Arab Autumn - A Bitter-Sweet Harvest

حلال الخريف -- الحصاد المر الحلو

Arabia in Autumn – A Bitter-Sweet Harvest

Syria -

In Syria, violent suppression of dissent continues. Today after prayers, some nine were shot dead in and around Homs. The regime uses photographs and school records to identify protesters, then raids their homes, often hauling young men and women away at night. The figure of 3,000 is generally given for deaths, both civilian and military, but some 20,000 Syrians are missing, mostly young men, but also older intellectuals. The regime's brutal techniques have cowed the dissidents: streets in Hama, Latakia, Dara'a, As Suweida, Ar Rastan, Deir Az Zaur and Homs were quiet, much too quiet. People are huddling in dark apartments, many war damaged, with little or no potable water, electrical power, and food. Out of such conditions comes such misery that behavior is closely guarded, the demonstrations come to end, temporarily. But today they appeared again: the people refuse to be cowed.

Demonstrations in 2009 in Tehran, Iran, and those in Syria over the past 9 months, resemble each other, that we wonder if the same people are involved in the successful suppression of these democratic movements. For months, the rebellion grew, spread from neighborhood to neighborhood, then from city to city, as Syria's neglected educated youth explored the limits of civil disobedience.

But the government is deploying snipers under orders to shoot anyone moving outside, while the secret police (generally called al Mukhabarat) make well-planned raids on individual apartments. Many defecting army personnel and targeted dissidents are constantly moving, through the satellite villages around these cities. So the army, under Mahir Al Assad, is maneuvering armor brigades, which, backed by helicopter gunships and bombers, is making sweeps all along the border, and in select areas outside the cities.

Note: The Turks are also maneuvering armor along its border. Devastating PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) assaults on the 18^th provoked Turkey to deploy battalions and squadrons inside northern Iraq. The other Kurds, the Americans, the Europeans, as well as the Iraqi gov., do not appear to mind such incursions. Not that they have any say. This is the mountainous region, northeast of Dahuk and Zakhu. The entire border region suggests a time warp, from Ugarit on the coast across to the Caspian, evoking Hurrian and Hittite historical memories.

In Syria, it is all jammed up. Neither the regime or its critics can win. All those more wealthy Syrians in Damascus and Haleb (Aleppo) are also losing big time. Here at Speculum we cannot determine how the regime is paying its 2.3 million armed forces, intel agents, secret police and informants. The Syrian gov. personnel are under extensive sanctions, and the Syrian National Bank has closed due to a shortage of funds. We suspect that Iran, Russia and maybe China are secretly providing credits. But how can the Syrian regime take delivery, or spend funds loaned or given to it?

The question is pertinent, because only such an economic breakdown of relationships will pry the regime's finger off the trigger. Where will the oil come from to run its vehicles and aircraft and navy? How will people in Syria stay warm this winter? These are the pressing questions in the country today.

Libya - Qaddafi is killed in Sirte (Surt) as resistance collapses. We confess our error, for “we deduce that the Mad Dog of Tripoli is hiding in the south, a vast territory impossible to monitor. Qaddafi had long cultivated warm relations with the Tuaregs. It was they who taught him to be a man of action.” Qaddafi went to high school in Sabha, in the Fezzan, far to the south.

But no: Qaddafi opted to make a stand in Sirte, the place of his birth and strongly pro-Qaddafi. Between Tripolitania and Cyranaica, he could command both fronts, kor so he thought. His son Mustahim, Libya's highest ranking security official, was killed with his father. Qaddafi also may have hoped to flee Libya by sea. It is surprising that NTC fighters did not learn of Qaddafi's presence in Sirte until they found him hiding in a fetid drainage pipe, like a rat. Many think the Colonel was killed by his captors, but others say one of Qaddafi's own body guards put a bullet in the side of his head.

Libya's revolution is so far the only complete revolution amongst all the Arab states. But it was also the most improbable. Given Qaddafi's hideous repression, the revolt last February of Benghazi was a brave act: if the US president did not order his pilots to intervene, the revolt would likely have been crushed. Or left smoldering while Qaddafi sews up, integrates, his forces of repression.

The Libyan revolution did not occur in a vacuum. The Sahrawi protests of the summer and autumn 2011 may have tempted the Libyans to rise up. Perhaps it was Algeria, where the crowds disobeyed the police curfew and people set themselves on fire. Tunisian demonstrators took heed of the Algerian lesson, as did the demonstrators at Tahrir Square, Cairo.

NATO countries have no claims, are not pressing for influence. The revolt is all Libyan in terms of sacrifice. But NATO jets proved decisive: satellites and electronic intercept missions were followed by armed recon, then the strike 'packages.' But NATO would not have intervened had not Amr Musa (Moussa), chief of the Arab League, given the green light to Big Power intervention.

Amr Musa is hoping to win the presidency in the upcoming December elections. He was Egypt's foreign minister and that job led to his appointment to head the Arab League. Paradoxically, he has had a much information about the Arab world than did the nationalists, like Gamal Abdul Nasir (Nasser).

Mr. Musa (the Arab League) did not mind but ordered Western intervention, while Nasir went to war to fight the West. The League is showing signs of unexpected maturity. The West has changed also: an international order can be formed without the support of the Russians and Chinese. The real threat is much closer to home: rivalry and competition for diminishing amounts of oil and other minerals might bring these big petrol-heavy 'advanced' economies into deadly plots, schemes, bribes and narrow stratagem and ruses and machinations, all to win a place at the big Mid East oil banquet.

Will the Arab revolutions pull the 24 Arab nations (we include Mauritania and Somalia) together? Possibly. The air forces of Qatar and the UAE now have pilots with combat experience. The Libyans will not forget them. These are two kingdoms (once sultanates) are the champions of liberal Arab 'awakening.' Both a well-armed in cash, jets, and media organs (like al Jazira).

The new leaders of Libya have their hands full disarming the thousands of militias that rose up in most of the neighborhoods. Already intense work is being done – communications across the boundaries of tribe, class, level of education, gender, and political leanings. I say 'leaning' because the Libyan people have never had the chance to choose their own leaders (at least since 1500 AD). Political parties? What do they do? What are my preferences and ideals, and how can I express these through political action?

Here are the major groups now vying for dominance:

• tribes, all 48 of them, led by the Misurata (on the Med coast) and the Tuareg in the south. For example, tribes in the Nafusa Mountains have little truck with tribes in Cyranaica.
• age and education level: can secular modern folk talk sense to their sons and their mothers? Old people are well qualified. But many of poor elderly will vote for the Islamists, because they will bury you properly, for free. Islamists are made to provide these kind of services. How can they reach for power except through that service?
• Religion. Though Libyans are Sunnis, there has been tension between the Wahhabi-crazed MB-affiliated mullahs (and their jihadis and young toughs), and the Sufis. Before Qaddafi, Libya was managed by the Sufis, the Sanussi tariqat.
• Labor unions: Qaddafi created labor organs but not independent ones. Many Libyan professionals have no collective representation, but that will change.
• Political leanings, right or left: progressive, regressive, active and reactive. Or full-time backers of the status quo. Unfortunately, nothing stays the same.
• Rich or poor
• Urban or rural
• Gender: there is constant exchanges between the three sexes.

These are the axis in the political equation. To make good democracy, all these groups need to come together and share in the power and in the responsibilities.

Global Oil Industry -  

Within hours of the news of Qaddafi's death, the oil markets started to come down a little. The US hasn't taken any Libya oil for decades, but the investment 'experts' got the jitters. I guess they've heard that oil is important, but do not have needed area qualifications to gauge the political flex and flux in the petroleum market, the OPEC, the OAPEC, IEA, US EA, the big oil companies. This created openings for both private speculators (NY Mecantile Exchange) playing the game of 'futures,' i.e., betting that the price will go up or down.) and for the big oil companies, who, bless their little hearts, never pass up a chance to jack up the price of oil. Gasoline is 30% higher than it should be.

Algeria -

Qaddafi's death occurred on the 50th anniversary of the terrible masscre of unarmed Algerians in Paris, killing some 700, many women and children. The FLN believed that, since the French were enlightened humanists, they would not fire on women and children. How wrong they were. That massacre has never been investigated. Nor was Charles DeGaul ever credited with such a savage inhuman policy. (Note: the French had been under attack by Algerian terrorists hitting innocents in France.)

The Algerian gov. is sitting on some $160 billion in gold and currency reserves. But how can such sums be spent without corruption? The Algerians have long been promised adequate housing, but again and again, the contractors keep adding little features so the housing complexes cost more than the poor or even the middle class can pay. Algeria is unusual in that its government and labor leaders cooperate in building new industrial facilities, hotels and housing blocks, and markets. The two new desalination plants that have increased the country's drinking water by a full 2/3rds, over the past two years..

We keep a sharp eye on this kind of capitalism, because it is oil money just might be intelligently invested. Few countries can act as investment bankers, drawing in resources and obligations, while joining elements of the private sector, all to create 'industries out of the blue.' There's a genius lurking there. I don't know if it is in Algiers, Oran, Tlemcen, Constantia in the Kabyle, or way down in the Sahara, in Tamanrasset.

Till the Libyans brought Qaddafi down, Algeria was the only Arab nation that had to fight for its independence. Civil war in the 1990s between Islamists and secular educated gov. personnel killed some 200,000. So the Algerians are a bit wary about massing in the streets: the police always hit them. But reform is going on: Boutiflika proved his independence from the army (after they seated him) and this leads us to think that democracy may include electing all of the members of the national assembly.

Algeria features scores of political parties, each nuanced, each reflecting a tradition of some sort.

Tunisia –

elections (national) will happen on Oct 23, this coming Sunday. They will determine 217 seats in parliament, who will then compose a new constitution. Will the Islamist An Nada Party win over a third of the seats? Yes, but not a half of them: close cooperation with the secular left will be requisite.The rural folk rise up, just as tourists stop coming to the country. Some secular people have already suffered attacks by crazed pseudo-Muslims.

Educated people like ourselves worry about the sudden organization prowess of the long-suppressed MB Wahhabi-crazed fundamentalists, led by jihadists. All Arab countries have secular traditions but Tunisia's were, are, particularly strong. But there is a divide between the capital (and its suburbs), and the rest of the country. Foolish uneducated folk will jump on the name of Islam without any ability to read its texts or how it compares to western law codes. Hence their knee-jerk support for militant mullahs. But Tunisia is, or was, arguably the most advanced Arab nation. So how can it fall to the budding jihadists? Through the ballot box.

As to whom will be chief, president. It's a toss-up between Rashid Ghannouchi, back in the country and now allied with An Nada (Islamist), vs. Beji Caid Sebsi, the acting PM. Both are implicated in repression, An Nada shoeing away Sebsi, while Sebsi more recently, beat back swarming jihadist wannabes attacking gov. installations.

It's the same in the USA, with certain bible-crazed christian fundamentalists, except that the Americans can mostly read, but nevertheless fall into the pit of shirk – worshiping something other than God, or associating Him/Her with some human intent, attitude or attribute. Behind all religions are paths of self-perfection, or at least moral development, but these cannot operate if the subject steals his religion from another and uses to embroider his ego, his personhood. Another sign that a religious group is just mocking God is when it claims to be the exclusive way to God. When such sentiments are expressed, you can be sure that the group's religion is false.

Egypt -

These principles apply to Egypt as well. Like Tunisia, it is still ruled by the armed forces and technocrats once loyal to the Mubarak regime. Intense parlaying has been taking place on all levels. Elections for president (and parliament) are coming in November. Again, we fear that a long-suppressed dumbed-down MB apparat will win great influence. The secular educated people, people of genuine accomplishment, is trying to fend them off by promulgating a rule that one third of the seats will be left for 'independents.' So any association with any group; will disqualify you. Will the Muslim plots and scheme and commit heinous acts like they were wont to do? Wait three years.

Yemen - As soon as Ali Abdullah Saleh returned from a Riyadh hospital, he went on the offensive. I guess he was able to retrieve (using Saudi channels) intelligence relating to Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and passed it to the Americans. They then killed Anwar Awlaki and some key leaders. Some sub-tribe likely sold them out for the 2 million dollar reward. One can't travel any road in Yemen without a tribe's permission.

Meanwhile, in Sana'a the two sides fight. Every few days ten or twelve demonstrators are shot dead. As we keep saying, the material conditions have greatly deteriorated: as winter approaches, there's not enough NG. Out east in Shabwe province, AQAP blew up the NG pipeline bring fuel into the long, fertile Hadramaut wadi. Tit for tat.

Saleh feels some security issues need be settled – he's gunning for the man who tried to kill him and he's hoping the sew the country back together, using carrots and sticks, but even the Americans don't want this. Like everyone, it seems, the Americans look to a much brighter future, when this poorest of Arab lands can be led by the people living therein.

Saudi Arabia -

Just hours after Qaddafi is killed, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, dies in a hospital in New York city. One of Ibn Saud's six sons, he was defense minister for 50 years, since 1962. He more than anyone was the force behind the modern Saudi armed forces. He liked Americans and advocated pro-American policies. Replacing him as crown prince will be Muhammad Nayif, long the minister of the interior.

Will the Arab revolt extend to Saudi Shi'a in the east of the kingdom? There have been a few small incidents. But remember the king receives the Shi'a imam and mufti at least once a year. This personal diplomacy goes a long way, because the Shi'a in the Gulf are members of specific mosques. So we do not expect unrest in the Saudi kingdom.

King Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz is actually quite popular, even beloved, by Saudis. He has managed to implement reforms, municipal elections, and set up schools for girls, while maintaining extensive contacts with the West, all the while not alienating the Wahhabi muftis and mullahs. Of course the cool one trillion dollars he dumped on the Saudi youth didn't hurt his image either.

Please consult www.middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com for longer studies of Islam, Islamic land law, and the economic challenges facing Arab lands.

By John Paul Maynard

The author is, amongst other things, the moderator/instructor for the on line discussion group “Islamic Civilization” of the Graduate Alumni Association, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.