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Tehran,
June 2009 MERO
- June 28, 2009 Kaveh Ehsani, Arang Keshavarzian
and Norma Claire Moruzzi
The
morning after Iran’s
June 12 presidential election,
Iranians booted up their
computers to find Fars
News, the online mouthpiece
of the Islamic Republic’s
security apparatus, heralding
the dawn of a “third
revolution.” Many an
ordinary Iranian, and many
a Western pundit, had already
adopted such dramatic language
to describe the burgeoning
street demonstrations against
the declaration by the Ministry
of Interior that Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, the sitting
president, had received 64
percent of the vote to 34
percent for his main challenger,
Mir Hossein Mousavi. But
the editors of Fars News were
referring neither to the
protests, as were the people
in the streets, nor to the
prospect that the unrest
might topple the Islamic
Republic, as were some of
the more wistful commentators.
Rather, the editors were
labeling the radical realignment
of Iranian politics that
they wish for. This realignment
would complete the removal
of the old guard, as did
the “first” revolution
of 1978-1979, and consolidate
the rule of inflexible hardliners,
as did the “second
revolution”
symbolized by the US Embassy
takeover of 1979. Full
Story>>
Something’s happening
here. In one of the largest
street demonstrations in Tehran
since the 1979 Revolution,
thousands filled Vali Asr
Street (formerly known as
Pahlavi Street) on Monday,
forming a human chain nearly
12 miles long and stopping
traffic for nearly five hours.
They wore strips of green
cloth around their wrists
and heads in support of presidential
candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
They sang “Ey Iran,”
the unofficial national anthem
composed in the Pahlavi era
by one of the leading figures
of classical Persian music,
the late Ruhollah Khaleghi.
Banned for a time by the Islamic
Republic, the song’s
lyrical melody touches a deeply
patriotic vein. Full
Story>>
On
June 8, when all votes are cast
and counted between the glitzy
urban quarters of Beirut and
the dusty hamlets of the Bekaa
valley, the Lebanese elections
will have produced one certain
winner: the local advertising
industry. Despite a newly imposed
cap on campaign spending, candidates
have been falling over each
other to plaster the billboards
along the roads and highways
of this miniscule country with
their oversized likenesses and
airy slogans. Crowded out by
the politicians, some peddlers
of more pedestrian seasonal
merchandise have retaliated
in kind, with a brand of cheap
fruit juice poking fun at notorious
practices of vote rigging by
promising democracy "extra,"
thus drawing attention to its
product by the same name, while
the only locally produced beer
brand declared itself "victorious
for lack of competition"
already three months ago --
true to the form of much of
the electoral contest. Full
Story>>
Deep in the morass of YouTube
lies a disturbing video clip
recorded in late February at
the cemetery of al-Baqi‘
and on surrounding streets in
Medina, Saudi Arabia. An initial
caption promises images of “desecration
of graves.” Al-Baqi‘,
located next to the mosque of
the prophet Muhammad in the
second holiest city of Islam,
is believed to be the final
resting place of four men revered
by Shi‘i Muslims as imams
or successors to the prophet:
Hasan ibn ‘Ali, ‘Ali
ibn Husayn, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali
and Ja‘afar ibn Muhammad.
The prophet’s wives, as
well as many of his relatives
and close associates, are also
said to be buried here, making
the ground hallowed for Sunni
Muslims as well. Full
Story>>
Tens
of thousands of people have
fled their homes in areas of
Pakistan’s North West
Frontier Province (NWFP) as
the army has launched ground
operations and air raids to
“eliminate and expel”
the Islamist militant groups
commonly known as the Tehreek-e
Taliban or the Taliban in Pakistan
(TIP). The targeted districts
border Swat, a well-watered
mountain vale described as “paradise
on earth” in Pakistani
tourist brochures, where the
provincial government tried
to placate the Taliban by agreeing
to implement Islamic law (sharia).
The February agreement, the
Nizam-e Adal regulation, was
approved by the lower house
of the Pakistani parliament
on April 12 and signed into
law soon afterward by the president,
Asif Zardari. But since then,
fighting has continued, with
both sides accusing the other
of breaching the peace. As of
April 27, according to a cleric
close to the TIP, talks with
the provincial government about
Swat are suspended. Full
Story>>
April
has already been a cruel month
in Iraq. A spate of bombings
aimed at Shi‘i civilians
in Baghdad has raised fears
that the grim sectarian logic
that led the capital to civil
war in 2005-2007 will reassert
itself. On April 6, a string
of six car bombs killed at least
37 people; the next day, shortly
after President Barack Obama
landed in Baghdad, another car
bomb killed eight; and on the
morrow, still another bomb blew
up close to the historic Shi‘i
shrine in Kadhimiyya just northwest
of the capital’s central
districts, taking an additional
seven civilian lives. Worryingly
for Iraqis, the bombings occurred
following gun battles between
the security forces of Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s
Shi‘i-led government and
Sunni Arab militiamen, fueling
rumors that the disgruntled
militiamen have spearheaded
the violent campaign.
Full
Story>>
Shoes
and pants soaked with rain,
I tagged along with a journalist
from the popular Arabic daily
Echorouk -- his paper
my umbrella -- while he visited
polling stations in the Belcourt
neighborhood of Algiers on the
day of local elections in November
2007. At the first site, disgruntled
party officials quickly ejected
us. We did not have the right
papers, they said, and the police
who looked on bored were inclined
to agree. At the second station,
we kept our distance. Watching
for half an hour, we could count
the voters who entered on two
hands. Next to us stood four
youths, escaping the rain under
a shop awning. They laughed
at us when we asked if they
were going to vote. Down the
road we saw an older gentleman
on his way back from voting.
For the occasion, he had donned
a woolen Nehru-type cap and
a brown burnoose, to which he
had proudly affixed a medal
earned during the war for independence
from France (1954-1962).
Full
Story>>
Across
nearly the breadth of North
Africa, the head of state enjoys
a lifetime appointment. Morocco
has a king. In Tunisia, Zine
El Abidine Ben Ali, president
since 1987, pushed for a constitutional
amendment removing term limits
and has now announced a bid
for a fifth term in office.
President Husni Mubarak of Egypt,
who assumed office in 1981,
is already serving his fifth
term. Libyan strongman Mu‘ammar
Qaddafi, in power since September
1969, has never permitted a
meaningful election. In March,
during a visit to Niamey, Niger,
where President Mamadou Tandja
is also seeking to rescind term
limits, Qaddafi denied that
such measures are “anti-democratic,”
declaring: “I am for freedom
of popular will; the people
must choose who should govern,
even if it is for eternity.”
Full
Story>>
On
the day after the International
Criminal Court (ICC) issued
an arrest warrant for Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir, the
wanted man addressed a pre-planned
rally of thousands in front
of the presidential palace in
Khartoum. Bashir was defiant,
denouncing the warrant as “neo-colonialism,”
and praising his supporters
in Martyrs’ Square as
“grandsons of the mujahideen,”
a reference to the participants
in the Mahdiyya uprising against
Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1885.
The atmosphere was almost one
of jubilation; one might have
mistaken the crowds for soccer
fans celebrating a win. As Bashir
condemned the ICC and the West
from the microphone, the protesters
waved the Sudanese flag and
held aloft pictures of Bashir,
as well as posters depicting
the face of Luis Moreno Ocampo,
the ICC prosecutor, superimposed
upon the body of a pig. There
were sporadic outbreaks of drumming,
dancing and singing. Full
Story>>
Beating
their chests and wearing black,
a procession of young men and
women filed toward the gates
of Tehran’s Amir Kabir
Polytechnic University on February
23. The mourners -- drawn primarily
from the ranks of the Basij
militia and unaffiliated hardline
Islamist vigilantes -- were
carrying the remains of five
unknown soldiers, martyred during
the 1980-88 war with Iraq, to
campus, where they intended
to rebury them. Inside the gates,
a gathering of angry students
had assembled to protest what
they saw as a blatant show of
state force, and when the procession
crossed onto campus, a confrontation
ensued. Students claimed the
fight pitted 1,500 protesters
against a smaller group of mourners,
most of whom were armed with
clubs, knives and martial arts
weapons. Security forces arrested
more than 70 of their number,
the students reported, and nine
were hospitalized. In subsequent
days, more student activists
were picked up in police raids,
and at press time, some of them
were still in detention. Full
Story>>
Under
a tent in Benghazi on August
30, 2008, Silvio Berlusconi
bowed symbolically before the
son of ‘Umar al-Mukhtar,
hero of the Libyan resistance
to Italian colonial rule. “It
is my duty to express to you,
in the name of the Italian people,
our regret and apologies for
the deep wounds that we have
caused you,” said the
Italian premier. Eastern Libya
was the site of the bulk of
the armed resistance to the
Italian occupation, which lasted
from 1911 to 1943. More than
100,000 Libyans are believed
to have died in the counterinsurgency
campaign, many in desert prison
camps and in southern Italian
penal colonies. Inside the tent,
Berlusconi and Libyan leader
Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi signed
a historic agreement according
to which Italy will pay $5 billion
over the next 20 years, nominally
to compensate Libya for these
“deep wounds.” The
treaty was ratified by Italy
on February 3 and by Libya on
March 1. Full
Story>>
Starting
in the late 1990s, and especially
following two stories by CNN's
chief international correspondent,
the British-Iranian Christiane
Amanpour, Westerners were treated
to a slew of articles and broadcast
reports aiming to “lift
the veil” on Iran. Amanpour’s
second story revolved around
“youth and the party scene.”
She visited the house of another
hyphenated Iranian to show a
group reveling in youthful abandon,
toasting each other with alcoholic
drinks to the tune of playful
music, and so consuming two
illegal items of consequence
in the Islamic Republic. With
youth, it seemed, came merriment
and rebelliousness. Full
Story>>
Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online Feature
Waltz
with Bashir (2008) opens
with a strange and powerful
image: a pack of ferocious dogs
running headlong through the
streets of Tel Aviv, overturning
tables and terrifying pedestrians,
converging beneath a building’s
window to growl at a man standing
there. It turns out that this
man, Boaz, is an old friend
of Ari Folman, the film’s
director and protagonist. Like
Folman, he was a teenager in
the Israeli army during its
1982 invasion of Lebanon. And
the pack of menacing dogs is
his recurring nightmare, a nightly
vision he links to the many
village guard dogs he shot --
so they wouldn’t raise
the alarm -- as his platoon
made its way through southern
Lebanon. Full
Story>>
For
the first time, the international
community has indicted a sitting
president of a sovereign state.
Omar al-Bashir of Sudan stands
accused by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in The
Hague of “crimes against
humanity and war crimes”
committed in the course of the
Khartoum regime’s brutal
suppression of the revolt in
the country’s far western
province of Darfur. Having indicted
two other figures associated
with the regime in 2007, ICC
prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo
began building a case against
the man at the top, and on March
4, the court issued a warrant
for Bashir’s arrest. Full
Story>>
Former
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari arrived in Basra
on January 24. His mission in
the southern oil port was to
stump for his Reformist Front,
a breakaway faction of the Da‘wa
Party of the current premier,
Nouri al-Maliki, ahead of Iraq’s
January 31 provincial elections.
His itinerary included visits
to the Five Miles area -- often
described as a stronghold of
the movement loyal to the young
Shi‘i leader Muqtada al-Sadr
-- as well as a rally at a sports
stadium. Only days earlier,
he had been preceded by Maliki
himself, and in the first days
of 2009 numerous other national
politicians trooped to Basra
as well. Full
Story>>
President
Barack Obama’s campaign
pledge that his administration
would begin working for peace
in the Middle East from its
first day in office is one that
he almost met. On January 21,
a mere 24 hours after his inauguration,
Obama placed phone calls from
the Oval Office to Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian
Authority (PA) President Mahmoud
Abbas, Egyptian President Husni
Mubarak and Jordanian King ‘Abdallah
II. The next day, together with
Vice President Joe Biden and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
he visited the State Department
to announce the appointment
of former Sen. George Mitchell
as the new special envoy for
the Middle East. Full
Story>>
Shortly
after 11:30 am on December 27,
2008, at the height of the midday
bustle on the first day of the
Gazan week and with multitudes
of schoolchildren returning
home from the morning shift,
close to 90 Israeli warplanes
launched over 100 tons of explosives
at some 100 targets throughout
the 139 square miles of the
Gaza Strip. Within minutes,
the near simultaneous air raids
killed more than 225 and wounded
at least 700, more than 200
of them critically. These initial
attacks alone produced dozens
more dead than any other day
in the West Bank and Gaza combined
since Israel’s occupation
of those lands commenced in
June 1967. Full
Story>>
A
stopped clock, the saying goes,
is right twice a day. The “senior
Bush administration official”
who chatted with the Washington
Post on December 28 was
right that Israel is “not
trying to take over the Gaza
Strip” with the massive
assault launched the previous
day, and correct that the Israelis
are bombing now “because
they want it to be over before
the next administration comes
in.” That’s twice,
and so one must take this official’s
remaining reasoning -- that
President-elect Barack Obama
may not smile upon Israel’s
gross abuses of military power
as the Bush administration has
done -- with a grain of salt.
Full
Story>>
The
day after Christmas, the wires
buzzed with reports that Pakistan
was moving 20,000 troops from
its western border with Afghanistan
to locations near the eastern
border with India. The redeployment,
said Pakistani Foreign Minister
Shah Qureshi, came in response
to “certain developments”
on the Indian side of the boundary,
one reportedly being that New
Delhi might be considering military
strikes on militant bases inside
Pakistan. Pakistani security
officials stressed that these
moves were “minimum defensive
measures”: No soldiers
had been taken away from the
theater of counterinsurgency
operations against the Taliban
and al-Qaeda, only from “snowbound
areas” where the army
sits idle. Still, the troop
transfers marked another dip
in relations between India and
Pakistan since the November
26 massacre of over 170 people
in the Indian metropolis of
Mumbai. Full
Story>>
Interventions:
A Middle East Report Online
Feature
On
October 8, 48-year old Tawfiq
Jamal got into his car with
his 18-year old son and a friend,
and set out for the house of
his relatives, the Shaaban family,
who lived as of then in a new,
predominantly Jewish neighborhood
on the eastern edges of Acre.
A walled city on the sea, mainly
famed in the West for having
served as the CENTCOM of the
crusading Richard the Lionheart,
Acre is today a “mixed”
Israeli town, inhabited by Jews
as well as Arabs like Tawfiq.
That day, he was on his way
to pick up his daughter, who
had been helping the Shaabans
prepare cakes for a wedding
scheduled for the following
week. He insists that he drove
slowly and quietly, with his
radio turned off. It was Yom
Kippur, the Day of Atonement,
one of the holiest days of the
Jewish religious calendar, on
which the streets of Israel’s
Jewish cities and towns customarily
empty of traffic. After he parked
his car at the Shaaban home,
a group of Jewish youths attacked
Tawfiq and chased him inside.
For the next few hours, a mob
besieged the place, and as rumors
spread that one of its inhabitants
had been killed, Arab youths
poured out of the city’s
old casbah ghetto, some reportedly
to come to the rescue. On their
way back home the youths proceeded
to break a number of windows
in Jewish shops. Full
Story>>
The
town of Bayt Sahour spills down
the hills to the east of Bethlehem,
spreading out along ridges and
valleys that mark the beginning
of the long descent to the Dead
Sea. Up the slopes the roads
carve out twisting rivers of
dirt and asphalt, wending their
way through clusters of soft
brown stone houses, but across
the ridges they run straight
and smooth.
At
the end of one of these roads
lies a hill called ‘Ush
Ghurab, known to Israelis as
Shdema, the name of the military
base that sat on the summit
until 2006. Today there are
only a few hollowed-out buildings,
thick concrete blocks with gaping
windows and doorways set low
behind earthen walls, to remind
visitors of the previous occupants.
On the northern slope, small
pillboxes stare out vacantly
over Bayt Sahour and Bethlehem.
Full
Story>>
Morocco
serves as the backdrop for such Hollywood blockbusters as Gladiator,
Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies. The country’s breathtaking
landscapes and gritty urban neighbourhoods are the perfect setting
for Hollywood’s imagination.
Unbeknown
to most filmgoers, however, is that Morocco is embroiled in one of
Africa’s oldest conflicts - the dispute over Western
Sahara. This month the UN Security Council is expected to take up the
dispute once more, providing US President Barack Obama with an opportunity
to assert genuine leadership in resolving this conflict. But there’s
no sign that the new administration is paying adequate attention. Full
Story>>
Shortly
before assuming office, President Barack Obama was handed a missive
signed by such Washington luminaries as ex-national security advisers
Zbigniew Brezezinski and Brent Scowcroft, urging him to “explore
the possibility” of direct contact with Hamas. One month after
he entered the White House, Obama received an epistle from Ahmad Yousef,
a Gaza-based spokesman for the Islamist movement, making the same recommendation. “There
can be no peace without Hamas,” Yousef told the New York Times
when asked about the letter's contents. “We congratulated Mr.
Obama on his presidency and reminded him that he should live up to
his promise to bring real change to the region.”
There
is no word, as yet, on how the foreign policy doyens' message was
received, but Yousef's occasioned a huffy US rebuke of the UN Relief
Works Agency, whose top official in Gaza, Karen Abu Zayd, passed the
letter to Sen. John Kerry while he was visiting the devastated territory
in mid-February. Even a single sealed envelope, it seems, creates the
appearance that the Obama administration is breaking with the US vow,
enunciated first under President George W. Bush, not to speak with
Hamas until it agrees to renounce violence, abide by previous Palestinian
agreements with Israel and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Full
Story>>
It
has been quite a week. For the first time, the international community
indicted a sitting president of a sovereign state. Omar al-Bashir
of Sudan stands accused by the International Criminal Court in The
Hague of "crimes against humanity and war crimes" committed
in the course of the Khartoum regime's brutal suppression of the
revolt in the country's far western province of Darfur. Having indicted
two other figures associated with the regime in 2007, ICC prosecutor
Luis Moreno Ocampo began building a case against the man at the top,
and on Wednesday, the court issued a warrant for Bashir's arrest.
Full Story>>
Speaking
to his people on January 18, hours after Hamas responded to Israel’s
unilateral suspension of hostilities with a conditional ceasefire
of its own, the deposed Palestinian Authority prime minister Ismail
Haniyeh devoted several passages of his prepared text to the subject
of Palestinian national reconciliation. For perhaps the first time
since Hamas’s June 2007 seizure of power in the Gaza Strip,
an Islamist leader broached the topic of healing the Palestinian divide
without mentioning Mahmoud Abbas by name.
At
a press conference the following day convened by Abu Ubaida, the
spokesperson of the Martyr Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades, the Hamas
military wing, the movement went one step further. “The Resistance”,
Abu Ubaida intoned, “is the legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people”. Full Story>>
Three
weeks after the war on Gaza, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire
but refused to terminate its so-called defensive operations. In response,
Hamas declared a ceasefire for one week, until the withdrawal of
Israeli troops has been completed. For many in the West, the ceasefire
might seem like an occasion to celebrate, for the cessation of military
hostilities on both sides will perhaps renew the peace process. But
there are reasons to be critical of this ceasefire, since it continues
the situation in which Israel acts unilaterally. What we are actually
witnessing is a new phase of the catastrophe in Gaza. While the characteristics
of this phase are not yet known, Israel's violence has become ever
more evident. And perhaps this is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
did not mention the word "peace" once in the speech he gave
to announce the ceasefire. The "peace process" might soon
be revealed as the other side of the coin to war -- its continuation
by other means -- that simultaneously feeds it. Full Story>>
Bob
Woodward’s four books chronicling the wars of President
George W. Bush are sensitive barometers of conventional wisdom in Washington.
Whereas the first volume, published in 2002 at the height of the self-righteous
nationalism gripping the capital after the September 11, 2001 attacks,
hailed Bush’s self-confidence in acting to protect the homeland,
the 2008 installment depicts the same man as cocksure and incurious.
This much is not news. More educational are Woodward’s hints
about the worldviews that will outlast this unpopular administration,
embedded in the organs of the national security state. Full
Story>>
The
Egyptian regime has once again succeeded in stifling freedom of speech,
this time not in Egypt, but in the US. Earlier this month, an Egyptian
court convicted a prominent Egyptian-American activist for his outspoken
criticism of the regime’s poor human
rights record in American public fora. The court accused Saad Eddin
Ibrahim, of "tarnishing Egypt's image" abroad. The conviction
referred primarily to writings he published in the foreign press; most
notably among them an August 2007 op-ed in the Washington Post in which
he criticized Egypt's human rights record and questioned the reasons
behind US aid to Egypt. Full
Story>>
Militant
Islam is under global scrutiny for clues to conditions that foster
its rise, and to strategies for reversing that growth. But the key
is not in Islamic doctrine, US foreign policy or formal ties to various
nations, as many analysts have asserted. It lies at the community
level, with clan and local leaders. Full
Story>>
Kurdish
parties have become kingmakers in Baghdad , and they know it. As
no federal government can work without them, they are pulling every
available political lever to expand the territory and resources they
control, trying to build the foundation of an independent Kurdish state.
But even more than territory, they need security. If everyone acts
quickly and wisely, that understanding could help resolve one of the
Iraq war’s thorniest issues. Full
Story>>
The
debate over the war in Iraq follows a yellowing script: The minute
someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters
cry “Havoc!”
True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain
summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always
said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through
a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech
on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable,
adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless
getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he,
like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain
that withdrawal is simply
“cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full
Story>>
