Syrian Crackdown

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is cracking down hard on protestors:

"Bashar al-Assad is determined to quell the Syrian revolt, which is why he has sent in the military with tanks and is now arresting the network of opposition activists and leaders that his intelligence agencies have been able to track.

"There is an element of 'shock and awe' to the operation. Tanks are clearly not useful for suppressing an urban rebellion, but they demonstrate the superior firepower of the state and the determination of the president. It is a classic military strategy – go hard and quick. Take out the opposition before t has a chance to harden and develop a durable command a reliable cell structure. This is precisely what the US military tried to do in Iraq. It is what it failed to do in Libya, when it allowed Qaddafi to regroup and regain control of Tripoli and Western Libya after his initial confusion and weakness."

Joshua Landis, from whom the above analysis is taken, wonders if the opposition could take a Libyan turn:

"Some of the leadership of the opposition is dedicated to peaceful means, but this pacifism is not universal. Already we have witness the resort to arms by the opposition. In Banyas, nine soldiers were shot while driving down the main highway into the city by armed opposition elements. In Jable, demonstrators had armed themselves with clubs, shovels and other weapons. Although useless against firearms, these weapons demonstrated the mood of the crowd and willingness to oppose state violence with violence of their own. Syrian authorities have insisted from the beginning that opposition elements have been shooting at police and the military. Even if only a small percentage of these reports are true, it suggests that the opposition is willing to use force."

Syria's eastern porous desert border was once a primary means of smuggling arms into Iraq. I don't know the Syrian opposition, but there's no reason that flow cannot be reversed, especially if Saudi Arabia and perhaps Israel want to destabilize the Syrian government.

UPDATE: I should probably toss in here, though, that the lack of military involvement on the protestors' side is an important difference from Libya.

Fire Ceremony

Today at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, thousands took part in a centuries-old fire ceremony:

"The small doorway to the traditional site of Jesus' tomb cracked open to reveal a bright flame and tens of thousands of worshippers cheered ecstatically, marking the pinnacle of Easter Week's holy fire ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

"The annual ritual has been practiced for at least the last 1,200 years on the day before Easter, which celebrates Jesus' resurrection.

"Worshippers of various Orthodox Christian sects packed into the Jerusalem church - Christianity's most sacred shrine and revered as the site where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. In the ceremony, a flame believed to be miraculously lit emanates from the tomb."

In his biography of the Fatimid ruler al-Hakim, Paul Walker includes a primary source account of that caliph's reaction to news of the ceremony in 1008 CE:

"That year Christians went from Egypt to Jerusalem to be present at Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as was customary every year, bringing with them important adornments, much as the Muslims do in going out with the pilgrimage caravan. So al-Hakim asked Khatkin al-Dayf al-'Adudi, one of his commanders, about that because of the latter's familiarity with the matter of this church. He responded, 'The Christians greatly revere this church and make pilgrimages to it from every country. Kings come to visit, carrying to it great wealth, vestments, curtains, furnishings, candle stands, crosses finely wrought in gold and silver, and vessels of the same. There are in it many things of that type. On the day of Easter, the Christians assemble at the church, setting up crosses and suspending candlesticks on the altar. They attempt to have fire transferred to it by means of elder oil mixed with mercury. It produces for the purpose a bright light that those who see this happen suppose has descended from the heavens.' Al-Hakim rejected that and directed Bishr ibn Surin, the clerk of the chancery, to write to Ahmad b. Ya'qub, the da'i, commanding him to proceed straight away to Jerusalem to destroy the church and have the people plunder it so thoroughly all traces of it were obliterated. He did exactly that."

Walker later suggests that the fact the actual destruction of the church in 1009, which is 400 in the Islamic calendar, may have been related to a messianic complex on the part of al-Hakim focused on that year, in which, for example, he began eschewing court ceremony for wearing plain clothes and riding everyone's favorite messianic mount, a donkey. The full mysteries of al-Hakim's actions during his reign, which have caused many to see him as insane, will probably never be resolved, but this one did have a significant historical consequence in that the westward travel of news of this destruction served as one of the "immediate" sparks for the First Crusade decades later.

Ayatollah Khoeiniha

This guy sounds like someone whose name I've certainly run across before, but he's definitely never made an impression until now:

"Since the mass unrest that followed the June 2009 presidential election, the Iranian authorities have succeeded in suppressing street protests and decapitating the opposition movement.

"The two leaders who stood against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are in detention, as are dozens of their supporters.

"The conservative factions that run Iran should be feeling confident they can win the parliamentary election later this year virtually unopposed.

"That hope may be premature. At the end of March, a 70-year-old cleric who had hitherto kept out of the headlines came out of the shadows.

"News websites run by conservative groups – often the first sources of such information – reported that Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha was making plans to ease the way for a number of candidates, presumably with opposition leanings, to get through the vetting process that might otherwise exclude them and stand for election."

The link is to a full IWPR profile of Khoeiniha, a reformist who during the Islamic Revolution served as the clerical liaison between the U.S. embassy hostage takers and Ayatollah Khomeini. He had some mid-level prominence in the 1980's, but was later edged out of government and became an important of apparently quiet player in the reform movement.

It speaks well of the climate for reform in Iran that even with its A-team of leaders out of the picture, it can find a such a respectable B-team.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Nahda's Future

Rajaa Basly joins those who seem bearish on the future of al-Nahda, Tunisia's main Islamist party:

"Although this would seem to be a field ripe for al-Nahda recruitment, many Tunisians are cautious about the Islamist party. The youth who led the revolution have never known anything but single-party dictatorship under Ben Ali, and were not exposed to the ideas of al-Nahda. The Tunisian middle class is wary of al-Nahda, which has been accused of extremism and terrorism, in particular following the incidents in the early 1990s, when al-Nahda activists attacked an RCD office in a Tunis neighborhood, killing one civilian, and threw acid in the faces of certain individuals. The shock of these incidents still resonates today, and Ghannouchi has recently admitted that party members committed mistakes in the past, though he stressed that those were individual acts not authorized by the party leadership...

"Although al-Nahda has succeeded in establishing itself within the coalition pushing to consolidate the revolution, it is still challenged by internal rifts and competition from other Islamists. Disputes surfaced as the younger generation of al-Nahda members forced founding member Abd al-Fattah Morou from the leadership body in light of demands that al-Nahda be more self-critical regarding the violence it committed in the 1991 Bab Souieka incident. Morou is now openly criticizing al-Nahda and planning to form an independent party. In addition, the official composition of al-Nahda’s executive bureau has seen significant changes, including Rachid Ghannouchi’s announcement from London that he was stepping aside from active leadership in favor of spokesman Hamadi Jebali.

"Fragmentation is a real threat for al-Nahda; some 50 political parties have been legalized, some of which are openly Islamist in orientation and thus are potential competitors for al-Nahda’s traditional constituency. Al-Nahda is also faced with unexpected emergence of a Salafi youth movement, particularly Hizb al-Tahrir, which was denied legal status by the government after it openly proclaimed its primary objective to be forming an Islamic Caliphate and abolishing political parties. This growth of fundamentalist Salafism puts al-Nahda in an awkward position, and may force it to reposition itself after the Salafists have led demonstrations chanting bigoted and anti-Semitic slogans, and attacked liquor stores and unveiled women."

There are two things about this which I think are generalizable to most of the Arab world. One is the possibly for major Islamist opposition groups to fragment in a new multi-party scene in which the different strains of thought may become more evident. The other is the rise of the underground salafi trend while these movements have, in different countries, been organizationally repressed, co-opted, or both.

Our Lady of Zeitun

John Calvert's biography of Sayyid Qutb mentions a fascinating case of apparent mutuality in Muslim and Christian religious practices in Egypt deep in the 20th century:

"Beginning on 2 April 1968, ten months after the defeat (in the Six Day War), tens of thousands of Egyptians, both Muslims and Copts, witnessed a vision of the Virgin Mary over the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Zaytun, the same Cairo suburb where, four decades earlier, Qutb had lived briefly with his journalist uncle. Spotted initially by two garage mechanics, the luminous figure of Mary appeared almost every night over the next two and a half years. Large crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of 'The Mother of the Light,' as Egyptians call the Virgin. According to one witness, the apparitions 'always took place at night and were generally preceded by mysterious lights, flashing and scintillating silently over the church like a canopy of shooting stars.' Many have explained the Marian vision at Zaytun as a collective psychological response to the trauma of the 1967 defeat. That may be the case. On the other hand, for those who witnessed the apparition and believed in it, the explanation was simpler: there is a divine truth, a rock of certainty constant over the ages that beckons man to liberation from human failing and the imperfections of the world.'"

Here is a detailed Coptic account of the events. This also explains why, in 2005, the Kefaya movement held a protest outside that church after one outside the mosque of Sayyida Zaynab, sister of Hussein and granddaughter of Muhammad who serves as the traditional Islamic patroness of the city.

Iraq and Libya

Reidar Visser looks at Libya's history of unification:

"When it comes to Libya, unlike Iraq, the country actually does have a history of twentieth-century federalism as well as complete territorial fragmentation. During the first years after independence, from 1951 to 1963, Libya had a federal state structure which among other things featured extensive taxation powers for the three federal regions (Benghazi in the east, Tripoli in the centre-north and Fezzan in the south). That tripartite federal structure, in turn, was based on complete administrative separation in the 1940s, when developments in the Second World War and the ouster of the Italians in 1942 had led to the creation of three separate zones of occupation with their own administrations. Although the ethno-sectarian geography of these lands did not correlate perfectly with the tripartite administrative configuration, Benghazi stood somewhat out thanks to a strongly influential puritan Sufi movement (the Sanusiyya), whereas non-Arab (particularly Berber) influences were said to be somewhat stronger in the west and the south. In contrast to the situation in Libya, Iraq remained a centralised state from the formal inception of the monarchy in 1921 until the beginnings of experiments with Kurdish autonomy in the 1970s.

"On the other hand, though, if we go further back in history, the parallels between Iraq and Libya are quite striking. Just like the territory of modern-day Iraq was administratively unified for a great deal in the late 1700s and the early 1800s, a political entity almost perfectly coterminous with the modern state of Libya existed in the same period: The Barbary state of Tripoli. Contemporary accounts of North Africa in the early nineteenth century almost invariably focus on four dominant political entities in the region: Morocco, Alger, Tunis and Tripoli. Headed by the Albanian Karamanlis – a group of military officers that broke with the Ottomans and as such another parallel to Iraq where the Georgian mamelukes reigned – the Tripoli state engaged in lucrative piracy activities in the Mediterranean that enabled it to subjugate, albeit tenuously, the territory to the south and east of Tripoli (incidentally, those piracies also brought them into conflict with the United States). After the Ottoman reconquista in 1835 (the timing being another Iraq parallel) that same geographical area remained mostly unified as a single vilayet until the 1880s. At that point, Cyrenaica was definitively separated as a distinctive unit. By way of contrast, Iraq oscillated between unified rule and various subdivision formulas throughout the nineteenth century...

"This point in turn relates to what is perhaps the greatest contrast between Iraq and Libya as far as territorial stability is concerned: Whereas both Tripoli and Baghdad presented a certain degree of continuity as proto-capitals for greater Libyan and Iraqi regions between the 1700s and the 1900s, Libya experienced a unique degree of both informal and formal territorial fragmentation during the first half of the twentieth century – above all as the result of different legacies of interaction with foreign, imperial powers in different regions of the country. Firstly, Sanusi resistance against the Italians provided for anti-colonial sentiment that translated into regional patterns: Cyrenaica, anti-Italian; Tripolitania, less so. Later, as the result of developments in the Second World War, formal fragmentation ensued in the shape of three different zones of occupation: Fezzan (French), Tripolitania (British), and Cyrenaica (separated from Tripoli and reconstituted as a single entity under the British, with special guarantees for future independence)."

I've excerpted only a few points from a post worth reading in full examining the possible parallels between the idea of a united Iraq and a united Libya. One thing I do wonder is the impact of economic integration in both countries. Tripoli and Cyrenaica may have had a common ruler around 200 years ago, but that wasn't a state that much penetrated society, nor was it particularly lasting. More important would be the extent of conquest in Libya by the Tanzimat-period Ottoman Empire, which I'm not sure about. The issue in both cases is that, economically, Tripoli looked west and Cyrenaica east, without much intercourse between the two halves of the country. The late Ottoman Empire would have brought similar administrative and educational structures to those areas, which would matter some.

This is not, however, to disagree with Visser's main point that Libya, as with other modern Arab states, is much more durable than those looking for social cleavages and supposed natural boundaries might suspect. Again, economically, a key to this is the expansion of the distributive oil state over the past 50 years, which brings everyone into important relationships with the central authority. More importantly, in the Arab world as a whole, the push has been to combine countries rather than break them up. Qadhafi certainly pursued many unity schemes, and I doubt public opinion differs on this particular issue, even if no such schemes are really practical.

Hunger Strike

Thanks to connections I have, Bahrain is a country whose troubles I can't help but take more personally than most. Today Zainab Alkhawaja, who happens to be a former student of mine, announced a hunger strike over the arrest of her father and other family members:

"Security forces attacked my home, broke our doors with sledgehammers, and terrified my family. Without any warning, without an arrest warrant and without giving any reasons; armed, masked men attacked my father. Although they said nothing, we all know that my father's crime is being a human rights activist. My father was grabbed by the neck, dragged down a flight of stairs and then beaten unconscious in front of me. He never raised his hand to resist them, and the only words he said were 'I can't breathe'. Even after he was unconscious the masked men kept kicking and beating him while cursing and saying that they were going to kill him. This is a very real threat considering that in the past two weeks alone three political prisoners have died in custody. The special forces also beat up and arrested my husband and brother-in-law.

"Since their arrest, 3 days ago, we have heard nothing. We do not know where they are and whether they are safe or not. In fact, we still have no news of my uncle who was arrested 3 weeks ago, when troops put guns to the heads of his children and beat his wife severely."

The "father" is question is Abd al-Hadi al-Khawaji, former head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. The current head of that organization, Nabeel Rajab, has also been summoned for questioning over his exposure of regime torture. All this is part of a crackdown on opposition since the country's protests were broken up last month with GCC backing, especially from Saudi Arabia.

Zainab addresses a call for support to President Barack Obama:

"I am writing this letter to let you know, that if anything happens to my father, my husband, my uncle, my brother-in-law, or to me, I hold you just as responsible as the AlKhalifa regime. Your support for this monarchy makes your government a partner in crime. I still have hope that you will realize that freedom and human rights mean as much to a Bahraini person as it does to an American, Syrian or a Libyan and that regional and political considerations should not be prioritized over liberty and human rights."

I don't know what kind of influence the U.S. can use with Bahrain on issues where the regime has decided its survival seems to be at stake, and I suspect that some in government are falling for the fear of Iran that the GCC has been peddling. If there is leverage, however, simply supporting the rights of dissidents is an appropriate place to use it.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Syria's New Citizens

Syria now has 250,000 more citizens:

"The Syrian president on Thursday granted citizenship to thousands of Kurds living in a northeastern province, fulfilling a key demand by the country's long ostracized minority and making yet another overture amid extraordinary anti-government protests that have shaken Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime.

"State-run television said Assad issued a decree granting citizenship to more than 250,000 Kurds registered as aliens in the Hasaka province records. In a separate decree, Assad sacked the governor of central Homs province that has been the scene of clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces in the past three weeks...

"Kurds - the largest ethnic minority in Syria - make up 15 percent of the country's 23 million population and have long complained of neglect and discrimination. Some 250,000 Kurds have been denied citizenship, making it difficult to find work or enroll in the state-run education system.

"The government had argued that they are not Syrians but Kurds who fled to the country from neighboring Turkey or Iraq."

I don't actually believe that younger rulers are more likely to reform, but in Assad's case the perception that he is, combined with these sorts of measures, may serve him in good stead.

Kirkuk and Kurdish Politics

Denise Natali reports on Kurdish politics in Iraq:

"The protests, which are still ongoing, have not only unleashed populations' pent-up frustrations with the KRG-party apparatus but also have reinforced fractures in Kurdish politics and society. While most Kurdish populations seek political reform, only those in Sulaimani have had the opportunity and interest to openly challenge KRG and Barzani family power. Political polarization between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was made evident after the PUK refused the deployment of KDP militia into Sulaimani, which attempted to quell a situation that its KRG partner has proven unable to manage.

"New fissures also have emerged between the KRG and its challengers -- Kurdish populations it now refers to as 'Those Who Do Not Love Kurdistan'. In fact, the entire opposition movement and protests have become highly politicized as old party feuds over leadership and control are intertwined with demands for real political reform. While the KDP and PUK accuse the opposition group, Goran, and demonstrators for being disloyal to Kurdish nationalism, Islamic parties that have joined the protestors in Sulaimani have permitted their mullahs to give sermons referring to the demonstrations as 'a jihad against the KRG'. These political tensions have widened the Badinani-Soran rift, or the geographical polarizations between regions, that has evolved alongside the aggrandizement of Barzani-family power and weakening of the PUK since 2006, making the possibility of a truly unified Kurdish government unlikely."

This, I suspect, is a critical context for the KRG's aggressive moves around Kirkuk:

"On February 25, Arabs and Turkomans planned to protest in Kirkuk against corruption and unemployment. The Kurds believed that these protests would lead to attacks against them and sought to preempt the protests. Therefore, two days earlier, Dr. Najmaldin O. Karim, until recently a prominent spokesman for the Kurds in the United States and now a member of Iraqi parliament from the Kirkuk region, told a press conference in Baghdad that '[Arab] chauvinists were planning to destabilize Kirkuk during the protests' (Kurd Net, March 3). Khalid Shwani, another Kurdish MP from Kirkuk, claimed that the Arab Political Council planned to attack numerous Kurdish administrative and security offices. The following day 8500 to 12,000 heavily-armed peshmerga, including crack units of the Zeravani (paramilitary police), were deployed just west of Kirkuk. The Arab Political Council and Turkoman Front denounced the Kurdish move and demanded its immediate withdrawal. A call for a 'day of wrath' to protest the peshmerga presence was only averted by a police-enforced curfew.

"On March 3, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded through a spokesman that the KRG withdraw its troops: 'These troops were deployed without the permission of the central government and the Prime Minister has asked them to draw down immediately' (Kurd Net, March 4). However, Shaykh Ja’afar Mustafa, the Minister of Peshmerga Affairs, announced that the Kurdish forces would not withdraw until the situation normalized (Kurd Net, March 9). He claimed that the Kurds had to protect Kirkuk from al-Qaeda, Arab groups, and Ba’athists and were acting on the basis of intelligence reports that indicated that these groups had been planning to take over the city during the protests (Kurd Net, March 9). Mustafa also asserted that the Kurds were coordinating their actions with the Iraqi army units in the region (Kurd Net, March 2)."

These events in Iraq outside Baghdad have not gotten the attention they deserve, as the type of protests seen across the Middle East are, in Iraq's north, increasing the volatility of an already situation. On one level, there is the KRG's stated fear for their interests in Kirkuk. On the other, there is the fact that it is easy for the challenged authorities in Iraq, in this case the KRG, to try and answer protests by standing up for the interests of the community they represent against those of other communities, and portray the opposition as traitors.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Black Africans in Libya

Reports that Moammar Qadhafi has brought in mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa has placed Libya's African migrant workers in a vulnerable position:

"As rumours of black mercenaries flown and trucked into Libya in their thousands have swirled about the country, poor sub-Saharan African migrant workers have borne the brunt of rebel outrage at the claims...

"The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it has become a “poisonous” atmosphere for sub-Saharan Africans in Libya, noting youth gangs this week broke down the doors to threaten an Eritrean family in hiding for three weeks, and that there are unconfirmed reports of some killed...

"Says the man in hiding: 'Some people here among the black African community tend to support the regime purely on the basis of wanting to survive. If the rebels win, they’re going to unleash their terror on black Africans.'"

Libya apparently has a history of racism. According to Julie Flint and Alex de Waal's Darfur: A New History of a Long War:

"Colonel Gaddafi had been mentor of the Arab Gathering. When relations with the Arab League sourced in the 1990's, he turned his attention towards building strategic alliances in Africa, and opened Libya's borders to migrant workers. But an estimated one-third of Libya's youth were unemployed, and race riots in 2000 killed an estimated 250 black migrants. Thousands more were expelled from the country."

Libya, incidentally, is relevant to Darfur because during the 1970's and early 1980's, Qadhafi sought a Saharan empire, fighting a lengthy war with Chad in which he used Darfur as a side base. Qadhafi promoted an aggressive Arab supremacy as a political movement potentially favorable to his ambitions, which led to the "Arab Gathering." This ideology of Arab supremacy is an important element to the genocide in Darfur.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)