Top Developments in the Arab Spring Today

Posted on 11/21/2011 by Juan

1. Egypt’s security police and other forces are alleged to have killed 13 persons and wounded hundreds more at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo as they systematically cleared it of protesters. The protesters were demanding that the military step down in favor of civilian government. The interim government of PM Essam Sharaf and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) affirmed that despite the turmoil, elections for the lower house of parliament would begin November 28 as planned.

Aljazeera English reports:

2. In Syria, two rockets slammed into Baath Party buildings in Damascus on Sunday, the first time the embryonic guerrilla resistance has hit inside the capital. . Security forces killed at least 9 protesters on Sunday, in Homs and points north. Meanwhile, the Arab League stuck to its guns with regard to its plan to send 500 observers to Syria. The Baath government complained that the plan as it stood would infringe against Syrian sovereignty. The Arab League deadline has passed for the Syrian government to cease shooting down its people, and some AL states have threatened economic sanctions. Syria has been suspended as a voting member of the Arab League.

3. Libyan fighters arrested feared former intelligence chief Abdullah Sanoussi near Sabha on Sunday. The capture came a day after Saif al-Islam Qaddafi was apprehended. Sanoussi is under indictment at the International Criminal Court for war crimes against the Libyan people, and has also been convicted in absentia of terrorism in France. Sanoussi was Muammar Qaddafi’s enforcer and is allegedly implicated in many killings.

The new Libya appears increasingly safe from any rearguard rebellion led by former regime figures, as all the significant ones are now in exile, in custody, or dead.

4. In Yemen, dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh seemed set to back out once again from talks on a transition from his rule. Saleh made it clear that if he did ever step down, he would hand over power to the Yemeni miltiary.

In the meantime, protests and clashes continue in Yemen. On Saturday, 400 more government troops defected to the demonstrators in Sanaa.

5. In a shameful piece of sectarianism, the al-Nahda Party in Tunisia, which gained a plurality of the seats in the new parliament in recent elections, appears to be taking the side of the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain against the largely Shiite protesters. Al-Nahda is a Sunni fundamentalist party that has benefited from the Tunisian revolution, waged mostly by secular forces last January. It is disappointing that it would allow its judgement to be affected by fellow feeling with the island nation’s Sunni monarchy.

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Posted in Bahrain, Tunisia | Leave a Comment

Army vs. People in Egypt

Posted on 11/20/2011 by Juan

Thousands of protesters in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo clashed for a second day on Sunday with Egyptian security forces, with some 18 arrested in the morning hours. Protests are also being held in a number of Egyptian cities.

On Saturday, one person was killed and hundreds were wounded at Tahrir Square as security forces and protesters clashed when the government attempted to clear the square. Another protester was killed in Alexandria. Some Egyptians are saying that deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak has been revealed still to be in power (i.e. his officer cronies have the same mindset as he did).

Aljazeera English reports:

Al-Masri al-Yawm likened the carnage to the attempted crackdown late in the Mubarak era last February.

Last month US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Cairo and pressured the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to abrogate the state of emergency, which was instituted in 1981 and sets aside constitutional personal liberties, on the grounds that it would detract from the legitimacy of the elections if they were held under such draconian laws.

The current round of protests was sparked by the SCAF’s constitutional guidelines, conveyed by deputy interim prime minister Ali Silmi. These guidelines would keep the military budget secret, allow the military to appoint 4/5s of the members of the constituent assembly that will write the constitution, and would permit the military to veto any articles of the constitution before it went to a national referendum. Leftists were outraged by the prospect of heavy-handed military intervention in governance. Muslim fundamentalists were upset because they suspected that the military will use its veto over articles in the new constitution to keep Egypt a relatively secular state. Protesters are also angered by the trial of civilians in military courts.

Elections are scheduled for November 28, and some wonder whether this turmoil will cause them to be postponed. It is hard to see, however, how postponing the elections that would bring legitimate representatives to power could possibly be a good thing. One of the problems is that the current authorities are all transitional and unrepresentative.

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Posted in Egypt | 17 Comments

Libya Should Turn Saif over to the Int’l Criminal Court

Posted on 11/20/2011 by Juan

The capture of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi on Saturday has created a knotty set of political and judicial issues.

Aljazeera English has video:

Saif was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. At one time the most reform-minded of Qaddafi’s sons, Saif faced a moral test from February 17 when the protest movement took off. He failed it miserably, shouting “let’s go, let’s go!” as he directed airplanes, tanks and artillery units to shell the demonstrating urban crowds. It is ironic that many in the Western Left, who now are rightly outraged about college students being pepper-sprayed by police at UC Davis while peacefully demonstrating, continue to defend the criminal Qaddafis, who attacked their own protesters with munitions rather more potent than pepper spray.

Although the International Criminal Court would very much like to see Saif Qaddafi brought to the Hague, ICC principles of complementarity do allow for a trial in Libya.

The interim Justice Minister on the Transitional National Council, Mohamed al-Alaqi, is insisting that Saif be tried in Libya. Though al-Alaqi maintains that Libya has the judicial infrastructure to ensure a fair trial, a post-revolutionary society in turmoil might be challenged in this regard. Al-Alaqi also is warning that Saif Qaddafi could receive the death penalty.

Libya’s new government should stop to consider that after the horror show of Muammar Qaddafi’s death and the exhibition of his mangled body, it has a lot of critics who need to be convinced that it is capable of instituting a rule of law. Delivering Saif to the ICC would go a long way in that direction. Moreover, having him tried abroad would be better for social peace in places like Sirte, where some still idolize the former ruling family. The ICC has the resources fully to establish Saif’s guilt and that of his father and brothers, which would be good for the new Libya. I understand post-colonial sensitivities about forwarding such a matter to an outside court, but the ICC is international, and Libya is a signatory to it.

Turning Saif over to the ICC will also require that the NTC interim government assert its authority and work out a deal with the Zintan militia, which is the force that captured Saif.

At the moment, al-Arabiya is reporting in Arabic that the people of Zintan are insisting on keeping Saif imprisoned in that town and resisting turning him over to the capital, Tripoli.

Zintanis are demanding a security portfolio on the next interim cabinet, as an acknowledgment of the key role they played in liberating the country. They fear that technocrats (some of them formerly having served Qaddafi) will marginalize the fighers and populations that actually made the revolution. But while Zintanis have a right not to be marginalized, they don’t have a right to do with Saif as they please. He should be turned over to the central government and, ideally, then delivered to the International Criminal Court.

Security, still shaky, is just good enough to have allowed Libya to get back up to producing 560,000 barrels a day of petroleum, up substantially from two months ago when production resumed. Before the war, Libya produced 1.7 million barrels a day, but during the civil war such production ground to a halt. Libyan authorities hope to return to producing 1.7 million barrels a day by June of next year, though some are skeptical that they can get past 1.2 mn. b/d next year. The return of the 2,000 foreign technicians may be important to restoring pre-war production.

Ironically, oil production depends in part on a perception of security and a rule of law. But bringing in the kind of money Libya could earn at nearly $100 a barrel could in turn contribute to a return to security and prosperity, as the government (which owns the petroleum) gains the ability to pay the bureaucracy and fledgling new army. For the time being, the refineries are being guarded by militiamen like those from Zawiya, but Libyans want them integrated into a national army, which will require resources as well as moral authority on the part of the NTC.

To get back to normal, Libya needs investment and trade, the prospects for which will be strengthened if it is perceived as a country where the rule of law prevails. Libyans would be doing themselves a huge favor to avoid the kind of fiasco that attended the execution of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which struck most observers as more vendetta than due process. Images and symbols can be important in shaping public confidence, inside the country and abroad.

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Muslim Brotherhood and Liberals Confront Military Rule in Egypt

Posted on 11/19/2011 by Juan

Al-Ahram reports in Arabic that hundreds of thousands of Egyptians all around the country protested on Friday against the military remaining in power.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi fundamentalists took the lead on the rallies, especially in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. But some liberal, leftist and youth organizations also joined in the demonstrations.

Euronews reports

The Muslim Brotherhood is annoyed with the Egyptian military because the latter has issued guidelines for the writing of a new constitution, which are largely secular in character. The Brotherhood hopes to implement its conception of Muslim canon law or sharia in Egypt, and now perceives the military as a barrier to this project.

In July when I was in Egypt, the shoe was on the other foot. The New Left movement, April 6, came out for a return of the military to their barracks. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) denounced April 6 and hinted that it would be prosecuted for taking foreign development money. The protesters almost fell down laughing, given that the Eygptian state receives $1.5 billion per year from the US.

At that time, the Muslim Brotherhood was in love with the military. I remember seeing Essam al-Arian, the number 2 man in the Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice” Party. speaking on television. He maintained that alongside the classical powers of the state (executive, legislature, judiciary), Egypt was fortunate to have a fourth power, which, he said, was like the backbone holding up the others. That power, he said, was the Egyptian military.

At that time, the military had scheduled the elections early, in September, a step that favored the Muslim Brotherhood because it is well-organized for contesting elections.

As the military has taken steps that angered the Brotherhood, that cozy relationship has faltered. The SCAF issued constitutional guidelines, which may make it more difficult for the Muslim Brotherhood to change Egyptian law further in a religious direction. And the miltary postponed the beginning of elections until late November, a step that benefits the secular opposition.

So the protests on Friday demanded not just that the military step down by next May but that it withdraw those constitutional guidelines.

The question of military rule has all along been the other shoe waiting to drop since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February. The Egyptian military hopes for a co-existence with the civilian government once it is established next year. Friday’s protesters want a subordination of the military to the civil state.

The protesters, however, are themselves deeply divided on the reasons for their opposition to the military. The New Left minds its anti-labor policies. The Muslim Brotherhood (sometimes) minds its dictatorial tendencies.

What we saw in Turkey in the past decade is that if a party receives a large enough public mandate, its ability to stare down the military is much enhanced. Similar things could happen in Egypt, though likely it will be a long and drawn-out process.

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Posted in Egypt | 8 Comments

OWS under Pressure: Banks Bailed out, People Sold Out

Posted on 11/18/2011 by Juan

The Occupy Wall Street held a series of rallies around the country on Thursday, in response to the attempt of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to remove their tents and other camping equipment from Zucotti Park. Some 300 were arrested, mostly because they chose to engage in some form of civil disobedience.

One central issue for the protesters is a perception that the big banks have been treated very well by the government but that there has been less done by Washington for ordinary people who have lost the homes and lost their jobs.

The Star-Ledger writes,

“In Los Angeles, more than 500 people, including a large contingent of union members, chanted ‘Banks got bailed out, we got sold out’ as they marched from the city’s Bank of America tower to Wells Fargo Plaza.

Is it a fair chant?

Despite widespread fraud in the banking and financial sectors, President Obama has prosecuted fewer financial crimes than did Reagan or either Bush.

Banks may well get away with massive unlawful foreclosure practices.

This site points out that big banks received bailouts, but that home owners largely did not. (President Obama’s mortgage bailout plan was expected to help only 1 in 9 home owners under pressure).

MSNBC notes that since the beginning of the mortgage crisis in 2007, about six million homes have been foreclosed on by the banks. Another four million homes are now somewhere in the process of being foreclosed on. And new house foreclosures are now in the range of two million a year. A quarter of homeowners in the US owe more on their houses than they are worth.

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Posted in Uncategorized, US Politics | 22 Comments

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