Egypt: New ElBaradei Interview
December 23rd, 2010 by Evan
In a recent interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm, Mohamed ElBaradei derided the Mubarak regime and countered criticism of his reluctance to personally lead the Egyptian opposition. Egyptians have increasingly turned to “radical” Islam as the state has failed them, ElBaradei said: “They’ve lost their identity as citizens because they have been treated as slaves. […] They feel a sense of marginalization. They feel a sense of hopelessness. They feel that there is no future. So you have a growing sense of frustration, and that leads to radicalism.” In response to critiques of his leadership, ElBaradei said “If I hit my head against the wall, my head will break. If all the Egyptians hit their heads against the wall, then the wall will break. […] So if I see 100,000 people in the streets, yes I will be with you. But I’m not going to go into a demonstration of 50 people. It’s a question of strategy, and it’s a question of tactics.”
Posted in Egypt, Freedom, Human Rights, Islam and Democracy | Comment »
Tunisia: Suicides Spark Unemployment Riots
December 23rd, 2010 by Evan
At Babylon and Beyond, Amro Hassan writes that the recent high-profile suicides of two unemployed men have sparked a series of violent demonstrations in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. Most recently Hussein Nagi Felhi, an unemployed 24-year-old, committed suicide after shouting “no for misery, no for unemployment” during a rally earlier this week. According to Hassan, “The death triggered protests met with tear gas after scores of jobless youths hurled stones at police and set fire to an administrative building in a nearby town.” The Tunisia-based blog Groupe Nawaat has video of and details about the protests in Arabic here.
Posted in Protests, Tunisia | Comment »
Kuwait: Parliament Challenges the Prime Minister
December 23rd, 2010 by Evan
Bloomberg’s Fiona MacDonald and Dahlia Kholaif report on growing tension between Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah and the Parliament. MPs recently summoned the Prime Minister to answer questions about the recent police crackdown on activists and opposition politicians. Al-Sabah, the nephew of Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, has clashed with the Parliament before. In December 2009, he survived a no confidence vote and he has dissolved the Parliament twice. According to MacDonald and Kholaif, the recent clash indicates a greater willingness on the part of the opposition to challenge the the regime. “The opposition is widening and gaining more support,” Kuwaiti economist Hajjaj Bu Khudour told the reporters.
Posted in Kuwait, Legislation, Protests, Uncategorized | Comment »
Clinton Welcomes UN Resolution on Iran
December 22nd, 2010 by Evan
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement welcoming the UN General Assembly’s latest resolution on Iran’s human rights record. “The international community is deeply concerned about ongoing human rights abuses in Iran and the plight of Iranian citizens facing persecution at the hands of their government. Yesterday’s UN resolution recognizes the severity of this troubling situation, particularly the continued harassment, persecution, and violent repression of political opponents, human rights defenders, and a wide variety of civil society representatives.” Clinton concluded the statement by reaffirming the United States’ commitment to stand with Iranian activists: “To all those Iranians struggling to lift your voices and speak up for fundamental freedoms and human rights, you are not alone. The United States and the international community stand with you.”
Posted in Human Rights, Iran, United Nations | Comment »
Egypt: A Guide to Succession
December 22nd, 2010 by Evan
Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, authored a piece for the Carnegie Endowment’s Egypt Election Guide on preparations for the upcoming presidential transition. The recent parliamentary election indicated that the ruling National Democratic Party is prepared to manage the succession, Brown writes. But questions remain about who the successor will be and whether the handover of power will lead to increased repression or a period of liberalization. On Gamal Mubarak’s possibly candidacy, Brown writes that while the president’s son has done a poor job of consolidating his political position, few viable alternatives have emerged.
Posted in Egypt | Comment »
“Party Building in the Middle East”
December 22nd, 2010 by Jason
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) has released a new article titled “Party Building in the Middle East.” Written by Les Campbell, NDI’s senior associate and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, the article seeks to “enumerate some of the key achievements of democracy assistance in the Arab world over the past decade; describe the strategies democracy assistance practitioners employ in their work; and explain, through four case studies and the voices of recipients, how specific interventions have contributed to the advancement of democracy in the Middle East and north Africa.” The case studies include Yemen, Morocco, the West Bank and Gaza, and Egypt.
Posted in Civil Society, Democracy Promotion, Egypt, Elections, Foreign Aid, Morocco, NGOs, Palestine, US foreign policy, Women, Yemen | Comment »
Iraq: Government Finally Seated…Now What?
December 22nd, 2010 by Jason
With the Iraqi government finally in place, commentators and average Iraqis are beginning to take stock of the nine-month process and look toward the future. Liz Sly, writing in The Washington Post, profiles Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the claims that he may be “another Iraqi strongman in the making,” noting that his critics say he has an “authoritarian streak.” Sean Kane of the United States Institute of Peace argues at The Middle East Channel that “Iraq’s Parliament now offers the best hope for political change and progress towards the consolidation of Iraq’s fledgling democracy.” Kane goes on to say that the new found power of Speaker Osama Najafi of Iraqiyya and his First Deputy Qusayal-Suhail, a leading member of the Sadrist coalition, is “noteworthy and represents an opportunity,” for the parliament to exert itself more prominently into Iraqi politics.
Meanwhile, the BBC and The New York Times blog At War both provide perspectives from average Iraqis. One young man from Baghdad told the BBC that the new government “‘is like running a car with cooking oil.’” And a man in Najaf told At War “‘The same people who were against the government and attempting to weaken it by all means portrayed themselves as trouble solvers. […] Now they are part of it. Let’s see what they will bring to the people. I hope they are honest.’”
Posted in Iraq, Political Parties, Sectarianism | Comment »
Kuwait: MPs Protest Government Crackdown
December 22nd, 2010 by Evan
Kuwaiti opposition parliamentarians protested the ongoing detention of legal scholar Obaid al-Wasmi outside the Kuwaiti parliament Tuesday. Independent MP Mubarak al-Waalan told AFP “We condemn the government measures against Wasmi and the brutal police beating,” while opposition leader Mussallam al-Barrak accused members of the ruling Al-Sabah family of directly ordering the attack. Al-Wasmi was beaten and arrested December 8 (video here) following an opposition meeting in Kuwait City.
Posted in Human Rights, Kuwait, Protests | Comment »
Iran: Sit-in for Sotoudeh at the UN
December 21st, 2010 by Jason
Freedom House released a statement yesterday expressing “solidarity and support for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and other women’s rights activists,” who began a sit-in Monday at the United Nations in Geneva in support of imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. Paula Schriefer, Director of Advocacy at Freedom House, said in the statement that the “human rights abuses inflicted on its people by the Iranian government, particularly on women, are in direct violation of international human rights treaties to which Iran is a state party.” Gissou Nia, a researcher and analyst at the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, writes at CNN that Sotoudeh was arrested for “a range of ’security’ offenses, including her legal representation of Ebadi,” and that the human rights lawyer has been denied “the ultimate legal right: a fair trial.” Nia goes on to describe the role lawyers have in protecting human rights in Iran and calls on the international community to “commit itself to protecting lawyers in Iran from arrest and imprisonment.”
Posted in Freedom, Human Rights, Iran, Judiciary, United Nations, Women | Comment »
Turkey: AKP’s Moderation
December 21st, 2010 by Evan
Writing at Foreign Policy, Gonul Tol counters criticism of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). “The party’s performance in government suggests that pressures from the opposition and from within its own diverse constituency have led the AKP to pursue centrist policies at the expense of alienating more conservative segments of its base,” Tol writes. The central question is will AKP continue to pursue economic and political reforms before and after the 2011 parliamentary election or “suffer from incumbent fatigue.”
Posted in Islam and Democracy, Turkey | Comment »
Lebanon: Khamenei Dismisses STL, “Justice is More Important” Than Stability
December 21st, 2010 by Jason
Speaking during a meeting with the Qatari emir yesterday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) “‘a rubber-stamp one whose verdict is null and void whatever it is.’” The Daily Star reports that the statement from the leader of Iran was not well received by many in Lebanon. “Labor Minister Butros Harb criticized Khamenei’s remarks, saying that it was up to the Lebanese to decide, ‘and not for others to dictate to them how to deal with the tribunal.’” Also in The Daily Star, Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir worries about a possible take over by Hizbullah: “The way Hizbullah is acting and their talk about becoming a significant force leads us to believe that if the party continues to pursue its plan it could seize power.” The patriarch also contradicted the recent assertion by Roger Cohen that stability “trumps” justice, saying “‘Justice is justice and if we sacrifice it once, we could sacrifice it many times. Stability is important but justice is more important and guarantees stability.’”
Posted in Hezbollah, Iran, Lebanon, Political Parties, Sectarianism | Comment »
Egypt: Parliamentary Elections Give Power to Security Officials
December 21st, 2010 by Evan
In a new piece for Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egyptian activist Saad el-Din Ibrahim argues that the recent parliamentary elections strengthened the position of the security services in Egyptian politics. According to Ibrahim, nearly 10% of the seats in the new parliament are held by former police generals, double the amount in the outgoing parliament. Citing Soviet tactics learned by the Egyptian security services in the 1950s and 1960s, Ibrahim expresses concern that the police generals will eventually undermine the Egypt’s political system and urges monitors to keep close watch on the police parliamentarians during the next term.
Posted in Egypt, Freedom, Human Rights | Comment »
Iraq: Maliki Cabinet Confirmed
December 21st, 2010 by Jason
The Iraqi parliament confirmed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet today, ending the country’s political deadlock. Reuters Africa has a list of the “top officials” in the government and the AFP has compiled a timeline documenting the nine month impasse. Juan Cole provides details of the circumstances that caused parliamentarians to delay the vote yesterday. According to Cole, the Sadrist Movement is concerned that the temporary candidates Maliki put forward as place holders yesterday would mean that “the ministers of the security ministries would in the end be the opposite of those already agreed upon,” while members of Iraqiyya were unable to agree on a candidate to put forward for Minister of Defense.
Update: Reidar Visser remains skeptical of the new government, calling it “XXL-sized and unwieldy.” However, he does credit P.M. Maliki for handling the situation “quite masterfully,” by “creat(ing) an end game where many from the other parties were forced to abandon their principles.”
Posted in Iraq, Political Parties | Comment »
U.S. Must Take Action on Egypt Rhetoric
December 21st, 2010 by Evan
Neil Hicks, International Policy Advisor at Human Rights First, urges the Obama administration to turn its democracy and human rights rhetoric into action. The White House’s approach to Egypt has been inconsistent, Hicks writes. “When Secretary of State Clinton held a press conference in Washington D.C. with the Egyptian Foreign Minister just prior to the election on November 10 she failed to mention human rights or the need for the Egyptian government to do more to meet its own commitments to move forward with democracy and political reform.” Continuing to support the status quo in Egypt will only hurt U.S. interests in the long run, Hicks concludes.
Posted in Diplomacy, Egypt, Foreign Aid, US foreign policy | Comment »
Egypt: ANHRI and EOHC Condemn Fatwa Issued Against ElBaradei
December 20th, 2010 by Jason
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHC) has released a statement (Arabic) condemning a fatwa issued against Mohamed ElBaradei. According to a report in Al Masry Al Youm, the group calls on “intellectuals to challenge such calls, which historically authorized the assassinations of former President Anwar Sadat and the intellectual Farag Fouda, and the attempted assassination of novelist Naguib Mahfouz.” The fatwa was issued by Mahmoud Amer, head of the al-Sunna al-Mohamadiya religious group, and says that “ElBaradei incites civil unrest […] For this, the temporal rulers, represented by the government and President Hosni Mubarak, have the right to kill him if he does not desist.” The executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Gamal Eid, called the fatwa “reminiscent of the Fatwas that spread in the nineties of the past century […] We cannot live that atmosphere of terror again , the government has to take a clear stance from these Fatwas to kill opponents as the classic governmental indifference in such situations would imply approval and a license to kill.”
Posted in Egypt, Human Rights | Comment »
Egypt: Economic and Political Decline
December 20th, 2010 by Evan
Lahcen Achy, resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, has a piece at Babylon and Beyond outlining “immediate threats” to stability in Egypt. Inflation, a failed tax system, youth unemployment, rising poverty rates, and widespread corruption all challenge the Mubarak regime’s narrative that Egypt’s economy has improved recently. Achy adds that reform will not be possible without “a fairly elected parliament and a government that people can trust.” Further attempts to fix Egypt’s economy under the current political system will likely accomplish little and may “lead to more troubled times ahead.”
Reuter’s Alistair Lyon has a new report documenting Egypt’s declining influence in the Arab world. In recent years, Egypt has remained static, Lyon writes, while other countries in the region—most notably Turkey, Iran, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—have taken steps forward economically and politically. Egypt’s stagnation is largely a result of domestic issues. Lyon reports that “political challenges sucks up much energy, while corruption and an inert bureaucracy have hollowed out institutions and undercut economic reform efforts.”
Posted in Egypt, Reform | Comment »
Iran: Subsidy Cuts Begin, Jundallah Members Executed
December 20th, 2010 by Jason
The Iranian government slashed subsidies for gasoline yesterday according to a report in The New York Times. “After midnight on Sunday, the price of subsidized gasoline jumped to about $1.44 a gallon from about 38 cents a gallon.” The report also states that there was an increase in the presence of security forces in anticipation of any unrest. Tehran Bureau provides reactions from Iranians in Tehran. Muhammad Sahimi explains that the rise in prices affects more than just fuel: “The price of electricity has tripled from 0.75 cents/KWh to 2.2 cents/KWh. The price of water has similarly increased by a factor of three. The price of natural gas for home heating and cooking has increased by a factor of four, and for vehicle fuel by a factor of ten. The price of flour has increased by a factor of 40.”
Also, eleven members of the Jundallah terrorist group have been executed in Iran. The group has recently claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Chabahar on December 15. According to an Iranian official, the men were executed for “‘carrying out terrorist attacks in the province (Sistan-Baluchestan) during the recent months, fighting with police, and martyring several innocent people.’”
Posted in Iran, Oil, sanctions | Comment »
Kuwait: Government Arrests Constitutional Scholar
December 20th, 2010 by Evan
Prominent Kuwaiti legal scholar Obaid al-Wasmi was detained last week after he gave a speech at an opposition gathering that was disrupted by security forces. The prosecutor’s office is reportedly holding al-Wasmi on charges that he had spread “false news abroad” and was actively working to undermine the emir. The detention is the latest development in a government crackdown on opposition groups and media in Kuwait.
Posted in Freedom, Human Rights, Judiciary, Kuwait | Comment »
U.S. Urges Egypt to Makes Promised Reforms
December 20th, 2010 by Evan
Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, authored an op-ed in Saturday’s Washington Post urging the Egyptian government to fulfill its commitments to pursue political reform. Citing low turnout and widespread reports of government interference, Posner wrote that while the recent parliamentary elections were not credible in the eyes of most Egyptians, the 2011 presidential elections present another opportunity for Egyptian authorities to enhance citizens’ confidence in government. Posner specifically called for an end to the decades-long state of emergency, the enactment of promised counterterrorism legislation that would help protect the rights of Egyptians, and less restriction on the media and NGOs.
Posted in Democracy Promotion, Diplomacy, Egypt, Elections | Comment »
Iraq: Government Formation Delayed, Sadrists Make Gains
December 20th, 2010 by Jason
After initial reports that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would announce his cabinet today, speaker of the parliament Osama al-Nujaifi told reporters that the parliament would not meet to discuss cabinet appointments. There have also been reports that the prime minister would announce half of his cabinet posts today, with the rest to be announced later. Maliki has until December 25 to unveil his government which will then be subject to parliamentary approval. An editorial in Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal warned that “the deal could fall apart,” while an editorial in today’s The Daily Star argues “if Iraq’s lawmakers cannot take into account the needs of their populace - irrespective of race or creed - regression will surely follow.”
Meanwhile, Jack Healy writes in The New York Times that the Sadrist Movement, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, is “tracing a path mapped out by militant groups like Hezbollah or Hamas, which built popular support by augmenting their armed wings with social and political groups that ran schools and hospitals and handed out jobs.” Healy also reports that the group is vying for the governorship of Maysan province.
Update: P.M. Maliki appeared with Speaker Nujaifi at a press conference Monday evening in Baghdad to announce his list of cabinet officials according to the Associated Press. However, “nearly one-third of the nominees were only acting ministers, an attempt to buy time to work out disagreements with a key part of al-Maliki’s coalition — the hardline Shiite faction loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.”
Posted in Iraq, Islamist movements, Political Parties, Sectarianism | Comment »
