An
uncertain calm has settled
over the small island kingdom
of Bahrain. The wave of peaceful
pro-democracy protests from
February 14-17 culminated
in bloodshed, including the
brutal murder of seven activists,
some of whom were asleep
in tents, by the armed forces.
On orders from above, the
army withdrew from the roundabout
on the outskirts of the capital
of Manama where the protests
have been centered, and since
shortly after the seven deaths
it has observed calls for
restraint. Thousands of jubilant
protesters seized the moment
to reoccupy the roundabout,
the now infamous Pearl Circle.
In commemoration of the dead,
the demonstrators have renamed
it Martyrs’ Circle. Full
Story>>
When
anti-monarchical revolution
swept the Middle East in
the 1950s, Jordan was one
of the few populous Arab
states to keep its king.
King ‘Abdallah II, son of
Hussein, the sole Hashemite
royal to ride out the republican
wave, has all the credentials
to perform a similar balancing
act. Aged 49, he has been
in charge for a dozen years,
unlike his father, who was
just 17 and only a few months
into his reign when the Egyptian
potentate abdicated in 1952.
And the son has grown accustomed
to weathering storms on the
borders, whether the Palestinian intifada to
the west or the US invasion
of Iraq to the east. Full
Story>>
It
took 18 days of mass mobilization,
the deaths of hundreds and
the wounding of thousands,
the crippling of Egypt’s
tourism industry and the
crash of its stock market,
to bring an end to the 30-year
presidency of Husni Mubarak.
And almost every minute of
the revolution was televised. Full
Story>>
There
are moments in world affairs
that call for the suspension
of disbelief. At these junctures,
caution ought to be suppressed
and cynicism forgotten to
let joy and wonderment resound.
Across the globe, everyone,
at least everyone with a
heart, knows that the Egyptian
revolution of 2011 is such
a time. Full
Story>>
With
cameras and Twitter feeds
trained on Tahrir Square
in Cairo, a series of large
opposition protests have
unfolded in an eponymous
square in the Yemeni capital
of Sanaa, as well as other
major cities across the country.
The protests have been organized
and coordinated by a cross-ideological
amalgam known as the Joint
Meeting Parties (JMP, sometimes
also translated as the Common
Forum), and have been identifiable
by their careful deployment
of protest paraphernalia
-- sashes, hats, posters,
flyers and more -- tinted
in gradations of pink. At
first glance, these protests
seem to have generated substantial
concessions from President
‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih, who,
having occupied some form
of executive office since
1978, is the longest-serving
ruler in the Arab world after
Muammar al-Qaddafi. Salih
pledged on February 2 to
abandon his efforts to amend
the constitution so as to
be able to run again himself
or engineer the succession
of his son, Ahmad, to the
presidency. Much as these
steps might appear to presage
far-reaching political change
in Yemen, perhaps even a
colored proto-revolution,
there are good reasons for
skepticism. Full
Story>>
The
year 2011 has brought Lebanon’s
political tug of war into
the streets again, with thousands
of protesters burning tires
and blocking roads over the
apparent failure of their
candidate to secure the office
of prime minister. But months
of hype to the contrary,
this time the raucous demonstrations
were not staged by Hizballah
and its allies in the March
8 coalition so named after
a day of protests in 2005
designed to “thank” Syria
before its withdrawal of
forces from Lebanon. Instead,
the protests were mounted
by the rival March 14 alliance,
so named for the day of “Syria
out!” rallies that followed
less than a week later. Full
Story>>
Amidst
the monumental Egyptian popular
uprising of 2011, Plan A for
the Egyptian regime and the
Obama administration was for
Husni Mubarak to remain president
of Egypt indefinitely. They
have now moved on to Plan B. Full
Story>>
Every
US administration has its
mouthpiece in Washington’s
think tank world, its courtier
that will slavishly praise
its every utterance. For
the blessedly bygone Bush
administration, that echo
chamber was the American
Enterprise Institute and
the neo-conservative broadsheets
in its orbit. For the Obama
administration, it is the
National Security Network,
an operation founded in 2006
to bring “strategic focus
to the progressive national
security community.” Full
Story>>
The
January 14 departure of Tunisian
President Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali amidst popular protests
was a long overdue demonstration
of the possibility for genuine
democratization in the Arab
world. Mohamed Bouazizi,
the street vendor whose self-immolation
set off the protests, tapped
a deep vein of anger in Tunisian
society at police harassment
and the general arbitrariness
of the state, but also at
severe, endemic economic
inequality sharpened now
by rising global food prices.
It remains to be determined,
however, to what degree the
toppling of Ben Ali will
transform Tunisia into a
representative democracy
whose citizens enjoy greater
economic opportunities. Ben
Ali was the head of a system
of one-party rule, and that
system did not board a private
plane along with him and
his immediate entourage as
they headed into exile. Full
Story>>
Soon
after the onset of protests
which eventually toppled
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in
Tunisia, a wave of riots
swept through Algeria as
well, with many neighborhoods
in the capital of Algiers
and dozens of smaller cities
overwhelmed by thousands
of angry young men who closed
down streets with burning
tires, attacked police stations
with rocks and paving stones,
and set fire to public buildings.
For Algerians a few years
older than the rioters, these
events recalled the uprising
of October 1988, in which
violent unrest upended the
single-party state. Full
Story>>
For
the first time in decades,
Tunisia is free of one-man
rule. The extraordinary events
of December 2010 and January
2011 have been nothing less
than a political revolution:
The consistent pressure of
popular fury forced President
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali first
to make an unprecedented
promise to relinquish power;
then pushed him to step down;
and finally halted an attempt
at unconstitutional transfer
of power, setting the stage
for elections to be held
at an undetermined date in
the near to mid-term future. Full
Story>>
On
the afternoon of January
6, a number of youths found
a suspicious-looking cardboard
box inside the Church of
St. Antonious in the Upper
Egyptian city of Minya. From
its appearance, the box seemed
to contain explosives, so
the youths slowly removed
it from the church, placing
it in the middle of the street.
They then phoned the police,
who arrived immediately and
whisked the box away. Full
Story>>
The
Egyptian parliamentary elections
that ended on December 5
defied expectations, not
because the ruling National
Democratic Party again dominates
Parliament but because of
the lengths to which it proved
willing to go to engineer
its monopoly. Official and
unofficial ruling-party candidates
garnered 93.3 percent of
the seats in the national
assembly, while marginal
opposition parties received
3 percent and the Muslim
Brothers got a lone seat
to be occupied by a member
who would not abide by the
Brothers’ boycott of the
runoff. While these results
are identical to the outcome
of the 1995 elections, the
reaction this time has been
much more severe. Full
Story>>
Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online
Feature
In
August 2006, a 27-year old
pharmacist started blogging
anonymously about her futile
hunt for a husband in Mahalla
al-Kubra, an industrial city
60 miles north of Cairo in
the Nile Delta. Steeped in
satirical humor, the blog
of this “wannabe bride” turned
into a powerful critique
of everything that is wrong
with how middle-class Egyptians
meet and marry. The author
poked fun at every aspect
of arranged marriage -- from
the split-second decisions
couples are expected to make
after hour-long meetings
about their lifetime compatibility
to the meddling relatives
and nosy neighbors who introduce
them to each other. She joked
about her desperation to
marry in a society that stigmatizes
single women over the age
of 30. She ridiculed bachelors
for their unrealistic expectations
and inflated self-images
while sympathizing with the
exorbitant financial demands
placed on would-be husbands.
Thirty suitors and four years
later, the pharmacist remains
proudly single at 32, refusing
to settle for just any man. Full
Story>>
After
five long years, the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon is expected
to hand down its indictments
at long last. By the end of
2010, or perhaps the beginning
of 2011, the Tribunal will
accuse a number of individuals
of direct involvement in the
murders of former Prime Minister
Rafiq al-Hariri and several
other prominent Lebanese political
figures between 2005 and 2008.
Officially, the investigators
keep mum about the identity
of their targets. Unofficially,
a steady stream of “insider
information” has converged
into a kind of received wisdom:
High-ranking members of the
Shi‘i Islamist party Hizballah
will be indicted for association
with the engineering of the
assassinations. The various
actors in Lebanon now treat
the “leaks” that formed this
received wisdom as a set
of established facts. Full
Story>>
When
a project mixes the feel-good
words of jobs, economic development
and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation,
how can anyone complain? These
things are some of what the
international community has been
promising to deliver through
the construction of industrial
free trade zones in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. The
free trade zone model has been
promoted locally and globally
by powerful third parties like
the United States, France, Germany,
Turkey and Japan for two decades,
but none has much to show for
the enormous efforts and amounts
of money spent to bring these
zones to life. Nonetheless, the
project’s
proponents expect the zones to
constitute the economic foundation
for a future Palestinian state.
They hope that, by bolstering Palestine’s
economy, the zones will make
Palestinians less prone to
social upheaval, less insistent
on their national rights and
more amenable to the status
quo. The idea is that a peace
agreement with Israel will
ensue. Full
Story>>
The
news reports and commentary
on Turkey in the middle months
of 2010 have sounded alarmist
themes. Analysts have warned
that Turkish foreign policy
is undergoing a reorientation
away from the West, ominously
foreshadowed by deteriorating
relations with Israel. Commentators
worry about creeping Islamization
in domestic and foreign policy,
a concern captured by pictures
of headscarved women accompanying
articles about Turkey’s eastward
turn. Elsewhere, descriptions
of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan’s increasingly
assertive policies toward
the Middle East are paired
with allegations of a more
authoritarian style of government
by the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP).
Turkey’s September 12 referendum
-- resulting in the passage
of a package of constitutional
amendments with support from
58 percent of voters -- offers
the most recent occasion
to revisit this increasingly
critical portrait of Turkey
in Washington and beyond. Full
Story>>
For
six weeks, Egypt has been
sitting on top of a sectarian
volcano. Protesters, men
and women, have been exiting
mosques following prayers
almost every single Friday
since the beginning of September
to demand the “release” of
Camillia Shehata, a Coptic
priest’s wife who they believe
has converted to Islam and
is now incarcerated by the
Coptic Orthodox Church. Full
Story>>
No
one thinks parliamentary
elections in Egypt are democratic
or even semi-democratic.
The elections do not determine
who governs. They are not
free and fair. They install
a parliament with no power
to check the president. The
government National Democratic
Party (NDP) always manufactures
a whopping majority, never
getting less than 70 percent
of the seats. The opposition
is kept on a tight leash,
restrained by police intimidation,
rampant fraud and severe
limits on outreach to voters.
And citizens know that elections
are rigged, with polling
places often blocked off
by baton-wielding police,
so few of them vote. No wonder
the reform advocate Mohamed
ElBaradei and others are
trying to build political
and moral momentum for a
boycott of the contests coming
up in November. “Anyone who
participates in the vote
either as a candidate or
a voter goes against the
national will,” ElBaradei
warned. Full
Story>>
On
September 1, Elad -- a Hebrew
acronym for “To the City
of David” -- convened its
eleventh annual archaeological
conference at the “City of
David National Park” in the
Wadi Hilwa neighborhood of
Silwan. Silwan, home to about
45,000 people, is one of
28 Palestinian villages incorporated
into East Jerusalem and annexed
by Israel after the June
1967 war. It lies in a valley
situated a short walk beyond
the Dung Gate of Jerusalem’s
Old City. Elad, a militant,
religious, settler organization,
claims that Silwan is the
biblical City of David mentioned
in the second book of Samuel
and that the Pool of Shiloah
(Siloam) located there watered
King Solomon’s garden. Full
Story>>
The
term dahiya (suburb)
is a staple of Lebanese political
discourse, practically shorthand
for Hizballah, the Shi‘i
Islamist party seated in
its infamous headquarters
just south of Beirut. Before
the civil war, the suburb,
or more precisely suburbs,
consisted of several small
towns surrounded by orchards
that began where the capital
ended. Today, it is a heavily
congested urban sprawl replete
with higher-income neighborhoods,
such as Jinah, where international
chains such as Burger King,
BHV, Monoprix, Spinneys and
the Marriott have opened
since the end of the civil
war in 1990. Administratively,
the dahiya lies in
a half-dozen municipalities,
and only one of these, Harat
Hurayk, home to Hizballah’s
party offices, is usually
the “dahiya” that
politicians and pundits have
in mind. Full
Story>>
Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online
Feature
In
late May 2010, the convoy known
as the Freedom Flotilla met
off of Cyprus and headed south,
carrying humanitarian aid and
hundreds of international activists
who aimed to break Israel’s
blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The organizers used social
media extensively: tweeting
updates from the boats; webcasting
live with cameras uplinked
to the Internet and a satellite,
enabling simultaneous rebroadcasting;
employing Facebook, Flickr,
YouTube and other social networking
websites to allow interested
parties to see and hear them
in real time; and using Google
Maps to chart their location
at sea. Until shortly after
its forcible seizure by Israeli
commandos in the wee hours
of May 31, the flotilla stayed
in touch with the outside world
despite the Israeli navy’s
efforts to jam its communications.
A quarter of a million people
watched its video feed on Livestream
alone, while many more consumed
these images in abbreviated
form on television news. Full
Story>>
Every
year or so the Palestinian
Islamist movement Hamas confounds
the Western policymakers
who have worked to deny it
power since its electoral
triumph in January 2006.
If the goal of Western policy
is to keep the Islamists
out of sight, out of mind,
then Hamas is like a jack-in-the-box,
periodically jumping out
of its confines to general
surprise and consternation. Full
Story>>
Egyptian current events prove one point
for good: Democrat or Republican, liberal
or conservative, U.S. presidents wish
their favored Arab states would forever
remain nice, docile autocracies. Full
Story>>
As
the Mubarak regime turns to violence
in a vain attempt to repress the peaceful
protests that have swept Egypt’s
streets for over ten days, the risks
associated with current U.S. strategy
for Egypt and the wider region continue
to grow. In its response to the events,
the Obama administration has subtly shifted
its message, incrementally increasing
pressure on the regime over the last
week. But the more important story is
the remarkable continuities reflected
in the administration’s approach.
Full
Story>>
I
was at Guantánamo Bay prison
on Halloween. In a ghoulishly fitting
coincidence, that was the same day
a former child solider was convicted
for war crimes for the first time since
the end of World War II. Eight years
and one day after Omar Khadr arrived
at Guantánamo, his military
commission case concluded with a plea-bargained
sentence of eight more years. Full
Story>>
As
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations lurch
from crisis to crisis, Palestinian
Authority (PA) leaders have been suggesting
they may go to the United Nations to
seek resolutions confirming the illegality
of Israel’s settlements in the
occupied territories and recognizing
a reality of Palestinian statehood.
Full
Story>>
The
war in Iraq is over. Or so the government
and most media outlets will claim on
Sept. 1, by which time thousands of
U.S. troops will have departed the
land of two rivers for other assignments.
With this phase of the drawdown, says
President Barack Obama, “America’s
combat mission will end.” The Pentagon
is marking the occasion by changing the
name of the Iraq deployment from Operation
Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn. Full
Story>>
Which
American has done the most harm to
Iraq in the twenty-first century? The
competition is stiff, with George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and
L. Paul Bremer, among others, to choose
from. But, given his game efforts to
grab the spotlight, it seems churlish
not to state the case for Vice President
Joe Biden. Full
Story>>
Why
would the Israeli navy commandeer boats
carrying collapsible wheelchairs and
bags of cement to the Gaza Strip? Israel
says that the aid convoys are trying
to "break the blockade" of
the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
But why is there a blockade in the first
place? Full Story>>
Sects
and the City New York Times Magazine May 17, 2010
Moustafa Bayoumi
I
had almost forgotten I’d sent
in an application when the e-mail message
appeared, like Mr. Big, out of nowhere. “Hi,
Moustafa,” it began, as if we
were old friends. “Thank you
for e-mailing us regarding your interest
in working on ‘Sex and the City
2.’ ”
No
way. Last August, I half-jokingly answered
an e-mail message posted on a list-serv
requesting “lots of Middle Eastern
men and women” as extras for
the second “Sex and the City” movie
(opening this week). Although I must
have been one of the very few in the
tri-state area to possess all the talents
requested in the e-mail (legal to work,
Middle Eastern and between 18 and 70
years old), I still never thought I
would be selected. Two months later,
I got the call. Full
Story>>
At
first glance, there’s a clear
need for expanding the Web beyond the
Latin alphabet, including in the Arabic-speaking
world. According to the Madar Research
Group, about 56 million Arabs, or 17
percent of the Arab world, use the
Internet, and those numbers are expected
to grow 50 percent over the next three
years. Many think that an Arabic-alphabet
Web will bring millions online, helping
to bridge the socio-economic divides
that pervade the region. But such hopes
are overblown. Full
Story>>
Iyad
Allawi, the not terribly popular
interim premier of post-Saddam Iraq,
is in a position to form a government
again because he won over the Sunni
Arabs residing north and west of
Baghdad in the March 7 elections.
The vote, while it did not “shove
political sectarianism in Iraq toward
the grave,” as Allawi would have
it, rekindled the hopes of many that “nationalist” sentiment
has asserted itself over communal
loyalty. Full Story>>