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Friday, December 20, 2024
[Salon] THE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE NEEDED BY A SHARPLY DIVIDED NATION - Guest Post by Allan Brownfeld
THE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE NEEDED BY A SHARPLY DIVIDED NATION
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
————————————————————————————————————————-
Christmas comes at a time when our nation is sharply divided. In our recent presidential election, neither candidate received more than 50% of the popular vote. One candidate called his opponent a “Marxist.” The other candidate called her opponent a “Fascist.” In the past, Republicans and Democrats did not view one another as “enemies,” but as participants in a common democratic process and enterprise. The fact that they might disagree over tax rates, environmental regulations, and when military force was to be used was expected. Working together, Republicans and Democrats ended segregation, advanced civil rights and won the Cold War. Think of the friendship between Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill.
To celebrate Christmas, but have contempt for those with whom we disagree on one issue or another is to disregard completely the teaching of Jesus. Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew (5:43-44): “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which desperately use you, and persecute you.”
Even many who proclaim themselves to be Christian fail to understand that the view of man and the world set forth by Jesus—-and the one which dominates in the modern world—-are contradictory.
This point was made in the book “Jesus Rediscovered” by Malcolm Muggeridge, the distinguished British author and editor. Muggeridge, who had a religious conversion while preparing a BBC documentary about the of Jesus, pointed out that the desire for power and riches in this world —-a desire to which so many are committed—-is the opposite of what Jesus called for. Indeed, Jesus was tempted by the Devil with the very worldly powers many of us so eagerly seek.
“Finally,” writes Muggeridge, “the Devil shows Christ all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said: ‘All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I will give it.’ All Christ had to do in return was to worship the donor instead of God—-which, of course, he could not do. How interesting, though, that power should be at the Devil’s disposal, and only attainable through an understanding with him! Many have thought otherwise, and sought power in the belief that by its exercise they could lead men to brotherhood and happiness and peace; invariably with disastrous consequences. Always in the end the bargain with the Devil has to be fulfilled —-as any Stalin or Napolean or Cromwell must testify. ‘I am the light of the world,’ Christ said, ‘power belongs to darkness.’”
This year Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve. In an article “A Jewish View of Jesus,”Rabbi John Rayner, a leader of Reform Judaism in England, writes: “Jesus was a Jew…He often went to synagogue. The prayers he prayed were Jewish prayers, the festivals he celebrated were Jewish festivals…Above all, the religious beliefs and values Jesus affirmed and taught were those of Judaism…The teachings of Jesus…fall comfortably within the parameters of the several varieties of Judaism that existed in first century Palestine.”
As Christian and Jewish Americans gather to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah this year, they would do well to reflect upon how far our society has strayed from the moral values inherent in our religious traditions. There is, in reality, a spiritual yearning in our American society, a feeling that things are not what they should be, a desire to set ourselves and our country back on a better path. Christmas speaks to that spiritual vacuum in our lives—-but only if we will listen to its message.
G.K. Chesterton, discussing the meaning of Christmas, wrote, “…there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man. It does not in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero-worship.”
In the end, writes Chesterton, “It is something that surprises from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is as if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good.”
A key question for Chesterton was, ,How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?” His sense that the world was a moral battleground, wrote his biographer Aliza Stone Dale, “helped Chesterton fight to keep the attitude that has been labeled ‘facile optimism,’. So that he could never recover the wonder and surprise at ordinary life he had once felt as a child.”
This holiday season we would do well to reevaluate the real gods in our lives and in the life of our country. Our health and the health of America may depend on such a genuine celebration of Christmas.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
[Salon] Mihail Hazin: If we lose the bases in Syria, we will also lose our air access to Africa - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Guest Post
https://harici.com.tr/mihail-hazin-suriyedeki-usleri-kaybedersek-afrikaya-hava-erisimimizi-de-kaybederiz/
Mihail Hazin: Suriye’deki üsleri kaybedersek, Afrika’ya hava erişimimizi de kaybederiz
Harici.com.tr18.12.2024
Mikhail Hazin, one of Russia's leading economists, drew attention to the strategic importance of Russia's air bases in Syria.
Speaking to radio Sputnik, Hazin stated that these bases are critical for protecting Russian influence on Africa and the Middle East.
“If we lose our airports in Syria, we will also lose our direct air access to Africa. This is a big problem for Russia. It also leads to the complete disappearance of our influence in the Middle East," he said.
Describing the developments in Syria as a "first act", Hazin emphasized that the consequences of this situation have not yet fully emerged.
Armed groups that entered Damascus on December 8 announced the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad government. 59-year-old Bashar al-Assad resigned and fled Syria and received asylum from Russia for himself and his family. HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Colani, who recently used the name Ahmed Sha'a in public, claimed that Syria's new administration offered the opportunity to reconsider relations with Russia in a way that would serve common interests.
On the other hand, Hazin mentioned the fate of the shipment of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine.
After the contract, which will expire this year, Russia is expected to continue its natural gas shipments from a different route.
Hazin stated that Turkey is trying to provide an advantage by limiting ship crossings in the Black Sea.
Drawing attention to Turkey's demand for taking Russian gas with a big discount and selling it to Europe on its own terms, Hazin described this situation as "blackmail". “That's their style. However, in such a situation, they take a big risk," he said.
[Salon] True scale of Assad’s slaughter revealed at Syrian mass grave -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevV8cuxpJY&t=30s
[Salon] Ambassador Chas Freeman: Not War, But Leadership - Guest Post
Ambassador Chas Freeman: Not War, But Leadership
by Dennis Speed (EIRNS) — Dec. 18, 2024
Ambassador Chas Freeman gave an interview to Berliner Zeitung published Dec. 15, one of Germany’s leading newspapers. Ambassador Freeman, who knows as much about the American relationship to China as any living diplomat, told the truth “as he sees it.” “We’ve incentivized the Chinese to improve their science and technology, to expand trade relations with the Global South; we’ve driven them into the arms of the Russians, and we’re driving them to forge alliances in the Middle East that will roll back American influence in the region.”
Even more importantly, he said of Russia and Ukraine, “Firstly, Kiev and Moscow must agree on the border. Secondly, the minorities in Ukraine must be granted the right to live out their own language and culture. This right is guaranteed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and was also enshrined in the Austrian State Treaty of 1955…. A neutral Ukraine that would be independent, prosperous and democratic and act as both a buffer and a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe would be an important achievement to work towards.”
In contrast, the Ukrainian assassination of Gen.-Lt. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defense Forces (NBC) in Moscow yesterday should be seen as the latest episode in the continually escalating NATO/Russia conflict. “A high-ranking general in the Russian armed forces and his assistant have been killed in Moscow by Ukraine’s security service, a Ukrainian source has told the BBC.” Although, according to the BBC, the Ukrainian SBU security service characterized Kirillov as “responsible for the mass use of banned chemical weapons,” their concern—and that of NATO—was probably exactly the reverse.
Kirillov, a highly public figure, had become known in the West for his reports, in the first months of the war, regarding NATO and the United States operating bioweapons laboratories throughout Ukraine. In a March 17, 2022 briefing on Ukraine’s bio-labs, Kirillov, more accurately termed the head of the Russian Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, presented documented evidence to the effect that (in Kirillov’s words) “in no uncertain terms … components of biological weapons were being created in Ukraine with direct U.S. involvement and financing.” Kirillov’s significance may have been of particular concern to those that are now re-visiting, from various standpoints, the story of the 2013 chemical attacks in Syria, a country identified in the RAND Corporation’s 2019 report, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” as a secondary theater of military-strategic operations against Russia.
Syria, in an echo of similar events 100 years ago, is being dismembered as part of a “Great Game” that “Greater Israel’s” Benjamin Netanyahu has been warned by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov not to play. “I would like to warn certain ‘hotheads’ in West Jerusalem against being intoxicated by opportunities.” There of course can’t be a Great Game without the Brutish—er, British—playing a leading role. Now another member of the British Powell family has “held forth.” Hugh Powell, who was the deputy national security adviser for former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013 (and is referred to by a British publication as the “scion of Britain’s greatest diplomatic family,") is claiming that Syria’s dismemberment should have happened 11 years ago.
“2013 was an opportunity to help crack (Syria) well before Hezbollah and Russia came to its rescue,” Powell said on a Dec. 12 podcast. “And with Assad gone we had a good chance of installing a power-sharing government in Damascus that might well have prevented the hidden expansion of ISIS.” Powell, in his remarks about 2013, of course, did fail to note, that the Anglo-American intelligence services were funding ISIS, as Seymour Hersh had covered in 2007, in his New Yorker story, “The Redirection.”
“The ‘redirection,’ as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran…. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. … The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador) Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While [Condoleezza] Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, ‘The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.’)”
What we are hearing, when the Powells speak is the voice of “continuity of imperial governance.” That is the real way that British—and most American—foreign policy, especially for Southwest Asia, has been shaped since the 1970s. Once the Trilateral Commission’s Zbigniew Brzezinski got his hands on the national security adviser tiller in the Jimmy Carter Administration of 1977-81, the British Crown’s “Bernard Lewis Plan,” re-branded for naive American palates as “the Brzezinski Islamic Fundamentalism Card policy” was implemented. The Afghanistan war against Russia of 1979; the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988; Operation Desert Shield/Storm of 1990-91, and all of the rest of the wars that followed, were all part of the Great Game, what the ever-original Brzezinski called “The Grand Chessboard.” It is all war on Russia, and Asia, including China.
But this is not the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, or the early 21st century. Now, China, Russia, India, and many other nations are not what they were then. Colonialism is over, one way or the other. And as the world witnesses the public rift in the American Presidential process, with war escalating day by day despite the objections of the incoming Administration, the terrifying realization that America, which is now attacking the nation of Russia with long-range missiles, is clearly not being run by sane people, must not paralyze us. Instead that realization can and must be used to give us the courage to act to take back the government now, not on January 20.
Ambassador Freeman, who also spoke at the Dec. 7-8 Schiller Institute Conference, “In The Spirit of Schiller and Beethoven, All Men Become Brethren!” and supports the dialogue initiative by Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche for a New Security and Development Architecture, shows what all Americans can choose to do, to come to the aid of their country, and the world.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
[Salon] Where is Syria headed? - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Where is Syria headed?
Summary: comparisons of HTF’s sudden victory have drawn comparisons to the Taliban’s rout of 2021 but a closer examination reveals deep flaws in that assumption.
We thank Gilbert Achcar for permission to publish a version, edited for length, of his article translated from the Arabic and originally published by Al-Quds al-Arabi on 10 December 2024. Professor Achcar lectures on Development Studies and International Relations at London’s SOAS University. You can find his blog here.
While observing the amazing historical events that unfolded on 6 December the first thing that came to mind was relief and joy at the images of detainees being freed from the hell of the carceral society that Syria had become under the Assad family’s regime. Our feelings were also overwhelmed by delight at the sight of Syrian families suddenly able to return from nearby exile, whether from another area within Syria or from Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey, to visit the towns and homes they were forced to flee from years ago. Add to this that the dream of millions of Syrian refugees, in the countries surrounding Syria and in Europe, of returning to their homeland, even if only for a visit, this dream that looked impossible a few days ago, has begun to seem achievable.
Now, as the Arabic saying goes, the time has come for meditation after elation. The truth is that if it were not for the Iranian intervention that started in 2013, especially through Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and for the Russian intervention that started in 2015, and also for the US veto that prevented the Syrian opposition from receiving any type of anti-aircraft weapon for fear that it might be used against the Israeli Air Force – if it were not for these three factors, the Assad regime would have fallen more than a decade ago, as it was on the brink of the abyss in 2013, and again in 2015 despite Iranian rescue. The plain fact is that once external support dried up, the regime collapsed like any “puppet regime” that is abandoned by the power that used to hold its strings. The latest striking example of such a collapse was what happened to the puppet regime in Kabul in the face of the Taliban’s advance, after US forces gave up propping it in 2021.
Thus, after Russia had withdrawn most of its forces from Syria due to getting bogged down in the quagmire of its invasion of Ukraine (Moscow left only 15 military aircraft in Syria, according to Israeli sources), and after the Lebanese Hezbollah had suffered a severe defeat, which its new Secretary-General desperately tried to portray as a “great victory... that surpasses the victory achieved in 2006” and which prevented it from being able to rescue its Syrian ally this time, all this while Iran carried on with its cautious approach terrified at the prospect of an escalation of Israel’s aggression against it and the possibility that the United States might join it directly, after Donald Trump’s return to the White House – in the face of these facts combined, when Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized the opportunity thus created to launch an offensive on the areas under the control of the regime and its allies, starting with the city of Aleppo, the Syrian puppet regime collapsed like its Afghan counterpart.
The big difference between the Afghan and Syrian cases, though, is that HTS is much weaker than the Taliban were when they completed their control of their country. The forces of the Assad family’s regime collapsed not out of fear of a mighty enemy, but because they had no incentive to defend the regime any longer. The army, constructed on a sectarian basis through the Assad family’s exploitation of the Alawite minority to which they belong, no longer had an incentive to fight for the Assad family’s control over the entire country, especially in light of the collapse of living conditions that led to the nosedive of the purchasing power of soldiers’ incomes. The regime’s miserable last-minute attempt to raise their salaries by fifty percent could not change anything. As a result, the current situation in Syria is very different from that of Afghanistan following the Taliban’s victory. HTS only controls some of the Syrian territories, and its control is fragile in part of them, especially the area surrounding the capital Damascus, where the regime collapsed before HTS reached it, preceded by the forces of the Southern Operations Room.
After 54 years of totalitarianism last Friday saw a sea of green celebrations all over Syria
Syria is now divided into several areas under the control of heterogenous, even hostile, forces. First, there is the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where the Zionist state has seized the opportunity to expand into the buffer zone that separated the territories it occupies and did formally annex in 1981 from the territories controlled by the Syrian regime, while its air force has begun to destroy some of the key military capabilities of the defunct regime to prevent whoever succeeds it from seizing them. There is also the vast area that HTS now controls in the north and centre, but the extent of this control in general, and especially in the coastal region that includes the Alawite mountain, is highly questionable. Then there are two areas on the northern border under Turkish occupation, accompanied by the deployment of the “Syrian National Army” (which should rather be called the “Turkish-Syrian Army”); a considerable area in the northeast, east of the Euphrates River, under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces dominated by the Kurdish movement, allied with some Arab tribes (which HTS will certainly seek to win over to its side) under the protection of US forces; a large area in the south, west of the Euphrates River, under the control of the Syrian Free Army, also linked to the United States and centred around the US base at al-Tanf inside Syrian territory, close to the borders with Jordan and Iraq; and finally, the southern region, where forces in the Daraa region that rebelled against the Assad regime, some of which were under Russian tutelage, and forces emerging from the popular movement in the Suwayda region, have gathered together to form the Southern Operations Room, which is the Syrian Arab armed faction the most closely linked to the popular democratic movement.
Now, where might things go from here? The first observation is that the possibility of all these factions agreeing to submit to a single authority is almost nil, even if we put aside the Kurdish movement and limit ourselves to the Arab factions. Even Turkey, which has a longstanding relationship with HTS, and without which HTS would not have been able to hold out in the Idlib region in northwest Syria, will not abandon its occupation and its puppets as long as it does not achieve its goal of curtailing the Kurdish movement. The second observation is that those who hoped or believed in the transformation of HTS and Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka al-Julani, from Salafist jihadism to non-sectarian democracy have begun to realize that they were delusional. The truth is that HTS would not have been able to spread in place of the forces of the collapsed regime had it not pretended to change its skin and open up to a democratic, non-sectarian future. Otherwise, local forces from Homs to Damascus would have fiercely resisted it, whether under the wing of the defunct regime or after emancipating from it. Now, al-Julani’s haste to claim that he has turned the “Salvation Government” that ruled the Idlib region into the new Syrian government, frustrating the hopes of those who expected him to call for a coalition government, highlights a fact that should have remained in people’s minds: the fact that the residents of the Idlib region themselves demonstrated only eight months ago against HTS’s tyranny, demanding the overthrow of al-Julani, the dissolution of his repressive apparatuses, and the release of detainees in his prisons.
Last but not least, the joy over the tyrant’s fall should not make us overlook the haste of various European governments to stop considering Syrian asylum applications, and the beginning of various countries, especially Lebanon, Turkey, and some European countries, to consider expelling the Syrian refugees and forcibly returning them to Syria under the pretext of the Assad regime’s termination. Syria has not yet emerged from its long historical ordeal that began 54 years ago (with Hafez al-Assad’s 1970 coup) and tragically worsened 13 years ago (after the 2011 popular uprising). All countries must keep respecting the right of asylum granted to Syrians, and continue to consider granting it to Syrians who demand it.
Monday, December 16, 2024
[Salon] Yemen’s fractious puzzle - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Yemen’s fractious puzzle
Summary: Yemen’s seemingly intractable conflict and the failure to find resolution to it can best be understood by thinking of that part of the country not under Huthi control as a puzzle. Helen Lackner discusses the many pieces to the puzzle and why they seem doomed to never quite fit.
We thank our regular contributor Helen Lackner for today’s article. An expert on Yemen, Helen also works as a freelance rural development consultant with a particular interest in water among other environmental issues. SAQI Books has published the paperback edition with new material of her Yemen In Crisis, now subtitled Devastating Conflict, Fragile Hope. It is a seminal study of the war, what lies behind it and what needs to happen for it to finally end. Her latest book Yemen: Poverty and Conflict was published by Routledge in 2022. You can find Helen’s most recent Arab Digest podcast “Yemen in the Gaza war” here.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government [IRG] is the generic term to describe the regime’s executive as a whole, including its leadership, the eight-man Presidential Leadership Council [PLC] and the government led by the Prime Minister. Internecine competition is its best known characteristic. To understand its dynamics and possible future, a brief outline of the factions and their areas of control may help. Bear in mind that prior to 1990 there were two Yemeni states: the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY.)
The almost systematic description of Yemen’s situation as being ‘north’ controlled by the Huthis and ‘south’ by the IRG is simply incorrect, both geographically and politically. It gives the impression that the Huthi-controlled area covers what was pre-1990 the Yemen Arab Republic and the IRG-controlled one the area of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. A simple superposition of the relevant maps show that this is simply wrong.
Within the former YAR area are two major IRG-connected areas: part of the north-eastern governorate of Marib is the base for PLC Vice-President Sultan al Arada who is close to the Islamist Islah party and to the Saudi regime, though significant parts of the governorate are under Huthi control. In the south-western coastal area, including parts of Hodeida and Taiz governorates another PLC Vice-President Tareq Saleh is in control: the nephew of the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, he is the military leader of the National Resistance Forces (NRF) which is financially supported by the UAE but maintains relations with the Saudis. His politics can be summarised as supporting the unity of the Yemeni state and favouring a strong, if not determinant role for himself or his cousin Ahmed Ali [son of the slain former president] in the country’s leadership.
In most of the IRG-connected areas [except in Hadhramaut and al Mahra], a third PLC Vice-President Abdul Rahman al Mahrami, a Salafi leader, leads the militarily effective Amaliqa forces, aligned with the UAE. Given Salafi ‘quietist’ non-political ideology which by definition supports whoever is officially ruling, the question arises of why they are not supporting the PLC/IRG President Rashad Al Alimi.
Central Lahej, al Dhala’ and the western part of Abyan governorates, as well as Aden city are the strongholds of the Southern Transitional Council (STC). As its name implies, it is a separatist movement calling for the return to the pre-1990 borders. In a snapshot of the tangled politics of the country the STC leader Aydaroos al Zubaidy signs his documents President of the STC and Vice President of the IRG. In doing so he claims for himself the presidency of a southern entity yet to be formally declared while hanging on to the IRG vice presidency of a Yemen he hopes to sunder. It is worth noting that his claims to control the entire former PDRY area are challenged by many, both other separatists and supporters of Yemeni unity. Al Zubaidy relies on UAE financial, diplomatic and military support and is the most explicit challenger to the IRG/PLC president, Rashad al Alimi.
Shabwa governorate, which includes the main road from Saudi Arabia to Aden, was contested between the Huthis and their opponents until late 2021 when they were expelled by UAE and STC aligned forces, supported by the Amaliqa and Tareq Saleh’s NRF. Awadh al Awlaqi, a separatist was then appointed as governor leaving the governorate a site for a muted struggle between the STC separatists and the ‘mainstream’ unitary IRG.
Hadhramaut is large and holds hydrocarbon resources and their export facilities. Historically it has three main parts, the scarcely inhabited plateaux north and south of the Wadi [valley] with Seiyun as its capital, and the coastal region with Mukalla the main port and capital of the governorate. For the past three years it has been the focus of competition between the unitary IRG which controls the wadi and most of the plateaux and the coastal strip under UAE-supported Elite Forces more or less aligned with the STC. Vice President Faraj al Bahsani was both governor and head of the Second Military region when the PLC was formed in April 2022 but was then removed from both these positions. He has aligned with the STC, thus strengthening this faction within the PLC. By contrast the ‘wadi and desert’ is semi-autonomous with a Deputy Governor in charge and is the base for the First Military Region, accused by the separatists of being ‘northern’ and Islah dominated.
For the past three years or so, the struggle for control of the governorate is simultaneously between the interior, including the border crossing with Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of President al Alimi and his supporters, more closely aligned with the Saudis, and the coastal areas under Emirati and STC influence. Both Yemeni sides have set up ‘tribal organisations’ which claim to represent the governorate as a whole. To overcome these rivalries, the Saudis supported the creation of the Hadhramaut National Council in 2023, a model which they are trying to reproduce in other governorates.
One important reason for the complexity in Hadhramaut is that historically sada [descendants of the Prophet] have been the most powerful political element in the governorate while the numerical majority of the population are low status agriculturalists who are not tribesmen. Hence the tribes are less powerful than they would like and is assumed by the external forces. Another major reason is that fundamentally, all Hadhramis are primarily loyal to Hadhramaut itself; none of them want to be ruled from Aden or elsewhere by the likes of the STC whom they consider to be uncouth. In addition, Hadhramaut is the only governorate of the country which has a sufficient economic base to be self-sustaining should the country fracture even further.
The main asset of the far eastern al Mahra governorate is its position on the border with Oman which wants to retain influence, despite competition from both Saudis and Emiratis, the former currently having the upper hand. The al Mahra leadership is aligned with the IRG as a whole and avoids conflict with the southern separatists. It has no representative on the PLC.
President of the PLC, Rashad al Alimi, former minister of the Interior was without any military force of his own when he was appointed in 2022. Since then, the Saudis have set up and equipped the National Shield Forces (Republican Decree 18 of 2023), which they finance and which is deployed mainly in Hadhramaut, along the border with Saudi Arabia and in Aden. The two remaining members of the PLC, Abdullah al Alimi [no relation to the president] from Shabwa and Othman Mujalli from Saada also lack military forces. This divided PLC is complemented by a formal government, since February this year led by Prime Minister Ahmed Awadh bin Mubarak, with ministers who have little power given the dire financial situation [see our posting of September 20 2024] and either work from Aden under pressure from the STC or spend much of their time abroad. Currently bin Mubarak’s relationship with the President is reputed to be under considerable stress. As usual, we can conclude by remembering that the leadership’s ongoing disunity worsens living conditions for millions of Yemenis.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
[Salon] Background: The Enduring Struggle to Remake the Middle East - Guest Post by Marc Lynch
The Arab Uprisings Never Ended
The Enduring Struggle to Remake the Middle East
Marc Lynch
January/February 2021 Originally published on December 8, 2020 in Foreign Affairs
Demonstrating in Tahrir Square, Cairo, January 2012
Demonstrating in Tahrir Square, Cairo, January 2012 Mohamed Abd El-Ghany / TPX images of the day / Reuters
Marc Lynch is Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.
There are few, if any, celebrations planned for the tenth anniversary of the uprisings that swept the Arab world in late 2010 and early 2011. The days of television screens filled with crowds chanting, “The people demand the overthrow of the regime” seem like ancient history. Early hopes for revolutionary change crashed into the blunt force of military coups, civil wars, and fractured states. In 2021, there may be few beliefs more universally shared than that the Arab uprisings failed.
It is easy to understand the appeal of this idea, eagerly promoted by autocratic regimes and foreign policy realists alike. It means a return to business as usual. Both the Obama and the Trump administrations tacitly accepted that view as they shifted their gaze to other goals in the region—the former to nuclear negotiations with Iran, the latter to normalizing Arab relations with Israel.
Yet that conviction is in fact just the latest in a series of premature conclusions. Before 2011, most analysts took the stability of Arab autocracies for granted. This was wrong. As popular pressure drove four long-ruling dictators from power—Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh—some observers rushed to assume that an unstoppable democratic wave had arrived; others warned that democratization would open the door to Islamist domination. Both were wrong. In 2012, most thought that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was finished. Wrong. In 2013, supporters of Egypt’s military coup argued it would put the country back on a path toward democracy. Wrong again.
In the heat of the revolutionary moment a decade ago, it did feel as though the region had changed forever. The autocratic wall of fear had broken, and empowered Arab citizens seemed destined to never again tolerate authoritarian rule. Within a few short years, however, those hopes were crushed. A military coup in Egypt ended its nascent democratic experiment. Fragile transitions in Libya and Yemen collapsed into civil war. Syria descended into a nightmarish mixture of insurgency and international proxy warfare. Eventually, autocrats across the region clawed back most of the power they had lost.
Still, the consensus that the Arab uprisings ended in failure is similarly premature and as likely to prove wrong in time. The effects of the uprisings should not be measured in regimes overthrown or democratic elections held, although their record there is not insignificant. The fact that dictators once again sit on the thrones of the Middle East is far from evidence that the uprisings failed. Democracy was only one part of the protesters’ demands. The movement was engaged in a generations-long struggle that rejected a regional order that had delivered nothing but corruption, disastrous governance, and economic failure.
By that standard, the uprisings have profoundly reshaped every conceivable dimension of Arab politics, including individual attitudes, political systems, ideologies, and international relations. Superficial similarities might mask the extent of the change, but today’s Middle East would be unrecognizable to observers from 2010. The forces set in motion in 2011 virtually guaranteed that the next decade will witness even more profound transformations—changes that will confound any policy based on a return to the old ways.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
After a decade of dashed hopes, it is easy to forget just how powerful and surprising the revolutionary moment that started in December 2010 truly was. By late 2010, it was clear that the Arab world was experiencing mounting popular frustration and growing economic inequality, but the region’s rulers believed that they were capable of crushing any potential threat. So did the academics studying them and the activists confronting them.
Nobody was prepared for the sheer scale, speed, and intensity of the protests that erupted simultaneously across the entire region. Arab satellite television stations such as Al Jazeera and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter accelerated the process, quickly transmitting images, ideas, and emotions across borders. Regimes that were well prepared for isolated local unrest were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of citizens who swarmed the streets and failed to leave. When some militaries refused to kill for their embattled presidents, the people declared victory.
Those victories in Tunisia and Egypt, where mass protests successfully evicted entrenched autocrats and set the stage for elections, galvanized protesters in other Arab countries. It is difficult to recapture the magic of the time, the new sense of community crafted in the chaos of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout, Tunisia’s Avenue Habib Bourguiba, and Yemen’s Change Square. Everything seemed possible. Change seemed inevitable. Autocrats were running scared, and nothing—not U.S. military support, not the seemingly omnipotent security services, not protesters’ own fears and divisions—could stop the movement.
The Middle East is far beyond the ability of any outside power to control.
But no other country emulated the path of the Tunisian and Egyptian trailblazers. Regional powers backed old regimes in their efforts to destroy the uprisings, and the West did nothing to stop them. Poor governments such as Jordan and Morocco drew on financial and political support from Gulf monarchies to weather their own smaller protest movements, while passing modest constitutional reforms to placate their citizens. Bahrain’s monarchy violently crushed its nascent antigovernment popular uprising, unleashing a wave of sectarian repression. Libya’s Qaddafi turned the full force of his military on the protesters, triggering a rapid escalation that culminated in civil war and international intervention. Yemen fell into a long and bloody stalemate as its military splintered after months of protests.
As conflicts dragged on and revolutionary momentum flagged, most regimes’ overwhelming military and financial advantage eventually won out. The surviving governments then sought revenge, punishing the activists who had dared challenge their rule. They aimed to restore fear and crush hope. The United States did little to stand in the way. When Egypt’s military overthrew the elected president Mohamed Morsi and massacred hundreds of protesters in the center of Cairo, the Obama administration refused to even call the event a coup.
Nowhere was this reversal of fortune more evident than in Syria. What started as a peaceful protest movement against Assad’s government slowly escalated into a civil war as the regime cracked down violently on demonstrators. The country’s degeneration into conflict carried incalculable costs: hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees, the spread of newly virulent forms of sectarianism, and a revitalized jihadi movement. Syria’s horrors have provided a useful scarecrow for autocrats. This, they signal, is what might happen if you return to the streets.
By 2013, in large part due to Syria’s descent into chaos and Egypt’s military coup against Morsi, a new consensus had taken hold. The autocrats had won, the uprisings had failed, and the Arab Spring was turning into an Arab Winter.
THE ISLAMISTS
Few other dynamics illustrate the uprisings’ transformative effects better than the fortunes of mainstream Islamist groups. Originally hailed as important players in new democratic systems, many were eventually suppressed by resurgent autocracies or struggled to navigate transitional democracies. This arc further reinforced a sense that the uprisings had failed.
In the decade before 2011, Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s, were the dominant opposition force in many Arab countries. Their organizational skill, ability to provide social services, reputation for integrity, and religious appeal made them a formidable political force. Starting in the 1990s, Brotherhood intellectuals generated elaborate arguments for Islam’s compatibility with democracy and critiqued existing secular regimes’ autocratic governance.
Islamists did not play a significant role in the early days of the uprisings. In Tunisia, the government had largely removed such groups from public life. In Egypt, they joined the Tahrir Square protests late. When opportunities arose, however, Islamists quickly entered the political arena. Tunisia’s Ennahda Party and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood scored massive victories in those countries’ first transitional elections. Morocco’s equivalent, the Justice and Development Party, formed a series of governments after its electoral victories in 2011 and 2016. Libyan Islamists also joined in the electoral game, with less success. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood played a critical organizational role, mostly from abroad, in the uprising against Assad. By 2012, Islamists seemed to be ascendant.
But these groups proved attractive targets for autocratic crackdowns and regional power politics. The post-2011 antidemocratic backlash was marketed in the West by the regimes partly as a response to an alleged Islamist takeover. Egypt’s military used arguments like this to legitimate its July 2013 coup and the sweeping, violent repression that followed. In Tunisia, the Ennahda Party practiced a strategy of self-limitation; its prime minister stepped down in favor of a technocrat to short-circuit rapidly escalating political conflict. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), both of which viewed the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat and a Qatari proxy, began to crack down on the movement and declared it a terrorist organization. In response, Qatar and Turkey stepped up their support to the group, welcoming members fleeing Egypt’s crackdown and aiding branches still active on the ground in Libya and elsewhere.
The aftermath of an attack near Damascus, Syria, January 2018
The aftermath of an attack near Damascus, Syria, January 2018 Bassam Khabieh / Reuters
Rather than winning the democratic game, most Islamist groups failed thanks to both their own mistakes and government crackdowns. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—the largest and most influential of those groups—no longer exists in a recognizable form. Tens of thousands of its members are in prison, its remaining leaders are dead or in exile, and its money was confiscated by the Egyptian government. In Jordan, the government has gone a long way toward dismantling the Brotherhood, leaving it fragmented and divided. Morocco’s Islamist Justice and Development Party has lost its luster after years of governing within the king’s constraints. Tunisia’s Ennahda ostentatiously disavowed Islamism and rebranded itself a party of Muslim democracy. And outside of Kuwait, Islamist movements barely function in most Gulf countries. Modern mainstream political Islam is a shadow of its former self.
Violent Islamism is another story. Al Qaeda and its ilk were initially caught off-guard by the uprisings. The rapid success of peaceful protests made the argument that only violent jihad could bring about change look extreme. But Syria’s war rescued them. Early in the conflict, Assad released a cadre of jihadis from prison in an attempt to frame the war as a struggle against terrorism. They were subsequently joined by remnants of what was then the Islamic State in Iraq, which moved some of its leaders and fighters into Syria to join in the battle against Assad. As the uprising morphed into an insurgency, governments from inside and outside the region funneled arms and money to rebel groups. Although Western governments tried to vet and direct aid toward moderate partners, others showed little restraint. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey all channeled assistance to armed Islamist groups and tolerated private financial support for the conflict. Those funds overwhelmingly went to the most extreme groups, tilting the balance within the rebellion.
The blowback came quickly. In 2013, jihadis in Syria initially split over the declaration of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, but then the group quickly turned its guns against the rest of the opposition. ISIS swept across eastern Syria and western Iraq, erasing the border and theatrically declaring itself the new caliphate. Its savvy social media campaigns and starkly apocalyptic messaging, coupled with demonstrable military success, drew tens of thousands of supporters to its ranks and inspired attacks abroad. Mainstream Islamist movements now found themselves squeezed between their long-standing rejection of violent jihad and their constituencies’ enthusiasm for groups such as ISIS. How could the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood continue to call for peaceful politics when its electoral participation had brought about only fierce repression and organizational disaster, while ISIS’s violence produced astonishing results?
A decade after they began, the uprisings have radically reshaped Islamist movements. The fortunes of organizations that participated in formal electoral politics spiked and then crashed. In contrast, jihadis suffered grievous setbacks but are still a viable political and ideological force: with few mainstream movements remaining as safety valves and entrenched conflicts offering ample opportunities for mobilization, more jihadi insurgencies seem likely.
THE REGION THE COUNTERREVOLUTION MADE
It wasn’t just Islamist groups that saw their fortunes take sharp turns in the wake of the uprisings. The protesters’ democratic aspirations seemed to portend a new role for the United States—one that might deliver on U.S. President Barack Obama’s famous Cairo speech promising a “new beginning” for American relations with the region. The reality, however, was much different.
The Arab uprisings challenged the entire U.S.-backed order, accelerating Washington’s retreat from the region. American disengagement has many causes, including the fiasco of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, shifts in energy dependence, the strategic need to pivot toward Asia, and domestic distaste for far-flung wars. But the uprisings profoundly undermined the United States’ core alliances, encouraging local powers to pursue policies at odds with Washington’s and inviting global competitors such as China and Russia into the once unipolar region.
A more vigorous U.S. embrace of the uprisings might have helped more democratic transitions take hold. But the Obama administration’s efforts proved tepid and ineffective, simultaneously leaving activists feeling betrayed and autocratic allies feeling abandoned. The administration’s reluctance to act more forcefully in Syria and its determined pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran further alienated the United States’ autocratic partners. As a result, through much of the past decade, putative U.S. allies, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, have often worked openly against American policies.
The uprisings have profoundly reshaped every conceivable dimension of Arab politics.
In contrast, the Trump administration shared the worldview of those allies, including their contempt for Arab democracy and the Iran deal. But its policies often proved no more reassuring. President Donald Trump’s nonresponse to the 2019 Iranian missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil refinery, for instance, which shut down nearly five percent of global oil production, shocked the region. On most regional issues, the United States under Trump seemed to have no policy at all. As the U.S. presence in the region has faded, Middle Eastern powers have been forging an incipient new order of their own.
Some parts of this alternative regional system are familiar. The death of an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution has been a long time coming. The struggle between Iran and its Sunni Arab rivals has metastasized but follows familiar contours from the early years of the century. Iran has upped its use of proxy forces, especially in Iraq and Syria, retaining its regional influence in spite of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and campaign of “maximum pressure.” Tehran’s attack on Abqaiq sent a message to Gulf states that a potential conflict would be costly. The steady campaign of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq by Iranian-backed Shiite militias even pushed U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to warn that the United States might abandon its embassy in Baghdad—a long-standing Iranian dream.
The real change in the post-uprising region is the emergence of a fault line within the Sunni world stretching across the Gulf, the Levant, and North Africa. With the United States either on the sidelines or obsessed with Iran, Sunni aspirants to Arab leadership, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE, fought proxy conflicts across the regional map. These competing Sunni blocs backed rival groups in virtually every political transition and civil war, turning local political contests into opportunities for regional competition. The effects were devastating: fractured Egyptian and Tunisian politics, the collapse of Libya’s post-Qaddafi transition, and a divided Syrian opposition.
It was into that polarized landscape that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman blundered like a wild elephant. MBS, as the crown prince is widely known, rose to power in 2015 by sidelining rivals and cowing potential opponents with abandon. Since then, he has initiated a series of disastrous foreign policy moves. He launched an intervention in Yemen that rapidly descended into a quagmire and a humanitarian catastrophe, bizarrely detained Lebanon’s prime minister, and allegedly ordered the assassination of the opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Such moves deeply damaged Saudi Arabia’s global standing.
Ten years on, the region’s autocratic façade is cracking once again.
Nothing exemplifies the erratic patterns of this newly multipolar Middle East better than the quixotic 2017 Saudi-UAE blockade of Qatar, launched in response to Qatar’s supposed support for terrorist groups. The diplomatic spat tore apart the Gulf Cooperation Council, once the region’s most effective multilateral body, and hobbled U.S. efforts to build a unified anti-Iranian front. Rather than succumb to the pressure, Qatar simply drew on Iranian and Turkish support, U.S. protection (Doha hosts the massive Al Udeid Air Base, which is used by the United States), and its own vast financial resources. The blockade eventually settled into a semipermanent, but not particularly dangerous, new reality, with tensions mostly playing out through proxy competition in Libya, Sudan, and elsewhere. The United States’ inability to compel its allies to resolve their differences and cooperate against Iran shows just how far its influence has fallen since 2011.
This intra-Gulf squabble, moreover, invited an aggressive Turkish bid for regional leadership. In northern Syria, the Turkish military redrew the region’s de facto borders and put sufficient pressure on U.S.-backed Kurdish units to force American troops to withdraw. Turkey followed this success with an aggressive intervention in Libya designed to counter Egyptian and UAE support for Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the military forces that oppose the interim government recognized by Turkey and other foreign powers. Turkey’s military expansion, closer ties to Qatar, and support for Sunni groups abandoned by Saudi Arabia all crystallized a new regional axis cutting through the Shiite-Sunni divide.
The United States has been virtually invisible in most of these conflicts. Under Trump, whose administration was fixated on Iran and uninterested in the nuances of regional politics, Washington largely disappeared as a major actor, even in areas such as Iraq and Syria, where U.S. troops remain deployed. Far from encouraging democratic change or even defending human rights, Trump instead chose to rely on the United States’ autocratic partners—hoping they could ignore public opinion and enter into an open alliance with Israel. Israel’s newly formalized relationships with Bahrain and the UAE, alongside broader Gulf support for Israeli efforts to target Iran, offer some vindication of that approach. In the absence of U.S. mediation elsewhere, however, interventions by regional actors have prolonged existing conflicts, with little regard for the well-being of those on the ground. Although the combatants have long since lost sight of their original purpose, entrenched violence grinds on—held in place by regional meddling and local war economies.
WHAT IS TO COME
Despite the Arab uprising’s premature obituary and dark legacy, the revolutionary wave of 2011 was not a passing mirage. Ten years on, the region’s autocratic façade is cracking once again. Major uprisings recently blocked the reelection of Algeria’s infirm president, led to the overthrow of Sudan’s long-ruling leader, and challenged sectarian political orders in Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon barely has a government after a year of protests, financial disaster, and the fallout of an incomprehensible explosion at Beirut’s port. Saudi Arabia has witnessed rapid change at home as it prepares for MBS’s presumed royal ascension.
These events initially seemed puzzling. Wasn’t the autocrats’ victory supposed to restore stability? Weren’t Arab publics defeated, exhausted, and despairing? In reality, what looked like an ending was only another turn of a relentless cycle. The regimes supposedly offering stability were, in fact, the primary causes of instability. It was their corruption, autocracy, failed governance, rejection of democracy, and abuse of human rights that drove people to revolt. Once the uprisings began, their violent repression fueled internal polarization and civil war, while exacerbating corruption and economic woes. As long as such regimes form the backbone of the regional order, there will be no stability.
More eruptions of mass protests now seem inevitable. There are simply too many drivers of political instability for even the most draconian regime to stay in power indefinitely. The COVID-19 pandemic, the collapse in the price of oil, and a sharp reduction in remittances from migrant laborers have piled intense new pressures onto already disastrously weak economies. Simmering wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen continue to spew out refugees, weapons, and extremism while attracting external intervention. And things could get worse. The tense U.S. standoff with Iran could escalate suddenly into a hot war, or the collapse of the Palestinian Authority could spark another intifada.
Soldiers guarding a polling place in Sousse, Tunisia, December 2014
Soldiers guarding a polling place in Sousse, Tunisia, December 2014 Zoubeir Souissi / Reuters
That is why, for all their assertiveness, most autocratic regimes in the region radiate palpable insecurity. Egypt’s government crushes every possible sign of popular unrest. Ankara has never recovered from the trauma of a failed coup attempt in 2016. Iran’s leaders obsess over external attempts to foment unrest as they struggle to cope with economic sanctions. Even the government of the UAE, where there have been few signs of domestic instability, raised eyebrows by arresting a British academic for alleged espionage. These are not the behaviors of confident governments. For them, the lesson of 2011 is that existential threats—such as democracy—can emerge from anywhere at any time. Their paranoia, in turn, drives them toward precisely the policies that fuel popular discontent. And thanks to nearly a decade of increased government repression, civil society and political institutions that might ordinarily channel popular frustration no longer exist. When such anger inevitably boils over, it will be more dramatic than ever before.
Future protests are unlikely to resemble the 2011 uprisings. The region has changed too much. Autocrats have learned how to co-opt, disrupt, and defeat challengers. Domestic unrest or regional contagion is unlikely to catch regimes off-guard, and governments are less likely to refrain from using force in the early stages of protest. But potential protesters have also learned valuable lessons. Although autocratic successes have left many Arab publics demoralized and broken, the recent revolutionary movements in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan have demonstrated that discipline and commitment remain. In all four countries, citizens proved able to sustain nonviolent mobilization for months on end despite crackdowns and provocation.
The political environment in the Middle East has also polarized into competing axes, which blocks the sort of cross-national identification that allowed the Arab uprisings to spread so easily. Unlike in 2011, today there is no unified Arab public. Regional media, once a source of unity, have fragmented. Al Jazeera is now seen as a partisan instrument of Qatari policy, not a platform for shared debate. Arab social media, meanwhile, has been thoroughly colonized by information warfare, bots, and malware, creating a toxic environment in which new cross-ideological coalitions struggle to coalesce. But as the interactions between Algerian and Sudanese protesters and the tenacity of Iraqi and Lebanese movements suggest, these difficulties are surmountable.
Compared with in 2011, moreover, the international environment is less open to a revolutionary wave today, but it is also in less of a position to prevent it. Whereas the Obama administration struggled to reconcile democratic values with strategic interests, the Trump administration fully supported regional autocrats and shared their contempt for popular protest. Nobody in the Middle East today will be looking to Washington for signals or guidance. Arab regimes and protesters alike understand that they are on their own.
To say that another surge of uprisings is coming does not mean subscribing to a deterministic view of history in which the right side inevitably triumphs. Far from it. Uprisings will happen, and when they do, they may well shatter existing orders in ways 2011 did not.
But for all the enormous untapped potential of the Middle East’s young population, there is little reason to be hopeful about the Middle East’s prospects. Nor will there be any easy, automatic reset when President-elect Joe Biden takes office. The Trump-brokered axis of Gulf states and Israel will likely resist every incremental change in U.S. policy. Iran will not trust U.S. commitments anytime soon. Shattered states will not be easily reconstructed. Refugees will not soon return. Jihadi insurgencies will continue to find ways to regenerate. If no other lesson is learned from 2011, it should be that the Middle East is far beyond the ability of any outside power to control.
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