Month: February 2007

Mahdi Army on Iran “break”

Let’s take a break from this sectarian warfare, go see our pals in Iran, and let the Americans take out the Sunnis for us. We can come back when they’re ready to leave. That’s seems to be the thinking of the Mahdi Army and their allies in the Iraqi government, anyway:

Senior commanders of the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been spirited away to Iran to avoid being targeted in the new security push in Baghdad, a high-level Iraqi official told the Guardian yesterday.
On the day the Iraqi government formally launched its crackdown on insurgents and amid disputed claims about the whereabouts of Mr Sadr, the official said the Mahdi army leadership had withdrawn across the border into Iran to regroup and retrain.

“Over the last three weeks, they [Iran] have taken away from Baghdad the first and second-tier military leaders of the Mahdi army,” he said. The aim of the Iranians was to “prevent the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Shia militias” in the Iraqi capital – one of the chief aims of the US-backed security drive.

Ethnic cleansing, step by step

So Israel occupied the West Bank and then decides who can or can’t build huts:

Israel razes Bedouin huts in West Bank
Wed Feb 14, 2:27 PM ET

HATHALEEN, West Bank – The Israeli army on Wednesday demolished seven huts and tents belonging to Bedouin Arabs who live near Jewish settlements in the southern West Bank, residents and the army said.

Several of the Palestinian men displaced by the demolition in the Hathaleen area southeast of Hebron scuffled with soldiers as the forces removed mattresses and other belongings from the homes before two bulldozers knocked them down.

Some of the women threw stones at the soldiers while others fell to the ground, sobbing.

Four Palestinians were detained by the soldiers, according to witnesses.

A total of 75 Palestinians were displaced by the demolition, residents said. The army said the structures did not have building permits and the Palestinians had been warned to take them down.

“We went to court to try to stop the demolitions but we didn’t succeed,” said resident Mahmud Abu Aram.

The army’s Civil Administration, which issues demolition orders, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the huts were knocked down.

Israeli apartheid

I should have posted this earlier but have been just too busy. Israeli Apartheid Week is being held for the first time in New York this year (it’s a three-year-old event and is being held in several cities in Canada and the UK).

You can visit www.endisraeliapartheid.net to read all about it, including schedules, informational materials and press coverage. I attended the opening event on Monday night, which had some excellent speakers and some small groups of young Zionists affiliated with Campus Watch or some such organization, who liked to ask questions such as :”Why do the Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews?”.

Tonight in New York there is an event at the Brecht Forum discussing Israel’s discriminatory marriage laws–not the most romantic thing to do on Valentine’s Day, but somewhat a propos.

New Saudi succession rules: there’s a regime that has it together

As my friend Hugh Miles notes in this Telegraph piece, something of a landmark constitutional change has taken place in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi Arabia has significantly reduced the powers of its absolute monarchy by quietly removing the king’s authority to choose his own successor.

This landmark constitutional reform, enacted by royal order last October but only disclosed this week, fundamentally changes the way the desert kingdom – which controls 25 per cent of the world’s oil – is governed.

Until now, the king alone has selected his successor, known as the crown prince, from among the sons and grandsons of King Abdul-Aziz, the founding leader of Saudi Arabia, better known as Ibn Saud.

In future, a committee consisting of senior members of the royal family, called the Bay’ah Council, will vote for the crown prince from three candidates named by the king.

The council is empowered to reject the king’s choice and can even impose a crown prince against the monarch’s will. It can also declare the king or crown prince incapable of ruling.

The nitty gritty of the changes can be found here and an explanation by Prince Turki al-Faisal was delivered at St. Antony’s College last week.

What’s interesting about this is that there now seems a clear succession mechanism — one of course that is still extremely restricted and undemocratic, but that has the advantage of being clear. Contrast that with the utter confusion over Egypt’s own succession system — the refusal of President Mubarak to appoint a vice-president in 25 years and the uncertainty about whether Gamal Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, or someone else altogether will succeed Mubarak.

I usually hate to praise the Saudis, but here as in so many other respects, they’re doing things a lot more professionally than the Egyptians. Just consider how Saudi Arabia has completely eclipsed Egypt as a regional mediator, and how it actually seems to have a foreign policy of its own. There’s been much grumbling about this in the Egyptian press lately. Salama Ahmed Salama, one of the most respected establishment columnists, recently noted in a column on Iran that:

During the Cold War, the Arabs were not the sheep blindly following US policy that they have become. They developed independent foreign policies that were based on Arab interests. Today, the Arabs’ problems are growing and reveal an total inability to manage their internal problems. The Arabs are in such an impasse that they are accusing Iran of having expansionist ambitions.

. . .

Arab policies, notably the foreign policy of Egypt, seems to be magnetically attracted to the US. This is evident from the confusion of Egyptian diplomacy. [Egypt] accused Iran of being behind the murder of its ambassador, Ehab al-Sherif, in Baghdad. Then, it denied that it had made these accusations only to later withdraw that denial — even though it is obvious that it was Sunni followers of al-Zarqawi who were behind the assassination.

The rest of the column (from about a week ago) went on to suggest that closer Arab relations with Iran would be positive, if only to shake off the “vicious circle of American hegemony over the region.” But even if there were criticism of Arab states, it was really aimed at Egypt. One only needs to take at the recent Saudi initiatives to deal directly with the Iranians to see that Saudi policy is a lot more independent. The conclusion: Saudi may be a pretty twisted country, but its regime has its act together. You can’t really say that about Egypt.

I was talking about this phenomenon with an Egyptian friend a couple of nights ago and he despaired: before the 1952 Free Officers’ coup, he said, Egypt was a country with money and clout. By 1969 Nasser had spent it all. We’ve been beggars ever since.

Reed lectures on “Understanding Iran”

Go here for a series of lectures on Iran, including:

William Beeman,
The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”:
How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other

Gary Sick
The United States and Iran:
Is a Military Clash Inevitable?

Minoo Moallem
Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister:
Transnational Formations of Islamic Nationalism and Fundamentalism in Iran

Scott Sagan
How to Keep the Bomb from Iran

Darius Rejali
Sickness, War, and Remembrance:
A Visit to Iran

Bahraini blogger Mahmoud interrogated, sued for libel

Mahmoud is the “grandfather” of Bahraini bloggers and is now being sued by a minister for a critical comment he wrote on Mahmoud’s Den. Read all about it here:

I was a guest of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Adliya this morning. I was called yesterday and asked – very politely – to present myself at the CID’s Anti-Economic Crimes Unit “for a chat and some tea” which I accepted with alacrity and with not a little trepidation. The fear; however, was unfounded.

. . .

Well, a public figure has taken umbrage with what I have written against him, and rather than contacting me to complain, or even entered a public comment refuting what I have written, he went through the legal route and lodged a case against me with the police, which is fully his right of course; however, that is not going to change the subjectivity of calling someone “stupid” or any other adjective used to describe someone or change the fact of his performance in the previous Shura council nor the fact that he has had business cases levied against him at some point of his life.

I am rather disappointed with this situation of course and I am unsure what The Right Honourable Minister His Excellency Mr. Mansour bin Hassan bin Rajab, Esquire, is going to gain from this. This action to me is nothing more than trying to shut his critics up by force of law – if any of these cases actually go to court in the first place – waste the courts’ time and efforts as they do have much more important cases going through them that take years, or at best terrorise his critics into submitting to never criticising him again! Well, this ain’t gonna work with me! I criticise to better this country as a concerned citizen, and shall continue to do so regardless of these frivolous cases.

Good luck to him.

Yediot gaffe on MB(?)

Update: See comments, there is some confusion as to which MPs people are referring to here.
Update 2: Haaretz picks up an AP story that has the same confusion about the names.

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot’s website, Ynetnews.com, had a piece today accusing two NDP members of calling for the development of a nuclear bomb as a deterrent against, or to get rid of, Israel. But the people they quote, I believe, are both members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed al-Katatny, in fact, is the head of the MB’s parliamentary bloc. Amer I am not so sure about — there is a Mohammed Amer among the MB MPs, but it’s a common enough name. Khalifa is not MB.

“That cursed Israel is trying to destroy al-Aqsa mosque…Nothing will work with Israel except for a nuclear bomb that wipes it out of existence.” Mohamed el-Katatny of President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) told the Egyptian Parliament.

During the special parliamentary meeting, which was convened to discuss controversial renovations near the Mugrabi Gate in East Jerusalem, other members of el-Katatny’s party called to revoke Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

“The war with Israel is still ongoing whether we like it or not,” NDP legislator Khalifa Radwan said.

Mohamed Amer, another ruling party member, said: “What this (Israeli) gang is doing makes me demand that we trample over all the agreements we signed.”

The parliament has little say in national security issues or foreign policy, ultimately dictated by Mubarak who has rejected similar calls in the past.

That gaffe aside, of course such comments don’t necessarily mean that much. Israeli ministers have threatened to nuke the Aswan Dam in the past. But — if these quotes are accurate, and I won’t assume they necessarily are — should the MB pursue a more careful line between nationalist sentiment and having a discourse that is acceptable to the international community? Like on most important issues, the MB is ambiguous about its attitude towards Israel. On the one hand it has said that, if it were governing Egypt, it would not violate the terms of Camp David. On the other, when there such crises as what’s happening at al-Aqsa right now (the millionth evidence that Israelis are provocateurs with zero interest in peace), it’s only normal that they push for a correction in Egyptian foreign policy that could include, eventually, dropping Camp David and pursuing a nuclear deterrent. But Katatni’s call to wipe Israel off the map isn’t exactly, as they say in Washington, helpful — for Egypt or for the MB.

Blood money

The Israelis are so brazen in their extortion racket on US politicians this is what you find in a newspaper like Haaretz:

Israel has started pondering a question that can’t be avoided for long, and whose strategic significance is not in doubt: How much American money should Israel ask for?

Read all of it, very instructive.

Tunisia in Le Journal

The great Moroccan magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire (which recently lost its editor-in-chief, Abou Bakr Jamai, a fact that saddens me deeply and on which I will write about at a later point) is one of the few publications on the planet — that’s no exaggeration — that will publish long, critical pieces on the Tunisian regime. Here Catherine Graciet does an interesting political-economic analysis of a regime that is heading for self-destruction, a small bio of “General-President” Ben Ali, and an interview with the leading dissident Moncef Marzouki, who recently returned to Tunisia after a long exile in Paris (he had made the announcement on al-Jazeera, as we had mentioned here) and was attacked, put under house arrest:

Vous êtes rentré en Tunisie le 21 octobre 2006 après cinq ans d’exil en France. Pourquoi?

Moncef Marzouki : J’ai quitté la Tunisie en 2001 pour des raisons alimentaires. J’avais accepté la prison, une tentative de meurtre et la diffamation mais quand on m’a chassé de l’université et de l’hôpital où je travaillais, je me suis retrouvé sans ressources. Je suis venu en France car on m’avait proposé un poste de professeur en médecine à la faculté de Bobigny. En octobre 2006, j’ai lancé un appel à la désobéissance civile en Tunisie sur Al Jazeera. Je ne pouvais donc plus laisser les autres affronter seuls le régime de Ben Ali et me devais de donner l’exemple en rentrant.

Comment s’est passé votre retour ?

J’ai été de facto mis en résidence surveillée pendant deux mois et le régime a usé de nouvelles techniques de répression à mon égard. J’ai été agressé dans la rue à quatre reprises par des voyous qui m’ont craché dessus et insulté. A deux reprises, en pleine rue, des femmes se sont jetées sur moi en hurlant que j’avais tenté de les violer. Pour éviter d’être agressé, je sortais en permanence accompagné d’amis. Une fois, j’ai voulu soutenir un prisonnier politique en lui rendant visite en compagnie de trois autres personnes. Notre voiture a été prise d’assaut par une centaine de voyous qui m’ont encore insulté et craché dessus. L’attaque a été si violente que le véhicule dans lequel nous étions tanguait. Pendant ce temps, la police politique filmait la scène. Une autre fois, je me suis rendu à un enterrement et l’on a jeté des œufs pourris sur la voiture dans laquelle j’étais.

I find the Tunisian regime an interesting one for some of the parallels it has with Egypt — I often think of the current situation in Egypt as analogous in some respects to Tunisia in the mid-1980s.

Update: This is really not a cheap shot, I just came across it soon after putting up this post — an interview with the new US Ambassador in Tunis that appeared in the Tunisian magazine Réalités, which is legal and therefore completely under security control:

Quelles sont vos premières impressions sur la Tunisie ?

Elles sont très positives. Le peuple tunisien est très chaleureux. Le pays est très beau, son histoire est magnifique, je trouve que la Tunisie est un modèle pour les autres pays de la région

And a bit later in the interview:

Je voudrais ici insister sur l’idéal humaniste de notre politique étrangère pour aider d’autres à réaliser les valeurs universelles auxquelles nous aspirons tous : la liberté, la prospérité et la sécurité.