جميع الدول العربية تتعرض لتغير. بعض الذين كانوا الثورات الناجح
Translation.: In some nations, revolution was successful, but they're going back to the streets, while in other countries, revolutions failed, but instituted improvements which are meaningful.
Don't look now but over the week May 1- May 8 2011 wars turned nasty and brutish, not just in Syria and Libya, but in Tunisia and Egypt, as well. Sectarian trouble-makers - salafis - are doing their best to destabilize Egypt. The governments of Syria and Libya are fighting their own peoples, using heavy weapons against civilians. In the Yemen, near-continuous protests are stuck, unable to remove Ali Saleh, as irridentists conspire. Bombs explode in Morocco and Iraq. It is rough in Bahrain if you are a Shi'ite. And demonstrations have been successfully suppressed elsewhere also: in Kuwait, the UAE, Djibouti. One might add Algeria, but we put Algeria in a special category all its own. (Tindouf in the SW is the temporary home of the POLISARIO).
Syria - Cry the Beloved country صرخة البلد الحبيب
Analysts and security buffs are all expecting the unrest in Syria to evolve into a nasty sectarian civil war. Bashar Al Asad is intent on protecting minorities. Who are they? Kurds, Alewites, Armenians, Christians, Kurds. Sunni Muslims comprise just over 75% of the population.
On May 6, Bashar Al ASAD ordered his other trustworthy forces, into Banias, on the coast. A powerful mullah has been using flowering Arabic ghazi talk, to trigger almost daily demonstrations. In Homs, the large industrial city, fighting has been going, after a huge crowd formed chains after Friday prayers.
Close to five hundred have been killed, with some 2,300 wounded, and another 2,300 detained, as we see armed agents of the Syrian regime raiding houses at night and dragging men off. We observed a May 4 video wherein Syrian police are pulling over motorists and taking passengers off – just to fill the quota set by their superiors.
Qaddafi's forces unleash rockets, destroying diesel stocks, in Mishrata. The Libyan military is using a helicopter with red crescent (equivalent to the red cross) markings, to spot for artillery. Qaddafi wants to cut Mishrata the city off from its port. If he does break the back of the local revolution committees, he can re-deploy eastward, and attack the democrats in Cyrenaica. Traveling at night, Saif al Islam al Qaddafi can move vehicles eastwards on the roads. There's one main road, but there are secondary roads running parallel to it.
Meanwhile, the Benghazi democrats are learning how to fight. What's more, the democratic forces are so doubt moving south on the tarmac through Al Awiliyya and Jalu, all the way to the Kufrah oasis, where the oil is, some 2/5ths of Libya's oil wells. Well, there has been in Al Kufrah a battle going on for two months, and finally Qaddafi's forces take it back.
The big powers need take Al Kufrah back. But with the new government taking shape in Egypt, the Euro-Americans do not have a base from which to deploy into Al Kufrah. Everybody hopes Qaddafi's people do not blow the oil well heads.
Let us look closely at Egypt and Tunisia
Today, May 7, we see seven killed in a clash between Copts and Muslims, Cairo. These incidents of sectarian killing preceded the March revolts – Copts and Muslim fought it out in Alexandria after Muslims burned a mosque, at the end of 2010. Another indicator that Egypt is permitting the Muslim Brothers to rule de jure or de facto, on the streets if not (yet) in parliament.
The revolution is in its fifth month, and soon there will elections. In setting elections so soon, the army bet that, apart from the Muslim Brothers, and the old NDP (National Democratic Party), the people would not have enough time to evolve in political parties. There have been demonstrations in Tahrir Square, but they have all been attacked, if not by the police goons, then by hoodlums roaming the streets.
Egypt shows its ugly face: the new birth of anti-western takfiri 'Muslim' 'Brothers' into the Law and Justice Party, which will likely get more than 45% of the vote, across Egypt. We see the way women have been treated, the near-rape of an American female journalist, crime, murders, and a new poverty caused by the unrest. The police vanished and now reappear ever more ready to meet the protesters, now rioting, in the Ishma'il Maydan (the real name of Tahrir Sq.). The protesters wanted to prosecute every last one of Mubarrak's lieutenants, which is why they took fire from some of them. But enough is enough. Are protests necessary in the new Egypt? Why not just talk to your neighborhood representative?
Somebody should make a play about what's happening behind the scenes.
Field Marshall Hasan Tantawi is playing the Sphinx, for he has said nothing. Nothing at all.
Tunisia - والفوضى قليلا
Demonstrations erupted before Friday prayer, on late Thursday, May 5th, and continues right till today (May 8). On the 7th, the new democratic regime declared a curfew, which protesters, or rather rioters, did not heed. Destitute men, bedouin and Tuareg coming in from the south, with some very young team leaders, many in Muslim dress, led by the Islamist ENNADHA, which is led by Rashid Ghannouchi. Can he keep it cool as youths in running battles with the police, torch car and smash windows? The government has acted forcibly to squash these protests, to keep traffic flowing if nothing else. So far the protesters are not obeying police curfew, and will roam at will all over Tunis, or so it seems, on May the 6th and 7th, 2011.
Tunisia's problem is similar to Egypt's. First, much crime was unleashed during the protests, for the police was down. That bad street element persisted, even grew, while the law-abiding democrats piece together a government. Tunisia resembles Egypt in the percentage of young adults, unemployed. Damages are such as to cripple the country. But one should not blame that on the protesters, but on the Ben Ali regime, who fired into protesting civilians.
the Yemen - والفوضى قليلا... انها توازن القوى بين القبائل
The Joint Meeting Group and other opposition factions want Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down immediately. The Gulf Cooperation Council keeps coming up with new plans, but Ali Saleh will not sign off till he and his family get immunity from prosecution. One would think the Saudis would extend hospitality, but it may be that they value Mr. Saleh in power, able to take on Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, which has protection by remote tribes, in the east. Some of these 'remote' cities, like Shibam, are UN-protected historical treasures.
The various regions of Yemen are going their own ways, resisting conscription, paying no taxes, and with no way of genuine material in provement. The Al Qaida attack in early April in the south caused an explosion at an arm and ammo depot, which killed some 112 people. That does not make the folk in Aden or Makalla or Ta'iz or al Hudayda well disposed to al Qaida.
Tribes control Yemen, and the present confusion paradoxically reflects a balance of power, with the army stepping in between. Of course the democratic protesters, all those secular educated people who occupied the university, are not members of any tribe (taking orders from them) as they are asking for something no tribe would dare aspire towards.
With OBL down, the US is focusing on the Egyptian physician Ayman Zawahiri, now al Qaida's No. 2, and in the Yemen, the US-born Anwar Al Awakki, along with his henchmen, Al Wahishi and Sayyid Ash-Shihri. The man hunt is on. Again, it's a matter to be settled by the tribes.
Terror Groups: The bomb set off on May 5th, killing foreign tourists, could either be from Al Qaida, an al Qaida wannabee, or from POLISARIO forces center on Tindouf, far away in SW Algeria. Morocco just sat on the UN order to hold a referendum on independence for the Western Sahara. That led to continuous protests through the summer in the autumn, and it was this unrest, that sent Algerians into the streets, where they disobeyed a curfew. That set Tunisia off, then Egypt. Yes, you can blame the Moroccan king for the whole thing.
Osama bin Ladin was killed May 2. Since he was an Arab, we need cite his death, and what it means to peaceful folk, and to the jihadis. He was in operational control of Al Qaida all along. Muslims are as relieved at his death as are Americans. Al Qaida from its very beginnings was split betsween ethnic groups who did not like each other. OBL held them together, commanding them, from 1989 to May 2, 2011. Now that connecting pin aas been removed. The Qaidah branches go their separate ways.
One thing the Brothers could do to demonstrate their sincerity, is to roll up militant salafi groups. But they would need be supervised, as there are many Muslim groups in Cairo which the Brothers might like to terminate - the sufis.
On May 3rd the Muslim Brothers announced the formation of the Justice and Law Party. Analysts think that this party will get over 50% of the seats in parliament in the upcoming elections, but we believe the figure is a bit lower - 45%. In any case, it is not such good news, for the Ikhwan al Muslimeen swear allegiance to their charter, which calls for attacks against secular officials, liberal Muslims, sufis, dervishes, and non-Muslims. To them, everything 'from the West' must be rejected - none of it is any help or convenience whatsoever. Before any Brother takes high office, he must be vetted - a specific rejecting of the above charter.
Interpretations of Islam are all over the place, but decisive points can be had at: http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com
هي الآن العودة إلى التظاهر في الشوارع.وفشل الآخرون الثورات ، ولكن أثار إصلاح ذات معنى .النقدية
Translation.: In some nations, revolution was successful, but they're going back to the streets, while in other countries, revolutions failed, but instituted improvements which are meaningful.
Don't look now but over the week May 1- May 8 2011 wars turned nasty and brutish, not just in Syria and Libya, but in Tunisia and Egypt, as well. Sectarian trouble-makers - salafis - are doing their best to destabilize Egypt. The governments of Syria and Libya are fighting their own peoples, using heavy weapons against civilians. In the Yemen, near-continuous protests are stuck, unable to remove Ali Saleh, as irridentists conspire. Bombs explode in Morocco and Iraq. It is rough in Bahrain if you are a Shi'ite. And demonstrations have been successfully suppressed elsewhere also: in Kuwait, the UAE, Djibouti. One might add Algeria, but we put Algeria in a special category all its own. (Tindouf in the SW is the temporary home of the POLISARIO).
Syria - Cry the Beloved country صرخة البلد الحبيب
Analysts and security buffs are all expecting the unrest in Syria to evolve into a nasty sectarian civil war. Bashar Al Asad is intent on protecting minorities. Who are they? Kurds, Alewites, Armenians, Christians, Kurds. Sunni Muslims comprise just over 75% of the population.
It is this last figure which explains why the regime cannot and does not trust its own the army. Dera'a has been shut down and deprived of services, and food, for seven weeks. These are the much-vaunted 4th division, the 'black swan' of Israeli intelligence, commanded by Maher Al Asad, but if you look carefully at Dera'a, you see that this 'division' is actually not a brigade but a battalion, reinforced by socialist secular civilians, police and intel 'agents' of darkness. Only such would fire at its own people, for doing what? Congregating around funerals and mosques.
On May 6, Bashar Al ASAD ordered his other trustworthy forces, into Banias, on the coast. A powerful mullah has been using flowering Arabic ghazi talk, to trigger almost daily demonstrations. In Homs, the large industrial city, fighting has been going, after a huge crowd formed chains after Friday prayers.
Close to five hundred have been killed, with some 2,300 wounded, and another 2,300 detained, as we see armed agents of the Syrian regime raiding houses at night and dragging men off. We observed a May 4 video wherein Syrian police are pulling over motorists and taking passengers off – just to fill the quota set by their superiors.
Probable outcomes? A stalemate, wherein the regime controls Damascus, Latakya, Homs and Aleppo (Haleb), plus checkpoints on highways, and some forts built on high ground, while the protesters arm themselves and control everywhere else, even the suburbs of the big cities,
An accurate figure of death must soon run to one thousand, with some 5,000 wounded.
Libya - dismemberment تقطيع الأوصال
Qaddafi's forces unleash rockets, destroying diesel stocks, in Mishrata. The Libyan military is using a helicopter with red crescent (equivalent to the red cross) markings, to spot for artillery. Qaddafi wants to cut Mishrata the city off from its port. If he does break the back of the local revolution committees, he can re-deploy eastward, and attack the democrats in Cyrenaica. Traveling at night, Saif al Islam al Qaddafi can move vehicles eastwards on the roads. There's one main road, but there are secondary roads running parallel to it.
Meanwhile, the Benghazi democrats are learning how to fight. What's more, the democratic forces are so doubt moving south on the tarmac through Al Awiliyya and Jalu, all the way to the Kufrah oasis, where the oil is, some 2/5ths of Libya's oil wells. Well, there has been in Al Kufrah a battle going on for two months, and finally Qaddafi's forces take it back.
The big powers need take Al Kufrah back. But with the new government taking shape in Egypt, the Euro-Americans do not have a base from which to deploy into Al Kufrah. Everybody hopes Qaddafi's people do not blow the oil well heads.
Why Tunisia and Egypt do not intervene to bring the Libyan civil war to en end, is a sore point, and something of a mystery. Do not the new democrats want to help their brothers and sisters in Libya? Where's the beef? Have they forgotten they had to fight for their own (emerging) freedoms?
Let us look closely at Egypt and Tunisia
Egypt -
-في ميدان التحرير وتحيط به ، المتظاهرين للضرب مرة أخرى من قبل الشرطة
-في ميدان التحرير وتحيط به ، المتظاهرين للضرب مرة أخرى من قبل الشرطة
Today, May 7, we see seven killed in a clash between Copts and Muslims, Cairo. These incidents of sectarian killing preceded the March revolts – Copts and Muslim fought it out in Alexandria after Muslims burned a mosque, at the end of 2010. Another indicator that Egypt is permitting the Muslim Brothers to rule de jure or de facto, on the streets if not (yet) in parliament.
The revolution is in its fifth month, and soon there will elections. In setting elections so soon, the army bet that, apart from the Muslim Brothers, and the old NDP (National Democratic Party), the people would not have enough time to evolve in political parties. There have been demonstrations in Tahrir Square, but they have all been attacked, if not by the police goons, then by hoodlums roaming the streets.
Egypt shows its ugly face: the new birth of anti-western takfiri 'Muslim' 'Brothers' into the Law and Justice Party, which will likely get more than 45% of the vote, across Egypt. We see the way women have been treated, the near-rape of an American female journalist, crime, murders, and a new poverty caused by the unrest. The police vanished and now reappear ever more ready to meet the protesters, now rioting, in the Ishma'il Maydan (the real name of Tahrir Sq.). The protesters wanted to prosecute every last one of Mubarrak's lieutenants, which is why they took fire from some of them. But enough is enough. Are protests necessary in the new Egypt? Why not just talk to your neighborhood representative?
Somebody should make a play about what's happening behind the scenes.
Field Marshall Hasan Tantawi is playing the Sphinx, for he has said nothing. Nothing at all.
Tunisia - والفوضى قليلا
Demonstrations erupted before Friday prayer, on late Thursday, May 5th, and continues right till today (May 8). On the 7th, the new democratic regime declared a curfew, which protesters, or rather rioters, did not heed. Destitute men, bedouin and Tuareg coming in from the south, with some very young team leaders, many in Muslim dress, led by the Islamist ENNADHA, which is led by Rashid Ghannouchi. Can he keep it cool as youths in running battles with the police, torch car and smash windows? The government has acted forcibly to squash these protests, to keep traffic flowing if nothing else. So far the protesters are not obeying police curfew, and will roam at will all over Tunis, or so it seems, on May the 6th and 7th, 2011.
Tunisia's problem is similar to Egypt's. First, much crime was unleashed during the protests, for the police was down. That bad street element persisted, even grew, while the law-abiding democrats piece together a government. Tunisia resembles Egypt in the percentage of young adults, unemployed. Damages are such as to cripple the country. But one should not blame that on the protesters, but on the Ben Ali regime, who fired into protesting civilians.
the Yemen - والفوضى قليلا... انها توازن القوى بين القبائل
The Joint Meeting Group and other opposition factions want Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down immediately. The Gulf Cooperation Council keeps coming up with new plans, but Ali Saleh will not sign off till he and his family get immunity from prosecution. One would think the Saudis would extend hospitality, but it may be that they value Mr. Saleh in power, able to take on Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, which has protection by remote tribes, in the east. Some of these 'remote' cities, like Shibam, are UN-protected historical treasures.
The various regions of Yemen are going their own ways, resisting conscription, paying no taxes, and with no way of genuine material in provement. The Al Qaida attack in early April in the south caused an explosion at an arm and ammo depot, which killed some 112 people. That does not make the folk in Aden or Makalla or Ta'iz or al Hudayda well disposed to al Qaida.
Tribes control Yemen, and the present confusion paradoxically reflects a balance of power, with the army stepping in between. Of course the democratic protesters, all those secular educated people who occupied the university, are not members of any tribe (taking orders from them) as they are asking for something no tribe would dare aspire towards.
With OBL down, the US is focusing on the Egyptian physician Ayman Zawahiri, now al Qaida's No. 2, and in the Yemen, the US-born Anwar Al Awakki, along with his henchmen, Al Wahishi and Sayyid Ash-Shihri. The man hunt is on. Again, it's a matter to be settled by the tribes.
Terror Groups: The bomb set off on May 5th, killing foreign tourists, could either be from Al Qaida, an al Qaida wannabee, or from POLISARIO forces center on Tindouf, far away in SW Algeria. Morocco just sat on the UN order to hold a referendum on independence for the Western Sahara. That led to continuous protests through the summer in the autumn, and it was this unrest, that sent Algerians into the streets, where they disobeyed a curfew. That set Tunisia off, then Egypt. Yes, you can blame the Moroccan king for the whole thing.
Osama bin Ladin was killed May 2. Since he was an Arab, we need cite his death, and what it means to peaceful folk, and to the jihadis. He was in operational control of Al Qaida all along. Muslims are as relieved at his death as are Americans. Al Qaida from its very beginnings was split betsween ethnic groups who did not like each other. OBL held them together, commanding them, from 1989 to May 2, 2011. Now that connecting pin aas been removed. The Qaidah branches go their separate ways.
One thing the Brothers could do to demonstrate their sincerity, is to roll up militant salafi groups. But they would need be supervised, as there are many Muslim groups in Cairo which the Brothers might like to terminate - the sufis.
On May 3rd the Muslim Brothers announced the formation of the Justice and Law Party. Analysts think that this party will get over 50% of the seats in parliament in the upcoming elections, but we believe the figure is a bit lower - 45%. In any case, it is not such good news, for the Ikhwan al Muslimeen swear allegiance to their charter, which calls for attacks against secular officials, liberal Muslims, sufis, dervishes, and non-Muslims. To them, everything 'from the West' must be rejected - none of it is any help or convenience whatsoever. Before any Brother takes high office, he must be vetted - a specific rejecting of the above charter.
Interpretations of Islam are all over the place, but decisive points can be had at: http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com
A most erudite and well written, up to the minute account of the 'Arab Spring' as they are calling it. It is quite rare if not unheard of to see a Westerner with such a depth and breadth of understanding of these complex issues of the Arab world. I find your use of Arabic script particularly excellent. Hoping you can generate more hits and interest in this blog.
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