Month: December 2004

NCHR and Emergency law

Partially an addendum to Issandr’s note on the NCHR and the Emergency law

Just had a meeting with Bahay al-Din Hassan of the Cairo Institute for the Study of HR and Egypt’s national council for HR (NCHR). He told me there are two memos are going to the president.
1) repealing Emergency law. He said there was almost a revolt by “some” members frustrated that the vote went as it did last April (24 against discussing to approach the gov to repeal EL, 3 in favor). To date there has been no reaction from the government/president. I asked him if he expected one. He responded, “the government does not respond to the most basic complaint – really mundane – things, why will they respond to this?”

2) The NCHR annual report. Contrary to things I have seen in the press, the report is not ready. Bahay said it was not going to be released until February and not a “single word” has been written yet.

He also said that he is not the only one on the council who is disappointed with the NCHR’s performance and everyday it loses the ability to assert itself.

More will follow on this next month.

Loose ends

It’s been a hectic week, so I am putting various bits and pieces I’ve noted over the past week here with little commentary:

  • Visit Daoud Kuttab’s homepage and his blog, which contains an archive of his writings and other material. Kuttab, whom I had the opportunity to meet in Cairo in late 2002, is the Arab pioneer of internet radio. Here is an article he wrote on the need for more alternative Arab media, and here’s an article on his pet project, Ammannet — a website and radio station. Radio could be a powerful medium in the Arab world, but in most countries it is restricted to state-owned stations and perhaps a couple of commercial ones that avoid anything controversial. A Malian journalist told me a while back that in his impoverished West African mostly Muslim country of Mali has dozens of independent radio stations. Embarrassing.
  • Amr Hamzawi had an article in the Daily Star on why Egypt’s ruling party’s reform image is a sham. Hellme didn’t like it though.
  • The Likudnik Middle East Quarterly remembers Hume Horan, noted State Department Arabist, although I noticed they chose not to call him an Arabist but rather an “Arabic linguist” so as to not confuse him with those nasty, er, State Department Arabists. In Robert Kaplan’s The Arabists, that subtle smear job on American diplomats who specialized in the Middle East and weren’t pro-Israel ideologues, Horan comes out as something as a hero for his role in the airlift of the Falasha Jews in Sudan — which is probably why he’s so well liked over at the MEQ. I’m not sure what Horan’s politics were, especially as he published in the MEQ, but he was certainly an important American diplomat working in the region.
  • Kareem Fahim, Egyptian-American globetrotting journalist for the Village Voice, keeps a blog on their site.
  • Mahmoud Abbas calls yet again for the end of armed struggle in Palestine, but has nothing to offer in exchange. In the meantime, military operations like the one carried out a few days ago offer a much better model of resistance than the suicide bombings, so why do they occur so little?
  • Sami Awad offers three strategies for non-violent Palestinian resistance: strong leadership, continuous protests and strong international campaigning. Easier said than done.
  • The NYT profiles Seif Al Islam Qadhafi. Like in another profile by the Financial Times a few months ago, he sounds deranged. Not as much as his father, though.
  • Europe’s counter-terrorism chief says that European and Arab radicals are being trained in insurgent-run camps in Iraq.
  • Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights has asked the government to cancel the Emergency Law that has restrained political life for over a quarter of a century. I won’t say more about this now because some more in-depth analysis will come soon.
  • Adam Morrow looks at the Wafaa Konstantin affair amidst larger sectarian tensions in Egypt.
  • Rami Khouri talks about the recent Dubai conference on Arab reform.
  • France has banned Al Manar, Hizbullah’s satellite TV station, for being anti-Semitic. (Update: CNN reports the US government about to declare Al Manar a “terrorist organization.” Not sure why they need to differentiate from Hizbullah which they already consider a terrorist organization.

    • Bush delaying new AHDR

    I’d never thought I’d write this, but Thomas Friedman actually has something interesting to say in his latest column! Friedman is revealing, for the first time I think, that the Bush administration is behind the delay of the release of the third installment of the Arab Human Development Report, which is on governance:

    Then I started to hear disturbing things – that the Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 percent of the report. While heartfelt, it’s there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 percent of the report.

    But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed – as if language 10 times worse can’t be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it’s changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticized in the report, also doesn’t want it out – along with some other Arab regimes.

    So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals – who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers – has produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But Bush officials, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking – even if that means it won’t appear at all.

    It makes you weep.

    Incredible.

    A message from the Iraqi resistance

    Take a look at this remarkable message from the “Media Platoon of the Islamic Jihad Army” of Iraq — aka the Iraqi resistance. There is a video at the link, but I am reposting the transcript in full:

    People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain.

    We are simple people who chose principles over fear.

    We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true weapons of mass destruction.

    Years and years of agony and despair, while the condemned UN traded with our oil revenues in the name of world stability and peace.

    Over two million innocents died waiting for a light at the end of a tunnel that only ended with the occupation of our country and the theft of our resources.

    After the crimes of the administrations of the U.S and Britain in Iraq , we have chosen our future. The future of every resistance struggle ever in the history of man.

    It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and stolen from our land.

    We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S. nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong unified Europe. It is Ironic that the Iraqi’s are to bear the full face of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this sleeping world.

    We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. , who took to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We also thank France , Germany and other states for their position, which least to say are considered wise and balanced, til now.

    Today, we call on you again.

    We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.

    We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.

    Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies. Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their casualties are far higher than they admit.

    We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat.

    The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they can not see nor predict.

    We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word “conquest.”

    Today we write a new chapter in the arts of urban warfare.

    Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you.

    In helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing for the Americans for a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their strategy.

    This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the American people suffer from in general.

    We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if not more.

    We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus, rendering their plans useless.

     And the earlier a movement is born, the earlier their fall will be.

    And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq , as we have done with a few others before you.

    Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq.

    And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?”

    The video is in English, which suggests that this is a message addressed to Westerners. I have no idea whether these people are representative of a small part of the insurgency (does anybody really know what the insurgency is anyhow?) but if so they are certainly sophisticated. Not exactly the mindless bloodthirsty fundamentalists you see on TV…

    Rethinking Taba

    The Washington Times has an in-depth article looking at how the Israeli intelligence community has re-assessed its attitude towards Al Qaeda’s influence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of the Taba bombings. Talking to many Israeli intelligence experts in academia and government, as well as Palestinian and Saudi analysts, it draws a picture of Al Qaeda extending its network’s activities beyond its “core” areas — the Saudi regime and the US — to the pro-US Arab regimes like Egypt. In the long term, the aim is to also have Israel as one area of activity, which would add an entirely new dimension to the conflict as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have thus far stayed away from Al Qaeda.

    The consensus in Israel’s intelligence establishment is that al Qaeda is intensifying its campaign against Arab states that have close ties to the United States. Al Qaeda’s long-term goal, according to the intelligence establishment, is to rid the Middle East of perceived Western implants, including the Jewish state.

    Bin Laden confirmed that view 21 months ago.

    Accusing the moderate Arab regimes of backing the Bush administration in the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, he described them as “Jahiliya” heathens — the Arabic term for paganism practiced on the Arabian peninsula before the advent of Islam.

    In March 2003, Al Jazeera television and some Arabic Web sites carried bin Laden’s “will,” in which he said that “getting rid of the Arab regimes is an Islamic commandment because they are heretical and cooperate with America.”

    Until Taba, there has been speculation in Egypt as to why it had been spared from the terrorist attacks that in the past three years have hit Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, Bali, Madrid and other places. Some analysts even ventured as far as saying Al Qaeda had explicitly excluded Egypt from their hit-list, although they had little evidence of this. And while the Egyptian government’s version of events was to downplay the importance of the group that carried the bombings — they basically argued that it consisted of local thugs who had just recently gone fundamentalist — the ongoing campaign of arrests in Sinai suggests that they are looking for something much more sophisticated than this.

    Another interesting thing from the story was a little backgrounder on Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian Islamist activist after which one of the groups that claimed the attack. Azzam is a veteran of Al Azhar, Saudi universities and the Afghan civil war, and apparently a leading proponent of the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be addressed by dismantling the pro-US Arab regimes.

    Azzam’s slogan, “The Way to Liberate Jerusalem Passes Through Cairo,” implies that the downfall of Egypt’s pro-U.S. regime will lead to Israel’s elimination from the Middle East.

    That slogan is something that over the past year I’ve heard over and over in demonstrations in support of the intifada or against the Iraq war. The idea it expressed has been endorsed by not only Islamists but also leftists who are enraged by the Mubarak regime’s support of the bogus peace process of the 1990s and the current roadmap effort. I doubt that many of the non-Islamists who chant it are even aware of its origins, but the elegant idea that freedom must come to Cairo (and Riyadh, and Amman, and Damascus and elsewhere) first has an ecumenical potential — even if their interpretation is not, as above, “Israel’s elimination from the Middle East” but rather a stronger, more united Arab stance in negotiations with Israel.

    One of the main sources for the Washington Times article was Reuven Paz, whose ideas on the meaning of the Taba bombing are explored in this article reprinted on Internet Haganah.

    Syria helping foreign fighters in Iraq?

    Yesterday, Bush threatened Syria and Iran that if they continue to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs in the lead-up to Allawi’s “election” on 30 January, there would be unspecified trouble against unspecified people.
    Confusing? Yeah…..

    The BBC filed this report this morning.

    Two key parts:
    1) Bush stated at the joint press conference with Berlusconi, “We will continue to make it clear, to both Syria and Iran that, as will other nations in our coalition… that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interests.” – This is a guised threat against Syria.

    2) Directly from the report, “As for Syria, the highest levels of government did not appear to have sanctioned such activity but there was a ‘significant amount’ of both financial support and movement across the border of foreign fighters, he [Bush] said.” – Double-speak: Although we threaten Syria, its leaders may not be involved.

    What does this mean?
    __________________________________________
    Apparently they are very tenuously insinuating that Syria and Iran had something to do with the bomb in Karabala that killed 7 and wounded 30.

    Yet if we go back a few weeks to the Fallujah report, there is no evidence that there was a massive influx of foreign fighters. Juan Cole also has several comments on Informed Comment in November documenting the lack of foreign fighters.

    Are we to believe there are no foreign fighters in Fallujah because they are in Karbala?

    And if we buy this logic leap, do we assume it is Iran and Syria and not Saudi or some place else from which these imagined army of foreign fighters come from?

    “That young intelligent visionary has my vote”

    The editor of Cairo’s Campus Magazine has a telling endorsement in this week’s issue. For those of you unfamiliar with Campus, it’s a free, English language, weekly magazine targetting upper class Egyptian youth. It’s almost all fluff, and almost never has anything remotely political. It calls itself “The voice of our generation.” Writes the editor in this week’s issue: “Anyone who knows me knows that I support Gamal Mubarak, the young, intelligent visionary definitely has my vote… assuming there is a vote.”

    Gamal is winning people over, convincing many in the crucial echelons of Egyptian society that he is the real deal, and the best choice for the future.

    Bishop’s wife recants conversion

    Wafaa Kostantin, the wife of a Coptic priest, has renounced her conversion to Islam and agreed to return to the Christian fold, Al Hayat reports today. The reason for her decision is that she “wanted to end the siege that had been imposed on her.” The problem here would be that Islam is an easy religion to join, but not such an easy religion to leave. On paper, the consequence of converting out of Islam is death. The Egyptian public prosecutor, who it seems is responsible for this affair, avoided this problem by saying in his report that she never actually converted to Islam, and therefore she “only retreated from seductive thoughts about converting to Islam.”

    A group of Egyptian intellectuals, “most of them with Islamic leanings,” have released a statement criticizing the government for “submitting to the blackmail of Coptic extremists by surrendering her to the church to be detained against her will.”

    The hypocrisy is plain as day here. A few days ago when it was thought that Kostantin had been pressured to convert to Islam by her boss in the civil service, there were protests and outrage in the Coptic community. The government, so as to avoid sectarian tensions, found the lady and handed her over to church officials who kept her under house arrest for 10 days while a team of four priests convinced her to return to the cross. Now who’s pressuring who?

    Another Failed US Policy

    The Moroccan Summitt came and went with many arguing that nothing news-worthy happened. Perhaps on the surface they are right. But for the sake of austerity, lets have a look.
    While some argue the economic reform before political reform discourse never left, the outcomes of last week’s Moroccan Summit firmly resituated and re-centered this notion.

    It is within this context that states concerned about the Arab world’s governance condition converged to discuss the US diplomatic plan to democratize the world (since Iraq has not proven a successful democratizing kick-starter). Yet, what really was on display is another expression of a US policy failure.

    Last February Al-Hyatt newspaper leaked the US’s Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI). Immediately, Arab leaders balked. Most prominently Hosni Mubarak called the plan “delusional” and an invitation to open “the gates of hell” without controlled reform (translation no reform, only adding cosmetic national councils). Yes….when one wants to bring a sudden stop to a idea’s circulation – employ the chaos argument. Other defensive, and not necessarily wrong, arguments Mubarak proffered were the “Islamists will hijack the Democratization process,” reform cannot come from outside, and reforms were already in progress.

    By mid-March 2004, the US had not realized that while it could unilaterally launch a war, it was unable to push diplomatic reform plans. Mind you, many warned that the US’s measures had no teeth. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian sniffed the GMEI out for what it was nearly as quickly as it was launched.

    This did not stop the US State department undersecretary Marc Grossman from touring the Arab world with his “we don’t want to impose this on anyone but it will be done” message in March 2004. I remember his encounter with then Egyptian FM Ahmad Mahir being more or less hostile. According to the view then democracy, one way or the other, would stop the scourge of terrorism. Terrorism is treated so simplisticly that if you eliminate authoritarianism it will magically disappear (without changing the US’s biased regional policies).

    Arab leaders responded launching diplomatic missions to Europe to try and unite Old and New Europe against the US’s imperialistic designs. In large part, they succeeded.

    The “initiative” battle was more or less over when Bush convened the G-8 summit in Georgia last June. The GMEI (then changed to Broader ME plan because in German “Greater” implied, ironically, imperialism when it was translated) was blocked by which countries did not show up rather than those in attendance. As al-Jazera.net pointed out then “Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two countries covered by the initiative but alarmed by its potential implications, declined invitations to the summit. Tunisia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League, followed suit. Leaders of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey and Yemen accepted Bush’s invitation.” So four out of 22-Arab league countries attended.

    The idea of democratizing the Arab world fades as Iraq unravels. Yet, a summit scheduled to further discuss the outdated plan in Morocco took place on 11 December. The NYT ran a story on 5 December, entitled “US Slows bid to advance Democracy in Arab world,” which forecasted the get-together’s expected agenda and limited outcomes. The NYT also followed up with a piece that correctly argued that Arab leaders used the “excuse” of the Arab-Israeli conflict as the reason not to reform. The story did not, however, choose to focus on how the US plan had changed over the year and became a fairly large diplomatic failure. I am not sure the US could have ever pushed through, morally or practically, such an ambitious reform program. However, the Moroccan summit’s limited outcomes are further evidence that the US is losing influence with its regional allies.

    Essentially, democratization efforts are being sidelined in favor of developing the social and economic aspects of the Arab world. Afterall, the Washington Consensus (WC) has been wrongly telling us for years that when the economic reform is done then political reform (read democracy which, in turn, is understood as peace) can commence. The Arab governments, knowing this convention to be wrong, simply have called for the WC to be followed. Indeed, this WC approach is a tremendously popular refrain in a certain party secretariat’s reform plans in Egypt. In the absence of any real desire or ability to oppose the Arab states, US policy shifted towards accommodate the possible.

    Anyone who has thought more than a minute about this insanely wrong and simplistic “economic reform leads to democratization” concept (derived from Modernization theory) knows that what took place last week was not a sincere attempt to create a dialogue or space for development. Morocco’s summit was “politics as usual” as the US continues to sure up support for its contradictory regional role as a destabilizing hegemon.

    I often argued last spring that when the GMEI successfully ran out of steam, we would see the proliferation of “We tried but Arab Culture resists modern democracy” arguments by US officials and more right-leaning analytical servants of political power. Nevertheless, I was outwitted again.

    Instead of blaming the culture….it looks like they instead will simply blame the rulers, who are marketed as pining to stay in power at any cost. But then again, I should of realized….the culture argument is being saved for when the US military leaves Iraq in the midst of its ongoing civil war.

    The truth of the matter is….the US never cared if there was democracy or reform. They only care about making sure that the dictators that exist in the region are friendly to the status quo minded establishment in Washington. By treating the Arab states as their vassals rather than actors (with interests and attributes) that can contribute to international political development, the US repeatedly, and likely uncaringly, continues to frame its policies erroneously. Its dialogues between equals (even when the equals aren’t equals) not orders from above that translate into every language and produce more promising, balanced policies.