’ll be okay.  If, however, the violence expands and the government is overly heavy-handed in its response, then I’ll have to move Morocco from the “safe” column and into the “regimes in play” column.

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Many more links and much more extensive information on the greater middle east can be found in today's post at the Arabist: http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/2/21/sehams-regional-links-2011-02-21.html

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.