Bahrain Part 1 - what's going on?

When the initial protests in Pearl Roundabout started I did a bit of writing on Bahrain and I’ve mentioned it several times in a few of my blogs and in my twitter feed, but I haven’t addressed it in a little while so I’d like to remedy that. Partially because I think it’s an outrage that the Bahraini government has escaped the scrutiny and criticism that it deserves for the brutal repression of its own people, but mostly because of the tragedy of the Bahraini people themselves.

In preparation for writing this blog I asked a Bahraini acquaintance which blogs or twitter feeds I should be following, his response was that there are none left.

They have all been arrested or they are silent because of fear.

The aspect of Bahraini culture that gets the most attention is the notable disparity between the Sunni/Shia ratio. Although exact numbers are ambiguous, the conventional wisdom holds that the Shia Bahrainis make up about 65-70% of the population. In and of itself this is not unusual, several other countries in the region have large (1/3 or more) Shi’a populations, including Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Syria, and Nigeria have significant (1,000,000+) Shia populations as well.

In the case of Bahrain, however, the issue is not the Sunni/Shi’a divide, but rather the haves and have-nots. Certainly there is a significant disparity between the country’s rulers and most of the Shi'a population, but in fact there is a significant disparity between the ruling class and EVERYONE else (though the Sunni population is treated a bit better).

The main organizers behind the protests have been pushing for Bahraini unity for several years, and despite what the government of Bahrain has been saying, the initial protests were nonviolent and nonsectarian in nature. In fact, one of the factors of discontent was exacerbated by a document that was circulating a few months ago: Notice that the focus of the document is the wide disparity between the royal family and the general populace – nowhere are the terms Sunni or Shi’a mentioned.

There are certainly justifiable complaints on the part of the Shi’a majority, but the primary complaint has been one of general disenfranchisement, not sectarian disenfranchisement. The call for greater representation and less corruption and nepotism is one that is universal to the Bahraini middle and lower classes, and one that has support from many members of the Bahraini family including crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa (unfortunately, his opinion seems to be an outlier at this point).

Unfortunately, the demographic realities of the Sunni/Shia divide in Bahrain have been used by the leaders to paint the opposition as fundamentally sectarian, while targeting moderates, unity leaders and human rights advocates. The insistent mantra of the ruling class that the protests are sectarian in nature is a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to a hollowing out of the middle. The events of the past month have made it painfully clear that the goals of eliminating corruption, limiting nepotism, and increasing political representation for the general Bahraini population are probably impossible without the ouster of the ruling family.

The nature and scale of the repression is not widely visible to the outside world, but the litany of offenses is long and horrifying. Click on the links at your own risk:

Peaceful protesters have been gunned down in the streets, police shoot pedestrians from cars, doctors have been attacked, beaten and arrested for treating wounded and dying protesters. As I mentioned before, bloggers, tweeters, and journalists have been arrested, jailed, and sentenced to death for writing about the violence against the protesters and the doctors. Newspapers have been shut down. Even Pearl Roundabout, the initial site of the unity rallies and protests has been deliberately destroyed and renamed.

The violence of the past two months has been accompanied by a much more far-reaching campaign of oppression. The state-run media has, predictably, served as a mouthpiece for the regime, but its actions have gone far beyond simply parroting the lies about the violent and sectarian nature of the protests. The press attacks are reminiscent of 1930s Nazi propaganda against German Jewish businessmen or the Maoist rhetoric against counter-revolutionaries in the 50s and 60s. This article gives some very important examples.

Arabic language media outside of Bahrain haven’t been much help either. Despite their embrace of the Arab spring elsewhere, coverage of the protests in Bahrain by the two big arab news networks al Jazeera and al Arrabiyya have been half-assed at best. Despite their generally high journalistic standards, the close ties between their home countries (Qatar and Dubai, respectively) and the rest of the GCC has severely hampered their ability to address the situation in Bahrain in an open, objective or honest fashion.

Here’s a good initial documentary piece by al Jazeera from two months ago before they backed off of the issue under pressure.

The American response has been similarly lackluster. Unlike Syria, where America has almost no leverage, the state dept has robust ties to the Bahraini establishment. The US fifth fleet – the core of our military presence in the Persian gulf - is based in of Bahrain (an extremely rewarding situation for bahrain’s economy - last year alone the US government gave bahrain almost 20million dollars). The virtual silence of the white house (relative to their positions on Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Yemen) is unconscionable. A few words dribbled out from the State Department on Monday, but given that the protests in Manama started in Mid February it is tragic that so little progress has been made by the US.

As I have mentioned before, the violence committed against the protestors has not just been committed by Bahrani police and military, but by troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This raises a much more far-reaching concern regarding the intensifying rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran for dominance in the Persian Gulf and the wider middle east.

More on that in part 2.
(Pic at the top is creative commons from al Jezeera)

Bringing you up to speed...

Sorry for the rather substantial drop in output on my part. In the absence of any reasonable excuses, I’ll blame twitter. (You have been following my twitter feed, right?)

Well, there’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it…

Libya still leads in the news, and at this point it seems as though the only thing holding the Libyan government together is utter terror. In addition to the defection Moussa Koussa on Sunday, another high profile defector got out of the country two days ago. As the article mentions, we aren’t seeing more defections because anyone who leaves the country without their family is endangering their lives.

The most substantial change In Libya has been General Abdel-Fattah Younis’ return to a military leadership role for the Liberation forces. Younis, a former Libyan Interior Minister, was one of the early high-profile defections from the pro-Ghaddafi camp. He initially assumed a leadership position, commanding a brigade of other Libyan army defectors. This created some conflict among the rebel forces, many of whom questioned his fitness for command (given his long career as a Libyan government insider). Additionally, the rapid initial success of the rebels had bolstered their confidence in their own ability to overcome Gaddafi’s military, and they wanted to preserve the spontaneous nature of the uprising, rather than rely on military assistance (this is also why they initially opposed the idea of a no-fly zone).

General Younis stepped back from his leadership role, and the anti-Gaddafi military forces took a backseat in the fighting until the rebels began to lose in a spectacular fashion a few weeks ago. Even with the advent of the NATO no-fly zone/civilian protection order, there seems to have been continuing debate over the military’s role in the revolution. It was only a few days ago that Younis was restored to his leadership role, something that probably should have happened some time ago.

With Younis in command, the rebels on the front lines (recklessly courageous, but under-equipped, untrained, and unguided) have been supplemented and/or replaced by actual soldiers. Facing stronger opposition, Gaddafi’s forces have redirected some of their attention to the small undefended southern towns that are opposing him but have not yet been integrated into the resistance.

As the Libyan conflict has unfolded, it has caused some major strategic realignment in both Africa and the Middle East. This can be seen in the recent actions of Algeria, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar.

Algeria has been serving as a main conduit for the arms and mercenaries flowing towards Ghaddafi, a fact that will probably soon bite Algerian president Boutiflaka's regime in the ass. Like Libya, (and unlike Tunisia and Egypt) Algeria’s military serves as an enforcement wing of the ruling party, and Ghaddafi’s failure to stop the Libyan uprising with brute force means that Algeria may have a similar fate in store for them. Not only that, their actions in support of Ghaddafi will not likely be forgotten in a post-Gaddafi state.

Turkey’s role in the Libyan situation has been deeply ambivalent, which has created a great deal of frustration towards turkey on the part of many Libyans. Although they initially opposed intervention, they followed that by assuming a prominent role in NATO’s actions in the Med. They have tried to position themselves as potential interlocutors between Qaddafi and the rest of the world, while decrying his brutality but they don't seem to have been successful with either side of the conflict.

Jordan, on the other hand, has conclusively settled itself on the side of the Anti-Ghaddafi forces by becoming the third Arab country to contribute planes to the NFZ/civilian protection action. This may be a move by the King to strengthen his support among his base. Jordan is fairly unique, demographically - close to 2/3 of its population is ethnically Palestinian, which creates a very odd power dynamic. (Anyone who says that Palestinians are really Jordanians is slinging BS or playing semantic games). For a better understanding of the Jordanian situation (and why there won’t be a revolution in Jordan any time soon) I highly recommend this blog post. King Hussein of Jordan is a sharp guy, and the advantages of having good relations with the emerging new Libyan state are pretty clear.

Qatar, more than any other Arab nation, has recognized the opportunities that a new Libya represents. Their enthusiasm for the NFZ/civilian protection action was evident from the start. I get the impression that the Qatari government sees the future of the Arab world more clearly than any of their neighbors, and has been taking bold steps to ensure their place in it, despite their small size and limited oil resources. Towards this end, they have already signed agreements with the provisional government in Benghazi to purchase a tanker full of oil. (Note – most Libyan oil is what they call “Light Sweet Crude” - extremely high-grade oil that requires less refinement and purification than most other types of crude oil.)

All of these Libya-centered power struggles can be seen as expressions of a larger struggle – the push for stronger standing on the international stage and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Saudi Arabia is probably the strongest player in the GCC, given their close ties to every US administration since Nixon and their staggering oil wealth. For the past 30+ years Saudi Arabia has been furthering its interests in a number of ways, and one of the most notable is the promulgation of its own distinctive Wahabist brand of Sunni Islam. Wahabism is a particularly conservative strain of Salafism, a strict back-to-basics rigidly fundamentalist form of Islam. Salafism, especially the Wahabist variations, has little tolerance for alternate interpretations of Islam and the Quran, which has created some serious conflicts within the Muslim world – especially with Shi’a and Sufi Muslims.

This is important to note because expressions of the Salafi vs. Sufi conflict have been flaring up in Egypt lately – in particular several Sufi shrines have recently been destroyed by Salafist mobs. Sufis regard the burial places of their saints and teachers as being somewhat sacred and often use them as places of prayer and pilgrimage, a practice that Salafis regard as tantamount to idolatry or even heresy. (Note – don’t confuse the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB represents and includes a much more diverse range of Islamic expression.)

I raise this issue because Saudi Arabia heavily funds their Salafist brethren in Egypt and the increasingly aggressive public actions by Egyptian Salafis carries the imprimatur of Saudi interference. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not known for cordial relationships with each other, but the recent events are likely to drive even more wedges between the two states and push Egypt towards the other big player in the Gulf – Iran.

The Middle East realignment can also be seen in some notable recent events in Syria (though in some rather counterintuitive ways). Shortly after the protests in Daraa started rapidly escalating the King of Saudi Arabia called Bashir Assad to assure him of Saudi Support. This is strange for a number of reasons, but most particularly because for the past 40+ years Syria has been either loosely or tightly aligned with the Baathist/Nasserist bloc of Arab nationalists (particularly Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent Libya and Algeria). This group has traditionally been locked in competition with the pan-Islamist royalists, especially Saudi Arabia. Not only that, but Assad, his family, and the rest of the Syrian government are Alawites, a sect of Shi’a Islam (remember what I just said about Salafis/Wahabis and Shi’a?).

One of the commonly heard chants in the streets of Syria last week was "No Iran, no Hezbollah, we want a Muslim who fears God." (it's catchier in Arabic) The accusation that Assad is insufficiently religious seems to have struck a nerve, and Assad seems to be trying to get more support from the religious conservatives in Syria by rolling back some of the social reforms of the past few years. (He’s not rolling back political reforms because there haven’t really been any) It could be that he’s backing away from Iran and towards Saudi Arabia to preserve his power structure. He's also taking big steps to gain the favor of Syria's substantial disenfranchised Kurdish population.

More on Syria's tenuous stability here.

Well…that’s plenty for now. Barring some other major upheaval I’ll be getting around to addressing Iraq and Bahrain this weekend.

Why exactly are we involved in Libya?

It’s pretty simple, really – we’re there because it’s easy.

Easy is relative, of course, but Libya as a target for intervention has a lot going for it. A comically distinct leader with a history of deliberate regional destabilization and brutality, a wave of democracy sweeping across its North African neighbors, a defiant but outgunned domestic uprising, an eager coalition of international partners, a clear humanitarian disaster in the making, the unprecedented approval of the Arab League to take action against one of their own members, and the fact that whole business can be conducted via NATO’s 60-year-old military alliance using our allies’ airbases in the Mediterranean.

It’s just too easy.

We don’t even need to put troops on the ground, just fighter jets, gunships, cruise missiles, and drones.

We get to use up ordnance that was reaching its expiration date, give our pilots a little bit of combat practice, and generally make ourselves feel better about the Middle East and our role in it.

Jon Stewart explained this last night in terms of a ledger sheet and, grim as it may sound, there is an undeniable truth to the reality of the situation. The benefits of our actions must be weighed against their costs. It’s ugly, but it’s true.

Are we doing the right thing in Libya? I believe the answer to be yes.
Why then, are we not doing the right thing in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Bahrain or Syria?

Because it’s a whole lot more difficult in those places.

Syria and Bahrain are tangled messes that require a delicate negotiation of allies, potential allies, neighbors, repercussions, and regional instability that could severely impact our interests in the area.

Whereas Bahrain and Syria have close ties to other Middle East countries, Libya has steadily angered and alienated everyone else in the Arab-speaking world. (This is one of the main reasons he has given so much money to African regimes and the African Union - Qaddafi has spent billions on dictators across Africa in order to ensure their support for his various machinations. )

Right now Cote d’Ivoire is in the early stages of a civil war. How many of their neighboring countries are clamoring for our help to mitigate the thousands of fleeing refugees? What has the AU done to stop that conflict (or any other, for that matter)? Almost nothing – instead they rail against intervention. Gbagbo, the former president of Cote d’Ivoire, refuses to leave office despite having lost the election. Instead he is unleashing his military on the supporters of his opponent Outtara. Simultaneously he has vigorously supported Gaddafi and denounced any and all western intervention. (Interesting sidenote – in addition to his links to Gaddafi, Gbagbo has strong ties to some big name conservative Evangelical Christian movers and shakers in the US).

Furthermore, the scale of brutality in Bahrain and Syria hasn’t yet begun to approach what we’ve seen in Libya (though Syria should be watched closely – this Friday after evening prayers things will almost certainly get interesting). Getting NATO or Arab league approval for an action in Syria isn’t going to happen, and unilateral American intervention in the middle east went out with GWB.

In the case of Bahrain we have to weigh our actions within the context of our own involvement (the US 5th Fleet is docked in Bahrain) and the proximity of Iran, the entanglement of Saudi Arabia, and the fact that we’d be hard-pressed to achieve anything truly constructive by getting involved. It’s also not near Europe, and it’ll have to get a lot worse before Europeans would even think of getting involved. (And really, why would Europeans get involved? It doesn’t really impact them in the way that Libya does.)

So. American intervention in Libya. Easy.

Everywhere else. Messy and problematic.

Israel: winning battles, losing the war.

Spring is here!

As the old marching cadence goes, "what makes the grass grow?  Blood.  Blood.  Blood." 

Or, alternately, we can always hum few bars from Ween’s classic tune, "push the little daisies."

Revolutions are ugly things.  And revolutions happen because ugly things have been happening.

(Note, some of the links on this page will take you to videos and photographs of unpleasant things – consider yourself warned)

I'm sorry I haven't been updating every day, but with my limited time I often find myself having to choose between keeping up on things and writing about things.  As good as it feels to update my blog daily, there is also a value to me keeping abreast of the things I am presuming to write about.

So...A speedy Middle East overview:

At this point there are four main hotspots: Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria.

Algeria is still teetering on the brink, the events in Iraq are relatively indistinguishable from their state before the Arab Spring (I'm sorry to be so dismissive, but Iraq's problems are of a very different stripe than the rest of the Arab world).

Oman, Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia have all experienced protests, but not to the degree that their neighbors have.

Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait are all fairly quiet right now (one of the advantages of being small and rich). 

Egypt and Tunisia are pushing towards a post-autocratic future as best they can with varying degrees of success.

Iran and Lebanon have their own sort of equilibrium – both of them are seething under the surface, but not in any sort of fashion that is easy to explain to an unfamiliar observer. 

So I guess that's about where things stand right now.

Have I forgotten anything?

Oh.  Yeah.

Israel and Palestine. 

The Siamese twin arch-enemies.  Let's begin there, shall we?

As the protests and revolutions have spread throughout the middle east, Israel has been somewhat left out, which is just as well for them, given the turmoil that their own political situation is undergoing – splits in the dominant political party, controversies over military appointees, and the recent rape conviction of former president Moshe Katsav.

The most visible effects of the Arab spring in Israel have come in the form of a recent surge in mortar and grad rocket attacks on Israeli towns near the gaza border, the horrific murder of the Foegel family in the west bank settlement of Itamar, a bomb going off in Jerusalem, and Israel's military and political reactions to all of those events.

The thing is, these events aren’t actually expressions of the Arab Spring - they are instead desperate actions by groups who stand to lose influence and power in the event of a real Palestinian unity movement.  As I’ve stated before, these incidents are intended to goad Israel into a disproportionate response in order to generate support for the various militant Islamist organizations operating in Gaza. To say that they are the work of Hamas is not really accurate, but Hamas certainly stands to benefit from anything that draws attention away from themselves and catalyzes the public mood against Israel.

The degree to which Hamas fears a genuine Palestinian unity movement can be seen in the ferocity with which they lashed out against the rally in Gaza city last week – their power is slipping and they know it.

Anyway, a Palestinian unity movement would be disastrous for both Hamas and Fateh (And probably for the Israeli government as well).  So instead we get what we have seen over the past few days: a resumption of aggressive actions against Israel, and unflinching retaliation on the part of the Israeli military.  This actually creates an interesting opportunity for Israel's military industrial complex - the Iron Dome.

This is the next-generation of antimissile defense.  Radar guided antimissile missile launcher that detects rockets and shoots them out of the sky with faster rockets.

Israel is hoping to market these to other militaries, and the situation presents them with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the units as "field-tested".  The IDF has stated that they will be moving one of the units into place over the next few days, so I guess that's something we can all look forward to watching.

Here’s The problem: with the implementation of the Iron Dome Israel may have a new weapon in their national defense arsenal, but the Palestinian people also have a new tool, the same one that has been used in Syria, Bahrain and Libya to powerful effect - the ubiquitous camera.

Watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=218IEpLCPrE and think about its significance.

In the same way that the events of three days ago in the Syrian town of Daraa were being viewed around the world within a matter of minutes, and the way that the brutality of Libyan protesters shot to pieces by antiaircraft guns was immediately displayed for the world to see (I'm not going to give you a link - the pictures are horrific), the consequences of each and every one of Israel's actions will be looking out of computer monitors and smart phone screens across the Middle East and around the world.

When "Cast Lead" went into action in 2008, twitter did not exist, camera phones were still something of a novelty, and Facebook was still largely the domain of college students.

The world today is very different.

In 2009, when Neda, a young Iranian girl on her way to a piano lesson in Tehran was struck by a stray police bullet during the post-election protests she was dead in less than five minutes.  As bystanders tried to help her, one stood and filmed. The video of her death was online before her body was cold.

Over the past three days more than a dozen Palestinians have died in Israeli strikes - at least four of them children.  Many more will die in the days and weeks to come. Only some of them will have had any connection to the attacks on Israel, but all of their pictures will be posted on the internet.

Of course, Israel has cell phones with cameras as well, but pictures of a missile that didn't hit anything doesn't really have the same impact as shaky handheld footage of family members pulling their children out of the rubble of their parents’ houses.

Israel is making some very bad strategic decisions right now.

Self-immolation: Performing Protest with Fire -- Part 2: Viewing and Reviewing

Introduction: the Jan. 2011 regime change in Tunisia can be traced back to a single trigger event - On Dec 17th a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi was publicly abused and humiliated by the police for selling  vegetables without a permit. Frustrated at the obstacles to simply making a living and the denial of basic human dignity he publicly set himself on fire. The jarring intensity of the act caught the attention of the Tunisian public, who strongly identified with the young man’s plight. Several more incidents of self immolation followed in Tunisia, as well as in Algeria and Egypt, and majorly contributed to the burst of protests and revolutions across North African and the Middle East. Self immolation as performed political protest has been a high profile practice since the early 1960’s, but until now has been largely unreported in the Arab world. 

Last year in Toronto I delivered a paper on self immolation. Given that Bouazizi’s self-immolation was the catalyst for such unprecedented events in the middle east I wanted to cannibalize some of last year’s paper to shed a little light on this practice. This is part two of a three-part blog. Part one can be found here

Remembering the performance 

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.

-Emile Durkheim

What follows the performance of self immolation? No act takes place in a vacuum, and once performed, such an act cannot be undone. But the act does not simply end with the death of the actor; even the hottest fire leaves a residue. There is the body, of course which must be removed and disposed of.  As mentioned before, if the act is interrupted the self-immolator is likely to suffer for days before dying, and often times this grants additional time for the promulgation of the self-immolator’s message.  Most survivors the initial fire shown no remorse or regret for their actions, insisting that they would repeat the act despite the pain it caused them. Jan Palnic, a Czechoslovakian who survived for almost a week before succumbing to his injuries, did not regret his own actions, but discouraged other Czechoslovakian's from following suit, on the grounds that only one person needed to suffer as horribly as he had.

Because of the ideologically charged nature of the act, self-immolators almost always leave a written record of why they undertook such an extreme action. Tich Quang Duc left an explicitly worded note explaining and justifying his actions.  He also left behind a nearly mythic relic: his heart.  After his self immolation, his charred body was taken away for cremation, but according to all accounts, the cremation failed to consume his heart.  Instead the organ survived the fire, was placed in a crystal goblet and retained by the monastery as a relic of the event and as a symbol of Tich Quang Duc’s standing as a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who has deferred his own transcendence for the sake of others.  The automobile that dropped him off at the intersection on the morning of June 11 is also preserved in his memory, with a copy of Malcolm Brown’s iconic photo affixed to the dashboard.  In the picture, the car itself can be seen parked behind the burning monk moments before his death. Indexically, the car and the photo reference each other and they both reference Tich Quong Duc’s self immolation.

Similar (though somewhat subordinate) reverence is shown towards all of the other Vietnamese monks who self immolated, whether in response to the Diem regime, the conflict between North and South Vietnam, or the American involvement. Memorials are maintained by their monasteries and by the Vietnamese government.  Additionally, the Vietnamese government and Tich Quang Duc’s monastery also memorialize the Americans who self immolated in solidarity with the monks and the Vietnamese people. Their actions are accepted at face value, and deemed worthy of gratitude and appreciation by the Vietnamese people.

This remembrance of the dead self immolators is far from common, however. In Europe there are a few memorials to the Czechoslovakian self immolators, who are also revered as national heroes.  Similarly, in Poland a monument has been erected in honor of Polish self immolator Ryszard Siwiec.  In America and most other locations there are no national monuments.  Any commemoration that is done is done by private citizens, usually family or friends. Given the absence of public monuments in the US, the primary way in which self immolation is remembered or referenced is through its depiction in various media.

Replaying and referencing the performance

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Most American news agencies avoid showing overly graphic footage of human death on US television, particularly violent human death.  As such, self immolation is not exactly fodder for the evening news, although mention of its occurrence will usually appear in print media. During the run-up to the US occupation of Iraq, three people committed suicide or self immolation in protest. Their actions received slight mention, but very little attention in the national news at the time.

Until the advent of the Internet, the only readily available footage of self immolation available in the US was found on “Faces of Death”, a notorious video compilation of archival and historical films of actual humans dying in a multitude of ways. This panoply of horrific and gruesome footage featured a few films of self immolation devoid of ideological context amidst dozens of other examples of human death. The internet has changed this.  Now, In addition to an abundance of articles and online discussions on the issue, the Internet provides a wealth of video footage as well.  A search for “self immolation” on youtube.com returns hundreds of videos and picture slideshows of actual self immolations, including two films of Tich Quang Duc's self immolation, and other immolations from Sri Lanka, Canada, Korea, and Eastern Europe.  Some of the videos are from films shot almost 40 years ago, and some of them are only a few months old, shot on cheap digital video devices or even cell phones. With the trend towards the ubiquity of security cameras and handheld video cameras integrated into cell phones, the likelihood is that video examples of self immolation will become much more common in the future.

The memory of Tich Quang Duc was most famously referenced in 1992, when the antiestablishment hard rock/funk/rap band known as Rage Against the Machine used Brown's photo of Tich Quong Duc as the cover of their debut album. The album, a self titled politically charged anti-colonialist rant from beginning to end went platinum in a little over a year, and continued to sell at high volume for several years to follow.  The cover was the stark black-and-white image of Tich Quang Duc on fire, marked only with the typewritten eponymous band name/album title. The power of Brown’s iconic photograph is inarguable - Robert Kennedy referred to the image as “the most powerful image of the decade.” Communications scholar Michelle Murray did a visual analysis of this photograph and reached many of the conclusions that I have already mentioned 

The powerful visual image of Quang Duc in the moment preceding his death functions rhetorically to implicate several distinct audiences with a shared sense of responsibility for his death. One must view his act of self-immolation as both a religious and political protest against the oppressive Diem regime and the American government. As such, it simultaneously indicts the South Vietnamese government for harshly oppressing the Buddhists. It also indicts the U.S. government for setting such a government in place and providing continued support for it despite knowledge of its repressive actions. 

Another elaborate instance of creative semiotic indexicality is found in the 2001 movie "Waking Life", a well-received independent art film.  The movie is a meditation on awareness, death and dreaming that is presented in a distinctive format known as “rotoscoping” – a technique where a layer of animation is laid overtop of the original footage of the actors, adding a dreamlike quality to the film. Towards the end of the movie the central character is listening to a man with a gas can talk about the nature of self destruction, chaos and tragedy.  The man concludes his monologue by sitting cross-legged on the ground and dousing himself with the contents of the gas can. His final words are, “I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes. Let my own lack of voice be heard.” At that point he sets himself on fire and the animated flames engulf him as he sits silently.  After a brief period, his flaming body collapses to one side, and the movie continues on to the next scene.

These few examples are hardly indicative of a clear trend. Replaying and referencing self immolation in media or through media is seldom practiced, but it is even less common in a real-life setting. To view the act on a screen is to be separated by a degree of mediation, facilitated by the willing suspension of disbelief, while the actions of the self immolator are much stronger when experienced directly - more compelling recreations of the performance do exist..

Reenacting the performance 

The first notable reenactment took place a few years after Tich Quang Duc’s original performance. In 1967 the 17-year-old son of an American embassy worker in Vietnam doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire, imitating the performances of self immolation that seemed to be everywhere at the time. The rapid response of passersby saved his life, and during his convalescence he was asked about his reasons for such extreme behavior.  His response was simply, "I wanted to know how it felt." This seems to be part of a larger trend in American media, the intentional or inadvertent separation of the act of self immolation from its accompanying ideology.

On January 23, 2001, the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, several self immolations took place in Tiananmen Square. Contradictory government reports placed the number of self immolators between five and seven, and fatalities at either one or two.  A week after the incident, heavily edited footage of two of the immolation incidents was released by the government, along with interviews with two bandaged individuals who were described as survivors of the incident.  One of the victims, according to government news reports, was a 12-year-old girl who had been pushed into the act by her mother.  All of the survivors vigorously blamed and denounced Falun Gong, the religious organization to which they had allegedly previously belonged.  All of the persons who had performed the act were described as victims of manipulation, brainwashing, and antigovernment propaganda.  The subsequent public shock over the event, was tremendous, and led to a dramatic shift of public sympathy away from the Falun Gong.

The Falun Gong themselves denied all responsibility for the immolation, and protested that such acts were theologically forbidden by their religion.  They also challenged the veracity of the publicly broadcasted footage of the immolations, and called for investigation. Danny Schecter, a CNN reporter who had been present at the first of the January 23 self-immolations also took issue with the broadcast footage.  He and a CNN cameraman observed the very beginning of the event, but they were quickly detained by the police, relieved of their movie footage from the event, and escorted from the scene.  Subsequent investigation raised doubts as to the actual identity of the person's described by the Chinese government, as well as the legitimacy of their connections to the Falun gong.  Even the official video itself, when closely examined reveals inconsistencies, most notably the disconcerting sight of a man in a government trench coat viciously clubbing one of the immolators in the face as she burns. Most of the official Chinese government claims regarding the nature of the event were discredited in the award-winning documentary "False Fire", but the Chinese government insists that their official account is an accurate one. Additionally, the Chinese government continues to insist that self immolation is selfish, dangerous, synonymous with terrorism, and the result of manipulation of the naïve by the unscrupulous cult members of the Falun Gong. This is similar to a narrative that was used by Indian media opposing a wave of self-immolations by low-caste Dalits protesting academic and employment discrimination in 1990 and 1991. The acts were dismissed or denigrated in a number of editorials:

“The unfortunate students suffered from a variety of psychological disorders ranging from alienation from their parents to acute depression and sense of insecurity caused by social and economic environs”

“…a general sense of fear manipulated among impressionable minds by extraneous forces which could have led to the suicide bids."

“…the extreme cynical step of encouraging self-immolation of gullible students as a weapon of political coercion,”

These denunciations are not intended to discourage the actions of the self-immolators themselves, but rather reduce the impact and perception of these performances by broader portions of the Indian and Chinese community. Because self-immolation itself is so difficult to prevent, the strategy of threatened institutions is to control the discourse over the issue while simultaneously disparaging its practice as barbaric and inhumane. Obviously, the response to performances of self immolation are likely to vary from country to country, regional variants has led to counteracting strategies by the groups that are being protested against.  This may be through actions in the press, or it may take a more direct form of physical measures on the part of the government.

After the first instance of self immolation in 1963, the Vietnamese police adopted a simpler strategy; simply club anyone trying to photograph a self immolation event. In South Korea, due to a spate of self-immolations in the past, the police have been specially trained to handle the situation/spectacle, and are quite successful at anticipating and preventing successful self immolations.  In response, however, more recent South Korean self-immolators have revised their performance style accordingly.  In order to prevent an unwarranted police interruption of a self immolation, the recent trend among self immolators in Korea is now to perform the act in a highly visible but inaccessible location like a tower of a bridge span, and throw one's burning self off of the staging location.

Recently, during a self immolation in protest of the Chinese occupation of Tibet a Chinese police officer took dramatic measures, and fatally shot the self immolating protester before the burning body was extinguished. The Chinese government claims that the police officer acted in this fashion because there was no other way for him to prevent the spread of fire except through severe self injury.  This may be indicative of a new strategy on the part of the Chinese government.  If the Chinese government can establish a narrative that defines self-immolation as a public danger to others, they will be able to act against it with extreme prejudice and force. Concurrent with this approach, there have also been reports of Chinese police beating undesirable political activists severely, setting their unconscious bodies on fire, and then attributing their deaths to self-immolation.

The most recent trend in self immolation is a heretofore unknown unobserved co-implementation of self immolation and suicide bombing by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Previously, it was generally accepted, that cultures and movements that used self immolation as a form of protest did so as an alternative to the use of violence towards their opponents, and that organizations and movements willing to utilize the suicide bombing is a tactic would have little or no use or need for self immolation with the two practices acting as opposite poles on a spectrum of violent fiery self-inflicted death. This new trend contradicts the conventional wisdom on self immolation, and is too novel to be fully addressed yet.  This is significant because the Tamil tigers were the group to actively deploy suicide bombers against civilian targets.  It is not clear from my research whether this-self immolation is a tactic utilized by more moderate elements within the Tamil independence movement, or if its utility has just recently been seized upon by the same ideological organizers responsible for the extremist actions of the Tamil Tigers.

The recent incidents of self immolation in Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt have brought the practice to the forefront of the world’s attention, particularly due to their location in the Islamic world. In part three of this piece I will address this new phenomenon of Muslim self-immolation…stay tuned.

Syria!

So, where are we at?

An issue I neglected to address in Tuesday mornings post on the Palestinian protests is that March 15 was supposed to be a “day of rage" for Syria as well.

It's not that I didn't think it was important, but I didn't think that we would see much of it. In a region full of repressive regimes, Syria is one of the worst. The state security apparatus is frighteningly effective, and government has shown itself more than willing to use excessive force on many occasions. These, in conjunction with a relatively stable population have led me to leave the Syrian regime in the "safe" column as far as political upheaval goes.

True to form, the protests in Syria were small and quickly controlled by Syrian police. Some arrests, and some violence for sure, but that was the end of it.

Or so I thought…

While I and many others were focused on the dramatic events transpiring in Libya something surprising happened in Syria - the protests continued.

Egyptian blogger Zenobia commented on Tuesday night,

"If our dear Syrian brothers and sisters managed to protest till Friday , till the Friday prayers it will be a great triumph."

Although I am a devoted reader of her blog, at I was busy thinking about Libya, Bahrain, and Palestine and I failed to take note of her prediction.

As it turns out she was right. Syria is no longer on the safe list.

(Other countries currently on the safe list are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco. The way things are going, however I may need to move a few of them over the next month or two).

Anyway, Syria. Big deal for sure. I was hoping that Qaddafi's brutality would serve as a "don't go there" sign for other Middle East tyrants, but unfortunately that seems not to be the case (particularly in Yemen and Bahrain). Instead, what seems to have happened is that the Syrian people are taking their lead from the Libyans.

Unabashed defiance in the face of almost certain death, injury, or incarceration.

Large scale protests in five Syrian cities.

Police using live ammunition on protesters in the streets.

Citizens storming a state security building.

Basically like a mini Egypt in fast-forward.

Rather than simply reiterating what has already been posted, I'll direct you to Zenobia's blog where she has some excellent coverage. She's an enthusiastic and devoted blogger - I don't always agree with her interpretations, but she takes her work very seriously and does an outstanding job of reporting events as she sees them.

Anyway, once again, all bets are off.

Here's to the Arab Spring...

So everything is great in the Middle East now!

Oh. Wait. Never mind. (Link)

Bahrain, Palestine, and ... Armenia?

What the hell, Bahrain?

The Shiites have hit the fan in Bahrain – Bahraini police and military have been supplemented by more than 1000 Saudi Arabian troops (and some from the UAE), complete with tanks and armored trucks. At least eight people have been killed, with hundreds more injured. Police have been using live ammunition, and there are reports of them firing indiscriminately into crowds obstructing their path.
There has been significant outcry by Shiites in Iran and Iraq (not that Saudi Arabia cares), and at this point the Bahraini royal family has made it clear that they are little more than Satraps for the Saudi Government.

At this point, the violence in Bahrain also seems to be part of an internal power struggle in the Bahraini royal family. Much of the incoherence and inconsistency of the government’s response to the protests (alternating between tolerance and violence) stems from divisions between progressive and conservative elements. Although the progressives were in ascendancy for some time, the involvement of the Saudi government (who strongly back the conservative elements) has reversed that power balance

In conversations on Bahrain (and Yemen and Libya) a question comes up again and again – “Why are these governments so willing to resort to violence against their own people?”

The answer is a pretty simple one – traditionally the autocratic governments of the Middle East have held power through a judicious threefold mix:

a. propaganda,
b. intimidation
c. force

With the advent of widespread electronic communication (both internally and externally) the effectiveness of propaganda has dramatically shrunk. Intimidation still has some effectiveness, but Egypt and Tunisia have served as an example and an inspiration to protesters elsewhere, successfully hobbling the effectiveness of intimidation. Without these two, there is nothing left for a regime to call upon except for force.

“So why not find new options? Isn’t it obvious that the violence will only make it worse?”

Here’s the essential problem: There is no plan B.

As was painfully obvious in the case of Mubarak, the powers that be in the Middle East have been entirely unprepared for what has come to be called “the Arab spring”. The status quo in these countries has been firmly in place for decades, and the skills required to retain authority have had more to do with internal power plays among the elites. An evolutionary shift is underway, and few leaders, if any, have the right range of skills to navigate this new terrain.

***

Lots of stuff going on in Palestine/Israel – seized weapons from Iran, settlement building as collective punishment for the murders in Itamar, rumors of a Syria/Israel peace deal, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Abbas announced that he won’t be running for reelection – things are always exciting in the Levant.

All of that aside, the issue that I want to touch on is the Palestinian “Day of Rage” protests. There were rallies in Gaza and the West Bank for unity between Hamas and the PA. These expressions of frustration at the gridlock created by having two separate and opposing governments weren’t the product of efforts by either the PA or Hamas, but both Fateh and Hamas were quick to co-opt the rallies.

The protests in Gaza ended a bit early, when Hamas security decided that it was time for the crowds to disperse, and started beating people with clubs.

This speaks to an interesting and unfortunately often overlooked issue – legitimacy. At this point neither Hamas nor Fateh have any. Excepting the die-hard supporters of the two parties (who are often beneficiaries of a paternalistic carrot and stick approach to governance) most Palestinians are sick of both groups.

Mahmoud Abbas is acutely aware of this, and seems to have grown tired of being the whipping-boy for the Israeli government (After the murders in Itamar his public denunciation of the act was deemed insufficiently loud enough by Netanyahu, and he was told that he needed to make sure that the Palestinians heard him clearly – as if most of the Palestinians give a damn what Abbas says about anything).

Word is that Palestinian elections are about six months away, an event that probably wouldn’t favor Fateh or Hamas. Hamas only won the 2006 elections because internal divisions in Fateh split their voting bloc, and over the past few years Hamas has shown themselves to be just as corrupt and nepotistic as the party that they beat. They haven’t secured any visible gains for the Palestinians, and they haven’t shown much in the way of leadership – this has not gone unnoticed. Unless Fateh and/or Hamas can put up some fresh young faces soon they are both poised to lose significant power in the next election.

***

Just a quick third note – although Armenia’s inclusion in “the greater middle east” is debatable, they had some protests two weeks ago, and round two is today.

Worth watching for sure.

Can Qaddafi regain control? Don't bet on it.

News from Libya over the past few days has been alternately frustrating and depressing. The momentum of the opposition forces seems to have broken as they reached Qaddafi’s main strongholds of Sirte (his hometown) and Tripoli (the capital). Once they lost their inertia, Gaddafi was able to begin concerted counterattacks. Despite being numerically outnumbered, Gaddafi’s remaining troops are his most loyal and by extension, the best equipped and best trained soldiers.

However, despite the pessimism on the part of many, it is important to note that a war of attrition would not favor Gaddafi. To preserve his primary advantage (better weapons and equipment) he needs a robust support system for his forces – something that only comes with money, supply chains, and loyalty. The elite soldiers may still support him, but the logistical components of his army will be much harder to retain - mechanics, cooks, truck drivers, etc. are what make a military function in the long run, and at this point they are only likely to carry the army’s burden while under duress. This goes double for the air force support crew. The more sorties a plane flies, the greater its need for careful maintenance and repair (just ask US helicopter crews in Afghanistan), and the higher the risk of serious systems failure.

Qaddafi may be able to recapture some of his lost ground, and he may even successfully retake some of his oil and gas production/refinement areas, but the only strategic advantages those will afford him are morale-related. He won’t be able to resume gas exports – the people who kept the refineries operating were the foreign workers who evacuated weeks ago, and the home-grown Libyan work force is notoriously inadequate. Large portions of his funds have been frozen, he has few trading partners for whatever oil he may have - maybe Venezuela, but they don’t really need oil, they make plenty of their own.

There is also some good news today. The Arab league has asked the UN to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. (It is worthwhile to note that the countries most resistant to the idea were Syria, Yemen, and Algeria – all countries that are dealing with some precarious political situations, and have used violence against their own citizenry or are likely to do so in the near future.). This paves the way for a multilateral projection of force that is less likely to bite the US in the ass later. I’ve been pretty critical of a US-led no-fly zone, but the explicit approval of the Arab League significantly assuages my concerns.

The White House has already responded positively to the Arab League's statement, and Hillary Clinton will be meeting with one of the main Libyan opposition leaders shortly.

The pace has been excruciating, but I believe that the long-term outcome will be a good one.

Amazing events in Egypt today and yesterday

Just a quick post today, I'm sorry it's been a few days since my last one, but I've been trying to finish several more in-depth posts, and they take a little longer than my conventional updates and snark. I’ll have another post up soon, probably not today but certainly tomorrow. (This blogging stuff is a lot of work!)

I mostly just wanted to bring your attention to two very interesting things that happened in Egypt over the last few days.

First of all, Thursday night something incredible happened.

The Prime Minister of Egypt was a guest on a popular Egyptian late night TV talk show and he spent about an hour and a half reiterating double-talk and vague patronizing fluff regarding the next steps for the Egyptian government. (That’s not the incredible thing)

After 90 minutes of his pandering bullshit, the host suddenly brought in additional guests – two well-known and respected Egyptian journalists who sat down and gave the Prime Minister the grilling of his life. The show continued for another two hours and the heavy back-and-forth basically made the PM look like a myopic tool, an out-of-touch jerk, and a blatant holdover from the Mubarak regime.

The only word to describe this is unprecedented. Even Lebanon, which has a fairly healthy and robust fourth estate, has never experienced anything like this - a prominent head of state being called on his crap in front of a nation of viewers.

Unprecedented.

As if that simple but momentous act of accountability was not enough, Friday morning brought with another bombshell: the Prime Minister had resigned.

It's not clear if he resigned due to his own humiliation, or if he was told to step down because his actions showed him to be so obviously unfit to lead. Regardless, it's an amazing event, and one that should be celebrated by everyone who appreciates the power of a free press.

Egyptian blogger Zenobia gives a wonderfully entertaining account of this event here.

The Prime Minister's replacement, Essam Sharaf, has a very good reputation as an effective minister and a supporter of the Egyptian protesters. Profiles of him can be found here and here. (Thank you to MEI editor Michael Dunn for the links)

***

As exciting and encouraging as this event was, today something even more remarkable happened.

First, a moment of context: Shortly after Mubarak stepped down from his position as Egypt's President, "rioters" burned down a police headquarters. The circumstances of the incident were such that it was painfully obvious to everyone that the culprits were Egyptian police/State Security personnel intent on destroying the evidence of decades of wrongdoing preserved in the station archives. This was followed by another incident two days ago where another police station was set on fire, destroying countless more files documenting thousands of additional corrupt and brutal acts against the Egyptian people.

Today, clashes between Egyptian State Security (secret police) officers and protesters took place in Alexandria outside of an infamous state security building where documents were being destroyed. In this situation, however, the violence was escalating dramatically, and the military intervened when State Security snipers were beginning to fire on the protesters. The security forces were dragged off by the army and the building was secured by the Egyptian people! Many documents were lost, but many others were saved.

Zenobia has an amazing account of this as well.

This bodes well for the new Egyptian century, and very poorly for the butchers and thugs of its past.

It’s going to be pretty interesting...

Terror, nonviolence, and Israel

A few years ago, during grad school I tried to write a paper on the concept of “Nonviolent terrorism”. The scope of the project quickly revealed itself to be far beyond the requirements of the class that I was writing it for, and instead I limited the focus of the paper to the performative aspects of self-immolation. (part one of that paper can be found here, part two and three are forthcoming)

The idea of nonviolent terrorism is one that is largely symbolic – actions that induce fear, chaos, and psychological trauma without causing physical harm to people or infrastructure. Bomb threats are probably the most common form of nonviolent terrorism, but other examples can be found – white powder in envelopes, firecrackers tossed into a tense crowd, psychological warfare through pranks. These things wear on the public psyche until it is like a tightly wound spring or a spooked horse unsure which way to jump - ready to protect itself from a threat whose likelihood cannot be clearly determined and whose severity cannot be calculated.

Nonviolent terrorism seeks to mimic the effects of a terrorist act without utilizing the destructive methods of terrorism. Nonviolent terrorism, however, does not exist seperate from terrorism – in fact, the success of an act of nonviolent terrorism is contingent on it being temporarily indistinguishable from a real act of terrorism. The act draws its potency from the real potential for violent terrorism. Threatening to poison a city’s drinking water can be an act of nonviolent terrorism. Threatening to destroy a city with the death ray from your moon base is something altogether different.

Nonviolent terrorism operates on the premise that the thing you fear hasn’t happened yet, but it might...

Israel is currently undergoing a wave of non-violent terrorism.

Let me be clear – I am not referring to the fear that more Gravads and Katushas will rain in from the Gaza strip, or the fear that a collapsing Lebanese government will become the puppet of Hezbollah, or the fear that the Muslim brotherhood will seize the reins of the fledgling Egyptian political scene and nullify the Israel/Egypt peace treaties.

All of these things are real fears, but none of these are the real fear.

The real fear comes from what we saw in Egypt. Less than a month ago millions of people filled the streets of Egypt, and in the face of police brutality and government force they stood their ground. Certainly there were acts of violence by the Egyptian protesters – clashes between hired baltagi and a public who was unwilling to be driven back, there was rock throwing and car burning in defiance of riot police, and there were a few nights where protesters in Tahrir square were pelted with firebombs and fought back with stones. But overall, it was a largely nonviolent movement, and therein lies the seeds of terror.

Certainly, when it comes to Egypt’s future some Israelis are hopeful and others are suspicious. But underneath it all there is a creeping and un-addressable gnawing fear that transcends concerns regarding the Egyptian people.

It is a fear that something like what we saw in Tahrir square could take place in Israel.

Every action by Hamas, or by the Palestinian Authority, or by the Palestinians themselves whether singly or in groups now brings with it the second-guessing - "Will this be the Mohamed Bouazizi moment?", "Is this the next Khaled Said?", "Could this be the thing that triggers it?"

As I said before, these things wear on the public psyche until it is like a tightly wound spring or a spooked horse unsure which way to jump - ready to protect itself from a threat whose likelihood cannot be clearly determined and whose severity cannot be calculated.

What would happen if 100,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel (AKA “Israeli Arabs”) showed up on Ben Yehuda street in Jerusalem demanding an end to the settlements?

What would happen if thousands of Gazan Palestinians marched from Gaza City and the refugee camps to the Erez and Karni crossings demanding passage to their estranged families in East Jerusalem and the West Bank?

What if the Muslim and Christian residents of Ramallah walked en masse to Ma’ale Adumim to protests the progressive loss of what little land they have left?

Most importantly, what if they did it with their hands empty of anything except for their camera phones?

How could Israel respond? And how long could large-scale human action in Israel stay nonviolent - either on the part of the Israelis or the Palestinians?

Because lurking behind the spectacle of Egypt is the specter of Libya: a population who no longer fear for their own lives facing down a military willing to use deadly force.

There is true terror.

We are Fires in the Night.

The big news today, as far as Libya is concerned (from an American perspective), is president Obama’s comments. Frustrating as it may have been to get little more than silence from the White House for the past several days, the logic behind their actions was solid, and fairly evident to those familiar with State Department procedure. Despite the horrific nature of the events on the ground in Libya, the American president’s primary obligation is the safety of his own citizens, and in this case (given that he was dealing with an individual of obviously unsound mind), it was imperative that the American embassy staff be evacuated before any substantive action could be taken.

If the White House had come out strongly against Gaddafi earlier (while American embassy staff were still on the ground in Tripoli) there was a very real possibility that Gaddafi might retaliate, using State Department employees as leverage, or even as targets for violence. It is worthwhile to note that his comments on Libya came barely minutes after the last plane of Americans had taken off from Tripoli.

Obama’s comments today were probably the ones he wanted to make several days ago, and although they carried with them no overtures of force projection, the way things look on the ground that won’t be necessary anyway.

So, where do things stand?

At this point, it’s pretty obvious that the regime’s timeline is down to its last hours - maybe 24, possibly 48. The regime has been madly shedding diplomats and officials for several days now, and with the end in sight, even the most obstinate and myopic supporters of the regime are probably weighting their options (which, at this point probably aren’t much better than
1. Suicide
2. Death at the hands of an angry mob
3. A public trial for their crimes against the Libyan people.

Frankly, I’d like to see a trial, but that raises an interesting point.

Two days ago I was on the phone with my saintly Quaker grandmother. Although she knew that there was something happening in Libya, she professed ignorance as to the specific details. Given my own compulsive inclination towards exposition and contextualization, I gave her a two-minute summary that covered the scope and scale of the protests, the horrific acts by mercenaries and military, and the inevitability of the regime’s demise.

“At this point,” I said, “Qaddafi will probably go out like Cheaucesceeu or Mussolini, but personally, I’d like to see him in front of an international Court of Justice.”

“Ehh...What good would that do?” She said In an offhand manner. “Maybe one of his soldiers will shoot him.”

Now...the vast majority of the people reading this probably don’t grasp the magnitude of that statement, but when my grandmother - one of the sweetest most peace-loving and nonviolent people I’ve ever known in my life - casually tosses out tacit approval of extrajudicial execution…well…there’s not much more that can be said.

Hey Qaddafi! Even pacifists think you need to be put down like the rabid badger that you are.

***

I’m trying to pull together two more solid and substantive blogs for this weekend, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll get both of them out before Monday. I should get at least one of them out tomorrow, and it’ll be a good one (I think).

I’ll say the same thing this week that I was saying last week...in the same way that Egypt was consuming all of the available “media oxygen” then, Libya is doing the same thing now. Very important things have been happening in many other countries, and they should certainly be addressed…I‘ll try to get there...

***

Just one interesting final point before I conclude this post - the situation in Libya has had a rather interesting and unexpected impact in Venezuela that is addressed here. I highly recommend that you read the article, but to sum up, Hugo Chavez’s state-run media mouthpiece sent a media team to Libya several days ago when the situation was beginning to crest. Because of Chavez’s fairly strong relationship with Qaddafi, the news network painted a picture that was entirely in line with Qaddafi’s personal perception of the situation, but so far detached from reality that it has made them the laughingstock of the Venezuelan population. Although Chavez has built his political career on the gullibility of a large portion of the Venezuelan community, the obvious disconnect between the messaging of the state TV and every other available information source has been comedic, dramatic, and unignorable.

Gaddafi has done us another favor - he has shown Venezuelan state television to be nothing more than government funded liars.

Thanks Gaddafi!

***

More to come tomorrow.

In the meantime, I just found out about Band of Skulls...aren’t they awesome?

Please help the people of Libya

As I've mentioned earlier, it's difficult to watch the horrific events from so far away and feel helpless. For those of you who are looking for something that you can do to help the people of Libya the good folks over at http://www.libyafeb17.com/ provided me with a connection to World Medical Camp of Libya http://www.wmclibya.org/

World Medical Camp Libya
PayPal - No Account Required

I'll keep the paypal button on my sidebar, so please keep the link handy and direct your friends to my page if they mention a desire to help.

We can't give blood, but we can at least give money.

Gaddafi’s gift to the Middle East.

It’s a funny thing, but Gaddafi has really done us all a favor here.

As I said yesterday, he has secured himself a place on the list of history’s most hated leaders. Like a predator who shits in the carcass of his prey to spoil the meat for those who come after him, Gaddafi has done his best to ruin his country - one world or none, you might say.

I will not waste print with accusations of malfeasance - there will be plenty of time for that in the days and weeks to come. Instead I want to extend a measure of thanks to him on behalf of the Middle East.

Thank you Gaddafi.

Thank you for reminding the other dictators what tyranny looks like to the rest of the world.

Many years ago you made yourself into an icon of sociopathic megalomania - this week you have taken that to it’s logical conclusion.

Sure, the scale of your destruction won’t reach the magnitude of Pol Pot, or Mao, or Stalin, or Mussolini, or the other butchers of the 20th century. What will set you apart from them is the extent to which it is being watched by the world.

You unleashed ruthless foreign mercenaries on your own people and within hours the pictures of the dead and wounded were spread across the internet.

You made incoherent mumbling denunciations from underneath an umbrella on a rainy night and the whole world was mocking you before the sun was up the next day.

It’s not what you did, it’s that we all saw it as it happened.
You are now a symbol of what not to do.

If, for example, the people of Syria start to flood the streets of Damascus demanding their dignity and their basic freedoms, Bashar al-Assad will have to choose his course of action carefully lest he be labeled "another Gaddafi"

The Iranian government must now step a bit more gingerly when dealing with their own angry youth in order to distinguish themselves from the wickedness of the Libyan regime.

Bahrain and Yemen now have to second guess the potential repercussions from their own acts of violence against their subjects and citizens.

Force is no longer a reliable guarantee of regime survival, and brutality is harder and harder to enact unnoticed. The cost of control has risen sharply over the past few days.

Gaddafi has given the world, and particularly the Middle East, a striking lesson in what no longer works.

(Minor follow-up - congratulations Brother Leader, the statisticians over at fivethirtyeight.com have determined you to be the #1 ranked dictator)

Minor update

Lots of people doing excellent updates now - I'll be posting some analysis later today when I get home.

In the meantime, you may find today's post at the Arabist interesting.

He links to a continuously updated google map tracking the status of the various Libyan towns and cities and whether they are government or protester controlled.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=208005345448417215163.00049cf3a2cdebe5bd17f

Hey Gaddafi - as they say in Serbia, "May your house be live on CNN"

Well, seems the die is cast.

In an attempt to make up for last night’s “crazy man with an umbrella mumbling in a truck” speech, brother leader pulled out all the stops today. Raving lunacy on the world stage.



To mix metaphors, the Colonel has decided to go down with the ship of state, and really, why did I even think he would have gone any other way?

There was a point four days ago - before mercenaries were machine-gunning people in the streets of Benghazi, before hundreds of soldiers were executed for their refusal to fire on civilians, before fighter planes were strafing crowds of protesters, before artillery batteries were shelling cities, before ministers and ambassadors were jumping ship on live television around the world - There was a moment when it could have all gone differently.

He could have been a hero (or even "an hero"). He could have been everything that he thought he was in his own mind. Qaddafi holds no official title, and he has always claimed that it was the Libyan people who governed themselves and not he who held the reins.

He could have turned it all over to the people of Libya, given them the oil wealth and opportunity that was their birthright, disengaged himself from his position of authority and become one of the great African altruists. He could have ensured that his sons held positions of respect and honor in Libya for as long as they lived. He could have kept working towards the creation of the United States of Africa, and been remembered better for his final years and for those that came before.

He could have become what he always thought he was.

"the leader of the Arab leaders, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of the Muslims,"

Well, apparently that’s not going to happen.

Like the proverbial scorpion who stung the frog halfway across the river, some time last week Gaddafi‘s soul - the withered black selfish thing that it is - simply shrugged and said, “it is in my nature to do these things. I am a scorpion, I cannot help but sting”

Gaddafi, welcome to the list of history’s most hated.
I almost didn’t think you’d make it.

Seriously...what the hell, Gaddafi?

“I am satisfied, because I was speaking in front of the youth in the Green Square tonight, but the rain came praise to God it bears well. I want to clarify for them that I am in Tripoli not in Venezuela. Do not believe these channels they are dogs. Goodbye.”

It looks like something from the Muppet Show.

All-out revolution is underway in Libya.

So, Libya again.

As I’ve said before, the situation in Libya is incredibly important.  It’s also unique in many respects.

Although Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt are all nearby, Libya differs from them significantly in its degree of isolation.  America has had working relationships with Algeria Egypt and Tunisia for quite some time, whereas our relations with Libya have only recently, and very slowly been thawing.neither the US government nor the US media have any substantial presence on the ground there.

Right now, what is going on in Libya is unlike the protests anywhere else in the Middle East.  Certainly, the violence in Bahrain and Yemen is jarring and horrific, but Libya is undergoing something of an entirely different stripe.  While the government of Bahrain has turned to its allies in Saudi Arabia for support in suppressing public protests, and the Yemeni government lacks the stability for a coherent response to the uprisings in their streets, Libya is undergoing an all out war.

War.

Battles for entire cities and towns are currently underway.  Helicopters are shooting at crowds, and government hired mercenaries (reportedly non-Libyan french-speaking Africans) are gunning people down in the streets.  Body count estimates at this point are into the hundreds, but I would suspect they are, in actuality, much higher.

The current strategy being used by the government speaks to the precariousness of their situation.  The fact that mercenaries have been deployed in cities suggests that the leadership does not fully trust its own soldiers to do the dirty work, and there have been reports of soldiers being beaten for refusing to fire on civilians and even some areas where the military seems to have joined with the protesters.

The  intensity of the uprisings seem to have taken the government by surprise, oddly enough.  Or perhaps the Libyan Army isn’t all that good at logistics, or perhaps there is turmoil within the ranks.  For whatever reason, there weren’t enough troops in place to control the situation when it began, and protester have seized two of the airfields in western Libya that were being used to reinforce the troops.

There have also been reports that some of the mercenaries have seized hundreds of hostages, and are demanding that they be allowed to leave safely in exchange for the release of their prisoners.

Benghazi was one of the first cities to rise up, and as a result of it has been the target of the heaviest attacks by Libyan military and the heaviest fighting. Hospitals are reportedly full of the dead and injured, the soldiers on the ground are shooting to kill, and Libyan voices are calling the government’s actions there “massacre”.

The extent of the situation is still unclear, but there are reports that the military has joined with the revolting citizens to free al-bayda and are headed to Benghazi to support the people in the streets there. There are also reports that the Libyan government is sending in more mercenaries to the conflict areas.

It’s basically become impossible to follow, but you can catch up here:

http://www.libyafeb17.com/ is pretty comprehensive,

I've also been following these four twitter feeds http://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi and http://twitter.com/ShababLibya and http://twitter.com/EnoughGaddafi and http://twitter.com/libi4ever

Al Jezeera has a Libya live blog, but it's not as thorough as it should be

The Libyan government did shut down the internet yesterday, but parts of it seem to be back up.(Which is a good thing for bit.ly and anyone else using a .ly suffix)

The most comprehensive site for the situation on the ground is here:
http://www.libya-/letters/v2011a/v31jan11z.htm#n18feb116 (run through Google translate). Be warned - there are very graphic pictures of dead protesters on this page. This site will tell you more than you want to know about the situation right now.

This video is from the libya-watanona.com page - it's mostly protest footage, but be warned, there are some graphic images of the dead and wounded in the video as well.


Oh, yea, and Gaddafi's leadership congress has pledged a change in government administrators. Yea, that'll fix the situation.

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

***

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

***

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.

Libya. Now.

I mentioned last week that Ghaddafi had been awfully quiet lately. Well, apparently his mouth is run out of patience. On Sunday he announced that … “Palestinian refugees should capitalize on the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East by massing peacefully on the borders of Israel until it gives in to their demands”

Ghaddafi has always had an interesting take on the Israel/Palestine situation, and although he’s not a fan of the Israeli government, he’s made it clear that he’s pretty Ok with the Israelis as a people (this was even before one of his sons started dating an Israeli model), and he has a much bigger problem with theocrats like the Saudis and the Iranians.

In this case, however, as much as he means what he says (which I think he does) he is also probably hoping that his recommendation will be taken seriously as a way in which to direct attention towards anything other than Libya.

I should’ve seen the signs. The fact that he’s making public pronouncements again usually means that something has set him off - the situation has changed.

When the list of Middle East “days of rage” first got posted last month the Libyan date for uprising was February 30. That made sense to me, as that was probably the only day of the year that such a thing would be likely in my opinion. That was later revised to Feb 17 by someone who knows how to look at a calendar.

Of course, there have already been some small protests, particularly in some coastal regions, but I wasn’t particularly expecting to see all that much happen. If there’s one guy who knows how to keep things locked down it is our dear Colonel.

(Full disclosure. Frankly, I’ve always been fascinated by Ghaddafi. Yes, he’s a dictator. Yes, he was an enthusiastic sponsor of terrorism throughout the world’s during the 1960s and 70s. Yes, he is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people both domestically and abroad. Yes, he has a tendency to say things that come across as crazy (though much of it isn’t really as crazy as it sounds). Yes, he did hire Doc Brown to build an a nuclear bomb back in the early ‘80s. I’m not saying that what Qaddafi has done in the past is morally acceptable, but when it comes to being a ruthless dictator, would you rather be known for your crazy outfits and your all-female bodyguard squad, or for butchering almost a quarter of your population or eating your political opponents? Say what you will about the guy, he has style.

That being said, when the rubber hits the road I’m going to throw my lot in with the Libyan people, and not that guy.

So, anyway, here’s what I was working towards – protests are already underway in Libya.

The protests kicked off early in the coastal town of Bengazi two days early, and the hammer-down by the government forces has already begun. The guardian UK is doing an outstanding job of keeping a protest roundup running. I highly recommend them as a way to keep abreast of the situation.

So what’s the score in Libya?

Right now, the capital is quiet except for some staged pro-Ghaddafi rallies. Protests are mostly in Benghazi and Tripoli.

The message that struck me most this morning was the tweet that said, “don’t show up with less than 100 people.”

Every single person protesting on the streets of Libya knows full well that they may not live to see tomorrow. The regime is ruthless. 15 years ago they massacred 1200 political prisoners in three hours because they were protesting for better prison conditions.

The bravery of the people in the streets of Bengazi cannot be overstated. These people are prepared to die, they may even be expecting to.

This, to me, is the wild card. There is an old Persian saying – You cannot leap a chasm with two jumps. If these people are not successful then, like Iran, the regime will spend the next several years eradicating everyone connected to the protests.

Please contact your political representatives today and ask them to bring pressure to bear on Ghaddafi - We may not have leverage with Iran, but we do have some influence with Libya. Please contact as many national news agencies as possible and let them know that the only thing that can keep the people on the streets of Libya alive is if their own voices are heard.

Ghaddafi is not stupid. He is proud of his stature in the African and Arab worlds and he wants to be seen as a reformer. This is the time for him to prove it. If we don’t see some public movement from him on this within the next day or so he plans on playing this grim situation out to the bitter end.