Month: January 2007

Mufti of Egypt against women presidents

Book-banning, Bahai-hating, regime bigot-in-chief Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the Mufti of Egypt, has decreed that women are barred from the presidency in Egypt.

“Under Islamic sharia (religious law), a woman cannot be head of state because it is one of the duties of the position to lead Muslims in prayer and that role can only be carried out by men,” said the fatwa carried by leading state daily Al-Ahram.

“If by political rights, we mean the right to vote, stand as candidate or assume public office, then the sharia has no objection to women enjoying them, but a woman cannot serve as head of state.

“Women can stand as candidates for parliament or the consultative council, in so far as they can reconcile their duties with the rights that their husbands and children have over them.”

I’m afraid this AFP article rather misses the point when it ends with the following paragraph:

But in a country where the Muslim Brotherhood is the main opposition group, social pressures still limit women’s political role.

This implies that the MB is behind the growing conservatism of regime clerics, even though women’s representation has steadily dropped under Mubarak (partly because he removed quotas in 1987) and the ruling NDP did not give much if any backing to female in the last elections (whereas the admittedly also bigoted MB fielded one female candidate). It is becoming increasingly clear that the Mubarak regime and the NDP has its own Islamo-conservatives, and in some ways they are worse than the MB. Just look at the recent uproar in the NDP over Farouq Hosni’s veil remarks, the agitation of “clash of civilization” issues, and Mubarak’s own pronouncements over Shias’ loyalty to Iran.

Who will rid us of these turbulent priests?

Labidi on Tunisia’s Islamist problem

Our friend Kamel Labidi had an op-ed a few days ago in the Daily Star about the clashes last took place in December between Tunisian security forces and Islamists probably associated with the Groupe Salafiste pour le Combat et la Predication of Algeria. If you’ve followed this story you will remember that there was a total media blackout during which the Tunisian media pretended that those involved were a criminal gang rather than an Islamist group. The PR man for the government was later fired. Rumors abound on the Tunisian online opposition media and blogs that this might have been part of an assassination attempt, that French security services are currently in Tunis investigating, and that it’s possible that the brother of First Lady Leila al-Trabelsi (the biggest mafia in Tunisia and, many complain, the real power behind Ben Ali) used his clout to sneak in a weapon shipment that was delivered to the Islamists. Of course none of this is confirmed.

Kamel’s op-ed highlights the failure of the Ben Ali regime’s “tough stance” towards Islamists and the damage he has wrecked on political plurality and free speech in Tunisia.

Friday, January 26, 2007
Ben Ali’s dictatorship is creating more Islamists
By Kamel Labidi

Tunisian President Zein al-Abedin Ben Ali has on official occasions often referred to the legacy of the great Arab writer Ibn Khaldoun, born in Tunis in 1332. The last time he did so was nearly two months ago on the 19th anniversary of his coup against President Habib Bourguiba.

This frequent mention of Ibn Khaldoun is somehow designed to show that Ben Ali is committed to the writer’s legacy. This led Amnesty International to remind the Tunisian president in 2003 of one of Ibn Khaldoun’s most important sayings: “Since injustice calls for the eradication of the species leading to the ruin of civilization, it contains in itself a good reason for being prohibited.”

The deadly clashes in the suburbs of the Tunisian capital between security forces and Islamist gunmen at the end of December and in early January took by surprise those who were under the illusion that an Arab autocrat of Ben Ali’s ilk could learn anything from Ibn Khaldoun. According to official sources, the clashes left 12 gunmen dead and 15 under arrest, as well as two security officers killed and two others wounded. The episode dealt an unprecedented blow to the reputation of a state often publicized as one of the most effective in fighting Islamists and maintaining stability.

Continue reading Labidi on Tunisia’s Islamist problem

Some links on the Iranian situation

  • The American Foreign Policy Council launches an ad campaign to help the Bush administration make its case against Iran.
  • The geriatric king of Saudi Arabia warns against the spread of Shi’ism — even though there are probably more Christian evangelists in the Arab world than Shia ones. Pure, irresponsible, bigoted fear-mongering of the kind we’ve come to expect from the al-Saud family.
  • Some analysis of Iran’s internal politics, including attempts to reduce the clout of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (Iran’s George W. Bush), at OpenDemocracy.
  • Update: I forgot to add this important LAT story that examines the Bush administration’s claims of Iranian armed support for Iraqi Shias and finds them lacking.
  • More of the same on the opposition to Ahmedinejad’s populist saber-rattling by Gary Sick, in an interview with the Council of Foreign Relations. Sick also authored a short analysis of US Persian Gulf policy which I am pasting after the jump. It was originally published on the Gulf2000 project that Sick maintains and is a very interesting read by a top expert in this field.

Continue reading Some links on the Iranian situation

Saddam is dead, long live SADDAM

I have an op-ed about US strategy in the Middle East and the growing Sunni-Shia divide over at TomPaine.com. Let me know what you think.

Later today I will post a hyperlinked version here.

Update: The New Saddam

Making a renewed appearance in the State of the Union address this year was Iran. Bush set out an agenda that puts the U.S. on a path of confrontation with Iran—the latest installment in the haphazard collection of ideological fads that passes as Middle East policy in Washington these days.

Having made a mess of Iraq, continuing to refuse to play a constructive and even-handed role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and having gotten bored with democracy promotion, the Bush administration now appears to be fanning the flames of sectarian strife region-wide. Since September 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials have made trips to the Middle East to rally the support of what Rice has described as the “moderate mainstream� Arab states against Iran. This group has now been formalized as the “GCC + 2,� meaning the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman) as well as Egypt and Jordan.

I suggest that this new coalition be renamed to something less technocratic: the Sunni Arab-Dominated Dictatorships Against the Mullahs, or SADDAM. I have to confess I was inspired by historical precedent. In the 1980s, some of you may remember, there was another Saddam who proved rather useful against Iran. Saddam invaded Iran without provocation, sparking an eight-year-long war that was one of the 20th century’s deadliest. Along the way, the U.S. and the Arab states listed above provided much in funding, weapons and turning a blind eye when Saddam got carried away and used chemical weapons against Kurds (it did not raise that much of a fuss when he used them against Iranians, either).
Continue reading Saddam is dead, long live SADDAM

HRW: Saudi persecuting Ahmadis

HRW has sent an open letter to King Abdullah of “mainstream moderate” Saudi Arabia urging to put an end to a campaign of persecution against Ahmadis:

Your Majesty,

We write to urge you to put an immediate end to Saudi Arabias nationwide campaign to round up followers of the Ahmadi faith who have committed no crime. The campaign appears organized and designed to detain and deport all Ahmadis in Saudi Arabia because of their religious belief.

Saudi Arabia has so far arrested 56 non-Saudi followers of the Ahmadi faith, including infants and young children, and deported at least 8 to India and Pakistan. All of those arrested face deportation as soon as a flight becomes available. All but two are legally in the country, mostly long-term residents of Saudi Arabia, and have not been charged with a crime. Many other Ahmadis in Saudi Arabia, a small community of foreign workers in the country primarily from India and Pakistan, are reportedly in hiding or have left the country voluntarily for their own safety.

the crossing (and the CSF conscript)

Inspired by sandmonkey’s remark on gifts to Egypt from foreign revolutionaries, I went to see the 1973 War Panorama the other day – also to learn more about the war’s first half. (For some reason, the show stopped before the IDF built four pontoon bridges crossing the canal into the other direction and before Egypt’s Third Army got trapped.)

The panorama is a gift from North Korea:


Now my visit got quite a sad note to it, if you see this CSF conscript who is so scared from his superiors that he does not dare to answer which two countries were fighting in the 1973 war and in which year it started. (See this post on 3arabawy.)

Back to The Crossing: I’ll hire these guys next time I need to cross Salah Selim during rush hour.

I’ll hire these guys next time I need to cross Salah Selim during rush hour.
PS: On a (maybe not) related note, I’d sponsor one shark soup for anyone who can tell me the secret history of the Korean restaurant deep inside the Cleopatra bunker on Midan Tahrir.

Update: The sign on the first picture reads Panorama creators D.P.R. Korea 1989. I’ll try to enlarge the pictures.

State of the (dis)Union

I watched President Bush’s State of the Union address last night. After calling for a balanced budget (I’m not sure if it was such a priority for the Republican Congress to balance the budget, but anyway..), health care tax credits, and immigration reform, he got to the main thrust of his speech: a defense of the war in Iraq and a request for support for “the surge.” I have to admit that most of it was so familiar that it barely registered
The president reiterated US commitment to Middle East democracy, although as has been noted on this blog, Rice’s recent tour of Arab autocrats is just one sign of our complete abandonment of any pressure for serious democratic reform in the region.

Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies — and most will choose a better way when they’re given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates and reformers and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security, we must.

About Iraq, he had this to say:

If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime.    A contagion of violence could spill out across the country — and in time, the entire region could be drawn into the conflict.

For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective. Chaos is the greatest ally — their greatest ally in this struggle. And out of chaos in Iraq would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens, new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to harm America.To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and invite tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq and to spare the American people from this danger.[…]

Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work.

The response to this speech has been underwhelming. I saw headlines this morning saying the president “pleads” and “begs” for support, and that his policy faces “challenges.”
You can read the whole State of the Union here. You can read the Democratic response (it’s much shorter and more interesting)–given by newly-elected Senator Webb, who’s son is serving in Iraq–here.

Lebanon in flames

Is another civil war about to start in Lebanon? The general strike called by Hezbullah and its allies yesterday turned into a day in which 3 people were killed, dozens injured, and gangs of Sunni and Shia youth threatened and insulted each other.

Novelist Elias Khoury and historian Fawwaz Traboulsi–two major Lebanese intellectuals–are in New York at the moment and spoke at NYU the night before last. I’m not in any way qualified to analyze the labyrinthine politics of Lebanon, but I’m going to summarize some of the main points made during this talk.

Khoury and Traboulsi said that it is not in Hezbullah’s interest to start a civil war, and that Hezbullah knows this; but the movement it started–which has been using the exact same methods as last year’s “cedar revolution” to topple the government–has now painted itself into a corner, and Hezbullah’s allies (Syria and the party of Christian General Michel Aoun) may be pushing for a war because they have virtually nothing to lose from it.
Khoury referred to “the tragedy of Hezbullah”–that it is “bigger than Lebanon” (a pan-Islamic movement) and “smaller than Lebanon (it only represents one sect within the country and therefore can never take full power). In his analysis, it has long been a Syrian calculation to entrust Lebanon’s military resistance to the Israeli occupation (Hezbullah ousted the Israeli after years of fighting in the south) to a group that could not, when victorious, represent the whole country and hope to come to power–Khoury points out that a more widespread, leftists, national resisance movement was decimated by assassinations in the 1980s. Thus in his view Hezbullah is as much a tool of Syrian as of Iran.

Which points to another facet of the situation in Lebanon: the way every group there has an outside backer. It is common-place to speak of Hezbullah as “backed by Iran,” but Traboulsi and Khoury were at pains to make clear that the way politics works in Lebanon is that every major player turns to powers outside the country to solidify its position–or is used by powers outside the country to promote their interests (the government is backed by the US, for example, the Sunni community by Saudi Arabia). The connection between Lebanese politics and regional politics is one reason that–seemingly overnight–the main sectarian conflict has become that between Sunni and Shias, not Muslims and Christians. This new divide is one of the many consequences of Iraq.