Consolidating Arabia's Freedoms

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Arab+Revolutions+2011-12&rft_id=info%3A%2F&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Consolidating+Arabia%27s+Freedoms&rft.issn=&rft.date=2011&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=John+Paul+Maynard&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Social+Science">John Paul Maynard (2011). Consolidating Arabia's Freedoms <span style="font-style: italic;">Arab Revolutions 2011-12</span></span>

Middle Eastern, North African revolutions – Consolidating the Freedoms

Only two nations have changed regimes so far. In both Tunisia and Egypt there is intense dialogue between secular, local councils, professional groups, businessmen, trade unionists, and scholars both secular and sectarian,  Muslim professors from Kairouan and Al Azhar Universities, plus emissaries from the Islamic interior.But the army is controlling it all from behind the curtain. Marshall Tentawi is a Sphinx, saying nothing, but overseeing all. 

In Yemen, and Syria, violence keeps breaking out – a full month of near-continuous demonstration.

In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman, the Gulf governments weigh in, not trusting the new linkages between Shi'i Islamists and the left.  The demonstrations had a front, made up of secular democrats, and a back, made up of people with aggendum. As the Al Khalifa forces attacked the crowds, the aims of these demonstrators were increased. The aim became, is, to make the Al Khalifa clan leave the country. The front breaks off, while the back takes charge. It is a sectarian conflict, and both sides are citizens of Bahrain. Each has claims, valid.

Meanwhile Qatar plays the fiddle, deploying F-16s to hit Qaddafi in Libya.

Sudan and Lebanon have their inner divisions, a very big country and a very little one. Sudan has split into the two but, as fortune would have have it, much of the oil is right on the border between North and South Sudan, around Abiyye. So neither one can claim exclusive possession. A no-brainer, right? Unfortunately, neither side can consider sharing the oil. Khartoum may want one half, but the southern Sudanese want most of it, being close to them, and being the only oil they have.

In Lebanon we see demonstrations protesting for and against the UN report on the death of Rafiq Hariri, and against 'confessionalism.' The vanguard of the Christians, the Druze and the Sunni Muslims don't want these religious divisions to characterize the formation of political parties.

Then there is the Western Sahara, that disputed nation, and Algeria. They're in a special category by themselves. Morocco, as we'll see, has a prime role also, behind the scenes. It has been the intentional delay by King Muhammad VIth in holding a UN-approved referendum on independence, for the Western Sahara, which triggered the continual demonstrations in and around Tindouf. Coastal Algeria is not immune to influences coming up from the far south Sahara. 

Every country has a different history, and we should not be surprised that so many educated unemployed suddenly speak up, or that the demonstrations should persist and grow, in the Yemen, and in Syria. In each country, some 220-240 have been killed, and thousands wounded.

But the demonstrations grow stronger when the police kill. The people may shy away in the presence of lethal soldiers and police, but re-appear elsewhere. We have looked at the crowds of demonstrators, studying their fronts and their backs. We also know that US political 'institutes' were training opposition parties throughout the Middle East in the use of non-violent techniques, the use of cell phones and the internet, from 2006 up till this autumn.

We cannot avoid the conclusion that all these revolutions were sparked by the endemic unrest and symbolic manifestations of Western Saharan Berber peoples, for a UN-promised referendum on independence, a decision which Morocco just delays.

Many times in history, trouble erupted between the deep Berber of the Western Sahara, and the city and farming folk of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The nomadic Almohads overthrew the farming Almoravids in 1175, and again, the Merinid dynasty grew up in the 12^th C., politics again featuring a tussle for control of the lucrative trans-Saharan trade. The dynasties of the Merinids in Morocco, the Zayyanids in Algeria (centered on Tlemcen), and the Hafsids of Tunisia all had imperial pretensions. The Christians fought for control, but the Muslims drove them out.. The Ottomans took control of coastal Algeria and Morocco in the 1540s, and war raged with the Christians, even after the Jews and Muslims were kicked out of Spain. French colonization, focused at first on Algeria, started the modern independence struggle, a bitter war in Algeria, but there occurred a much more accommodating (and practical) 'mode de vivendi' with the French, in Morocco and Tunisia. Secular education and tolerance  has made Morocco and Tunisia advanced societies.  As the French put it: Tant on comprendre, tant on pardonner.

Morocco -

King Muhammad VI is the only Arab ruler who decided not to resist the demonstrations. At times, back in late March, there were demonstrations in some 60 Moroccan cities and towns. The manifestations persisted for two weeks, till the King told his police not to shoot. The King didn't react except promising specific steps to turn his sultanat, his power, into a constitutional monarchy; and to permit ta limited democracy with parties. 


Morocco is responsible for the unfortunate war and unrest in Western Sahara. So it has the obligation to find a step-by-step way to bring in all the peoples to elections. And secondly, to provide the bare minimums of food, fuel and medical care, not to mention education.


Morocco did not become an Ottoman Province. The Arab-Berber genetic meld is seasoned with Christian and Jewish markers.  It has a functioning bicameral parliament, which, curiously, is not popularly elected, but elected by trade unions, scholarly associations, professors, doctors, minorities (like the Jews, the Shi'a), and local councils. This arrangement keeps the Muslim leaders focused on meeting local social problems. The demonstrators are a legitimate vanguard, and include Muslim leaders.  Can Maliki fiqh and shari'a help address Morocco's economic problems? Maybe the King should study the Osmanlis after all.  Ottoman geniuses modernized the Shari'a in the mid-19th C., and many of these new Ottoman revisions, hold relevance to today. For example, a whole book was published just on the laws of pious endowments, the famous waqf (pl.auqaf) institutions. Muslim communities were able to provide advanced services to local folk because of these endowments, without costing the state a penny. Also, capitalism is further advanced amongst the Muslims (though on a much smaller scale). Traditionally, people owned shares in various business adventures, spreading risk, as well in owning homes. In Islam, the women and children, even the parents if alive, have shares in the house. But these original Islamic laws are not much practiced today.


Note: you may like to read Speculum's "Land-ownership and land-use in Islamic Civilization" found on http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com.  That paper carefully 'lifts' the seven ways land is owned in Islam. No books will tell you these seven ways, how they work as an octave. We are referencing Muhammad's practice ('amal) at Medina, his think tank and social laboratory. I don't believe there exists today any community that is based on the original laws. Men own the houses today, and tribal and state factors prove more decisive that that old Medinan way. Muhammad did not make up new laws, but enshrined the Neolithic achievement - the co-existence and cooperation of farming communities and pastoral ones, in long-distant trade, i.e., capitalism. It was that unspoken unrecorded 'live-and-let-live' understanding that made long-distance ventures possible.

Algeria -

Of course it was the string of tense demonstrations around Algiers during the last days of 2010 and the first ten days of 2011, which triggered the Arab revolts in Tunisia and then Egypt. The Algerian protesters decided to disobey the police and violate their curfew, a bold tactic quickly taken up in Tunis, and then in Egypt. From there it spread to every Arab country, except Qatar, which plays the fiddle.

Algeria sees demonstrations everyday, somewhere, be it the Berbers in the Kabyle Mountains, or the Islamists in Tlemcen, or the secular modernists in Algiers and Oran, or, probably, in the dismal suburbs around Algiers, and around Tindouf in the far south west.

Libya -

World outrage over Qaddafi's use of cluster munitions against innocent civilians in Misurata (Mishrata), may propel world powers to act to bring down the Al Qaddafi apparat. On the 15^th of April, some 22 were killed by GRAD rockets and Spanish-made cluster munitions, while waiting in a bread line at the port. The democratic fighters are holding off both mercs and an elite SF 'brigade,'  actually a battalion. NATO aircraft have been intensified their strikes, hitting armor and ammo dumps around Tripolitania, but Qaddafi's artillery seems not to be silenced – or found. NATO would need continual real-time surveillance with special radars to verify firing locations. The guns and ammunition are buried. Finally, on April 22nd, Mr. Obama unleashes the drones. 

Fighting also rages in the east, where Benghazi freedom fighters have re-taken Ajdabiyya, only to have pro-Qaddafi forces counter-attack (Apr.19). That city was established a thousand years ago as a Muslim-designed urban space. Today, it sits at the end of the long road south to the Kufrah oasis – to most of Libya's oil. Its capture is a prerequisite for any move on Sirte.  Ajdabiyya is the start of the long road to the south, where most of Libya's oil is found. The Cyrenaican resistance is desperately training itself to match and meet the guerrilla-style combat favored by Saif al Islam. Of course the Libyan army had adopted Soviet ways, such as digging in armor. Qaddafi carried it one step further, digging in his artillery. Inward from the asphalt coastal road, lies a network of dirt tracks, plus some very strange installations. The battle may seem jammed along the road to Sirte, but there's plenty of action further south. The one hundred miles of steppe in the south of Cyrenaica, Sirt and Tripoli, permit mobile operations. NATO can make sure that vehicles and equipment and supplies and ammo, cannot be masked.

Sirte (Surt) is Qaddafi's political showcase. He transplanted from Tripoli to Sirte, the Peoples' Congress, and many offices, including the bizarre 'Museum of the Green Book.' Qaddafi's parents were nomads who came up from the Fezzan to settle amidst the Sirte tribe. The Al Qaddafa are a more recent tribal grouping, the root Qaddafa meaning 'detonation' and 'bomb.' (Note: the 'dd' in Qaddafy is actually a hard 'z', the correct pronunciation being 'qazdzafi.') They have been favored by Qaddafi, as have the larger Maghrahi tribe.

We've learned not to stress the tribes as a factor, for many modern Libyan young people, have no idea what tribe their ancestors identified with. Today, of course, tribal identifications have come to the fore, amidst democrats, as the modern socialist Libya 'nation' has been made redundant.

We have intentionally not tried to figure out the least harmful outcomes. Although we have studied the Qaddafi entity intensively on some 5 previous occasions, starting in 1975, along with the story of the Libyan oil industry, we cannot predict this guy, his sons and his daughter, his lieutenants and interrogators, his torturers and mercs. We hope some of them will move on the Qaddafi entity. 


The meeting on April 14 in Berlin sees Britain, France and the USA appealing to Italy, Spain, Germany and Greece and Turkey, to get involved in taking apart Qaddafi's genocidal war machine. These Europeans may have to fight for their energy. Spain and Italy put teams into Libya east and west. Potent rebel attacks along the border with Tunisia reveals a slow collapsing of the front maintained by the Qaddafi regime. The National Transition Counsel has only one aim: the end of the Qaddafi family regnum.

Syria -

Syria has seen over 35 days of unrest. It began in Dera'a, probably triggered by the ferment in Jordan, just to the south. The Damascus suburb Douma has been cordoned off, though food is getting through. Other suburbs staged converging marches, aiming to reach the Abbasidine Square in the center of Damascus. The police blocked and turned them.

On the 15^th, after Friday prayers, a huge crowd tried to march into Damascus center, but were met with phalanxes of security police. Protests were erupting again in Banias, where a charismatic Sunni cleric is issuing fatwas; and in Latakia, another coastal city and one close to the Al Assad family. There have been demonstrations elsewhere, to the north, in Homs, and even out east, Deir Az Zoar in the far west, featuring the Kurds calling for rights.

Bashar Assad has finally given 'no shoot' orders to his police. They did not fire on the crowds in Dera'a, for once (after killing some 200). The protesters kept their discipline. Riots, destructive acts, occupation of vital arteries – the rebels are smart to avoid these. The game is about granting Syria's diverse people some genuine say in their own government. Assad realized that if he shot and killed a thousand here and a thousand there, he'd be hunted down by his own soldiers.

It seems intractable, but the government is slowly giving way to democratic reform. Assad is about to abrogate his emergency law, but he'll just replace it with some other mock-legal statute. He seems entranced with his alliance with Iran, seeing this relationship between paupers, as a boon in some big strategic movement, a Shi'a surge, aimed at Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. The Sunni and Christian people don't want this socialist military-led bankruptcy.  The Syrian security apparatus wants to crack down hard on dangerous Islamist democrats, but Asad and his close group of advisers, which include several women, have ordered them not to fire unless the crowds break into the government sections of Damascus. We expect the Ba'ath regime to abrogate the no-assembly provisions of the emergency laws in just a few days. Syria is set for change.

Palestine and Gaza -

Two weeks ago we saw Fatah and Hamas commit themselves to a unity government. What happened was that crazed salafis in Gaza have been firing rockets into the occupied West Bank. Israel responded 'excessively,' killing some Salafi field leaders, forcing Hamas to sue for peace and ceasefire with the Jewish state. (The Hamas leaderships speaks Hebrew, learned while in prison.)

Salafis kidnap the activist Arrigoni, hoping to trade him for detained salafi imams and operatives, but the deal sours, and the salafis kill the devoted pro-Palestinian Italian. Hamas is pissed and has captured suspects. Those Arab-Arab tortures are noted for being 'exquisite.'

On the 14^th, the US State Department announces a new initiative. Hamas seems to have mellowed. Almost respectable. Remember, when people have nothing, they cling to their religion. I have no problem understanding the Arab's foolish aspiration, to drive the Jews into the sea. Such preposterous symbolic statements are magnified in Arabic. It's the last scrap of identity, they would say. But of course it just pertains to personality, false personality, held not everyone, just a few aggressively loud and violent 'spokesmen.'

No. If you are faced with an enemy with overwhelming force, it is clearly best to protest verbally and non-violently, than try to fight it militarily. And terror attacks are military attacks, even worse.

The situation is difficult. The Likud masters in Israel get money and support from rich American Jews, who really want the Arabs down, and down in such a way that they do not get up again. The fools. Don't they realize that the Arabs are producing almost 3 children for every one Jewish child born?

The Israelis and the Americans have shown again that they do value the Jewish child over the Muslim one, the Israeli over the Arab. For the Israeli is (or seems to be) 'like ourselves.' Israel has gone from being a 2^nd world country to a 1^st world one, even as it sponsors (and is led by) orthodox rabbis in an out-and-out annexation of most of Palestine. “It's written in our book, that Jews should rule, from the Euphrates to the Nile.” I've heard that several times. These are the same people who will tell you “We Israelis know what you Americans cannot know. We know the Middle East, you do not.” Israeli men will tell you that with a straight face. Of course they can't go anywhere outside Israel, except maybe a short tour to the pyramids. Of course I've spent years working in some eight Islamic countries, and don't think twice about crossing the Jordanian and Syrian borders.

The world's leaders understand clearly, that the Likud policy of land and water conquest and annexation, will so cheapen and foul the Jewish legacy, that these so-called chosen people, will no longer remember what happened, so guided they are by the Torah, by the imperatives of Zionism. Most American Jews think Israel is besieged and surrounded by powerful Arab armies. Enough!

The Yemen -

Unrest persists, as crowds grow, some calling for Ali Abdullah Saleh's demise, others supporting him and the regime. The army – bless their hearts – has found it more agreeable to step between the two sides, keeping them apart, rather than simply fire into the democratic crowd. Saleh is in office still, because he knows that, once out of power, he and his family will be prosecuted and imprisoned. So they look to Saudi Arabia for help. If I'm not mistaken, the several very different regions of the Yemen are loosening their ties, pursuing their own destinies, for better or worse. In the south, we detect a slow merger of Islamists and leftist radicals who know their explosives. This is in addition to the regular battle being waged against Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, in the rough land to the far west, a fight which has drawn in the Saudis. But most critical perhaps to the regime in Sana'a, is the rebellion of the Houthi tribe, to the north of Yemen, which seems to be allying itself with the Zaydi Shi'a royal house.  As poor as Yemen is, it has very diversified old populations, specializing. The Tihama, the highlands of Ta'iz, Aden, the Hadramaut, the desolate west with its strange skyscrappers in cities like Shibam, plus the north, in Ma'thrib, and the undefined borderlands with Saudi Arabia - different processes are at work in each of these regions. 


The worst may be over. Ali Saleh is going to leave. His family occupy privileged positions, both in government and in business, so all of them will flee prosecution. We expect the Saleh clan and its affiliates, to take out of the country, some $3 billion. Yemen, like Egypt and Tunisia, will be impoverished further by their genuine revolution.

Saudi Arabia -

There is unfortunate and needless tension between King Abdullah and the US government. The Americans don't like the cultural and political suppression of the Saudi Shi'a, especially since they live right where the oil fields are, and work in them.

Just this summer there was much talk about the new de facto alliance of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Egypt, against Iran, Syria and their proxies in Gaza and in the Lebanon. Now the Arab kings are anxious, even disturbed: the American Democrat and Republican Institutes have been teaching the radical opposition how to use the internet and mobile phones, to stage and co-ordinate, truly awesome manifestations. So the hurt is real.

Bahrain -

Terror reigns at night in the poor Shi'a villages surrounding Manama. Hamad Khalifa' s security police are conducting nightly raids against opposition activists. The Sunnis have also organized, and present good reasons why not to overthrow the Sunni Al Khalifas.

In the Gulf countries, the maritime populations, many of whom are Shi'a, claim to be the indigenous people. But that's a contradiction: these mariners had no real home Many Shi'a came only in the last century, when the British ruled. Some Shi'a on Bahrain can trace their ancestry back, but so can the Sunni Al Khalifa family. They were nomads, related to the tribes who also settled Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who came out of the Nufuz and Najd deserts, some 250 years ago, during a famine. Traditionally, they controlled the water wells found in the western parts of Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE. As nomads, they synchronized the activities of fishermen, pearl divers, and traders. In fact, they invested and coordinated and protected long-distant trade throughout the Gulf, but also into the Arabian Gulf, to Pakistan, India and Indonesia, even China. 

The Shi'a 12-er culture is fantastic. They are legal owners of the planet Mars, having filed the cofrrect papers. But they preserve a sense of victimhood which leads them to an exclusive eceptionalism. Shi'a leaders all appoint each other, in a religious hierarchy. They don't vote for their leaders. The Sunnis, however, are predisposed to vote in, elect their chiefs, the way bedouin do, while the Shi'a see their chiefs as divinely-appointed and infallible. It's not as if the Saudi king does not know the Shi'a muftis and imams: he meets with them at least once each year, and has done so for decades. He also meets with Hanafi, Shifa'i and Maliki muftis. The Saudi princes have waged a secret war against the crazed Wahhabis, and just might come to see these other traditions are of equal value and importance as the Wahhabis. It is curious that even Ahmed ibn Hanbal, the Wahhabi's favorite 7^th C. jurist, condemned Muslims who attend to their beards and their clothes, foolishly believing such outer trappings had anything to do with the prophet's message.

You know the story, I hope, of how Muhammad Qurayshi received his prophethood. He liked to meditate in a cave up on Mt. Hira, outside of Mecca. One night he heard voices speaking to him. He rightly included he was going crazy, ran home to his wife, Khadija, and said he wanted to kill himself. She said: “What do these voices say?” It was then that Muhammad started his strange career as a medium, the record of which is the Qur'an.

Contrast Muhammad's unassuming character with all the puffed up imams and mullahs, not to mention the crazed perverse terrorists. To be humble, unassuming, without pretense. That's the key to the prophet's splendid character.
                                                            -by John Paul Maynard