Overthrow delivers a jolt to Arab region

By Liz Sly and Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 16, 2011; A11

BAGHDAD - Moments after Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ejected from his palace, tweets began flying across a region that was at once enthralled and appalled by the specter of an Arab leader being overthrown by his own people.

"Today Ben Ali, tomorrow Hosni Mubarak," gloated one tweeter, referring to Egypt's long-serving president. "Come on Mubarak, take a hint and follow the lead," urged another.

And prominent Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy observed: "Revolutions are like dominos."

On Saturday, a day after Tunisia's president was forced into exile by massive street demonstrations, the Middle East was still reeling, with calls for copycat protests reverberating across the Internet, in cafes and on street corners as far afield as Jordan and Yemen. For the first time in the history of a part of the world long calcified by autocratic rule, a dictator had been forced from office by a popular revolt, and it was all broadcast live on television

Leaders braced for the fallout. Elites analyzed the potential for the revolution to spread. Ordinary people celebrated, marveled, gossiped and wondered: Will it happen here? What can we do? And, perhaps most important, who will be next?

Only one certainty stood out: The turmoil in tiny Tunisia, long ignored as a sleepy outpost of relative stability on the fringe of a volatile region, will have profound ramifications for the rest of the Arab world.

"Things will not be the same any longer," predicted Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst in the Jordanian capital of Amman. "2011 will witness drastic change, and it is long overdue."

The rumblings are already there. Jordan, Algeria and Libya have all seen violent protests in recent weeks, spurred by rising prices, unemployment and anger at official corruption - much the same issues that precipitated the snowballing street protests in Tunisia a month ago.

As the ousted Ben Ali flew into exile in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, the Saudi government issued a statement that seemed designed to forestall unwelcome comparisons between the new guest and the ruling Saudi monarchy.

"The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announces that it stands fully behind the Tunisian people," it said.

Almost no government in the region is immune from the combustible combination of grievances that sparked the uprising in Tunisia. Inflation, joblessness and the hopelessness of living in a country where opportunity is the preserve of a tiny ruling elite are steadily fueling frustrations from Algiers to Amman, from Tripoli to Sanaa and Damascus.

With the exception of Lebanon, whose democratically elected government also collapsed last week, for reasons related to Lebanon's own complicated sectarian politics, and Iraq, still battling the scourge of a lingering insurgency, every country in the region is ruled by some form of undemocratic autocrat.

"We could go through the list of Arab leaders looking in the mirror right now and very few would not be on the list," said Robert Malley, who heads the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Rumblings in Egypt


Perhaps nowhere do the lessons of Tunisia resonate more loudly than in nearby Egypt, where Mubarak has been president since 1981, six years longer than his toppled Tunisian counterpart. Egypt, like Tunisia, is grappling with the challenges of a rapidly growing population, limited job opportunities and deep resentment of the entrenched privileges of a ruling clique.

In a possible foreshadowing of what may lie ahead, police broke up an attempted demonstration outside the Tunisian Embassy in Cairo on Saturday night and blocked all but a few dozen protesters from reaching the site of another planned protest.

"It is our turn," chanted a small crowd of about 70 activists who managed to break through the police cordon. "Revolution is coming, by any means."

But it is far from certain that what happened in Tunisia will be replicated in other parts of a region whose governments have a practiced record of suppressing dissent. Tunisia was at once better and worse off than other Arab nations, in that its government had both allowed the development of a free economy in which many citizens prospered and ruthlessly repressed the emergence of any form of Islamist opposition.

"What is happening in Tunisia is Tunisia-specific," said Christopher Alexander, a Tunisia specialist and director of the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College in North Carolina. "Each country is struggling with its own political, social and economic challenges. But just because some of the challenges are similar doesn't mean that trouble erupting in one place will spread to another."

If it did, the trouble might take a very different form.

In Egypt, the most potent opposition movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters are dedicated to imposing Islamist rule on a country with a long secular tradition. Islamists are also the most vocal opponents of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which, like Egypt, are key U.S. allies, as well as in Syria, which is not.

"Change could come not for the better but for the worse, if fundamentalist forces succeed in taking over," said Kamhawi, the Jordanian analyst. "Tunisia was not that important at the end of the day. But what if a more important ally, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, was at stake? Would the Americans risk serious change in a more important country?"

The experience of 2005, when the region witnessed a somewhat similar moment, suggests that they would not. Powerful calls for democracy by the Bush administration had seemed to herald a new mood, encouraged by Iraq's first democratic election and the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in which hundreds of thousands of protesters forced the departure of occupying Syrian troops.

But the moment quickly faded. The United States backed off after strong showings by Islamists in regional elections, and Lebanon's revolution foundered in the face of the country's fierce sectarian rivalries and waning U.S. interest.

In a speech in the Qatari capital of Doha last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a measured critique of Arab regimes, emphasizing the need for leaders to reform their economies and stamp out corruption rather than outright political change. Unknown change ahead


Yet the upheaval in Tunisia may herald the stirrings of another new moment for the Middle East, one in which the United States perhaps becomes irrelevant, analysts say. U.S. officials noted that at no point did the protests in Tunis turn anti-American, despite U.S. support for the dictator they were seeking to dislodge.

Claire Spencer, who heads the Middle East department at the London-based Chatham House think tank, detects the beginnings of a new form of opposition among what she called the "post 9/11 generation," one that is as alienated from Islamic extremism as it is from its own governments.

"Tunisia has kick-started the region's imagination," she said. "There's a lot of frustration out there that could unleash change of some sort, though what it will look like, we still don't know."

Fadel reported from Beirut. Staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington, correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Dubai, and special correspondents Sherine Bayoumi in Cairo, Ranya Kadri in Amman and Ali Qeis in Baghdad contributed to this report.

What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? « Adonis Diaries

Cover via Amazon

Posted by: adonis49 on: April 4, 2010

What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? (Apr. 3, 2010)

The Morocco author Fatema Mernissi wrote in 1991 “Islam and democracy” after the first invasion of Iraq by President Bush the father or senior. In 2002, she wrote an introduction to the English edition. In 2010, the French editor Albin Michel asked Mernissi a fresh introduction to the updated French edition. Mernissi suggested that the English introduction should be fine and Michel replied: “Do you think that nothing happened between 2002 and 2010 that young Europeans might be interested in knowing?”

After a good night sleep Mernissi realized that among the many changes, apart that Islamic/Arabic youth are double the Western rate, one change stands out grandly: In 1991, the Arabs were terrified of Western supremacy in technology (smart bombs for example that CNN kept showing their devastating effects in collateral damages on civilians); in 2003 invasion it was clear that the American and British soldiers were the most scared of Islam virulence. Mainly, Islamic/Arab States had acquired the numeric information technology for disseminating instant news in sound, pictures, and videos and had begun rational communication discussions (jadal) on points and counter points to the benefit of every Arab/Moslems living in European States and the USA.

The unilateral monopoly in the diffusion and dissemination of information and “intelligence” was eroded: Moslems and Arabs could now enjoy 36 satellite channels broadcasting everywhere, including the most popular Al Jazeera channel that even the Western Medias watched for current and impartial news. Moslems in China were able to keep up with the rest of Islamic World events.

This information victory scared the Western civilization after it realized that the new Islamic/Arabic generations are no longer attuned to their local monopoly Medias run by dictators and monarchs: it is internet age and youth want changes and to discourse rationally. In 1991, Arabs had practically the CNN to cover the war in Iraq as direct source of information and it was biased toward showing the effects of “smart bombs” and Iraqi soldiers being shoveled alive under in the dune bunkers. Arab people got familiar with the term “collateral damages” and CNN failed to inform on the casualties. In 2003, Arab/Moslem masses had Al Jazeera channel to cover the war among 32 other satellite channels viewed for free. It is estimated that by 2012, Islamic/Arab States will have over 1,200 free channels as option for the world to watch information and discussion sessions.

For example, since 1948, Israel has devoured all Palestine and waged countless major pre-emptive wars and the Arab masses had to rely on American Medias for totally biased information; the pickiest watchers occasionally selected the BBC. Things have changed in this numeric information age. In 2003, Al Jazeera was offering as bonuses well targeted discussion panels with many foreign figures. For example, in 2001 and before the September attack on the Twin Towers, Al Jazeera ridiculed Taliban for bombing the ancient giant Buddhist idols in Bamyan (Afghanistan) while Richard Keller of the giant oil multinational UNOCAL was proclaiming “Taliban is good thing for us”

Western humanists grabbed the successes of the Islamic/Arabic satellite channels to become regular guest stars. For example, Dany Schechter of “Plunder: Investigating our economic calamity and the subprime scandal”; Adam Hochschild of “Burry the chains: Prophets and rebels in the fight to liberal”; and Chris Hedges of “War is a force that gives us meaning” are regular guests on Arab satellite channels.

Most ironic, it is the USA and a few European States that have been pressuring the obscurantist Arabic State dictators and monarchies to suppressing freedom of opinions and to shut down “controversial” Arabic channels. In France a few city mayors ordered Arabic channels banned for dissemination because the Arabs and Moslems living in these cities were hooked to Arabic channels and their mind being “poisoned” away from France patriotic indoctrination and inclusion programs.

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Saudi Bloggers Shatter the Kingdom's Silence and Censorship

By Judith Miller

Ahmed Al-Omran

Ahmed Al-Omran, a 25-year old Saudi blogger, must contend with ultra-conservative clerics and ongoing restrictions in a kingdom with 'no real political culture.'

For Ahmed Al-Omran, a 25-year-old Saudi blogger, this has been a particularly frustrating week.

To begin with, an ultra-conservative cleric issued a fatwa concluding that people who oppose segregating Saudi men and women should be killed. Then Al-Omran was forced by death threats to remove pictures he had posted on his Web site of university women clad from head to toe in their black abayas, the shrouds they are required to wear in public.

And finally, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abd al-Aziz al Sa'ud not only banned women and men from mixing together at the Riyadh book fair but also the display of books deemed "incompatible with religion and values."

"This country is so f—-ed up" Al-Omran tweeted, referring thousands of loyal fans to his latest postings on these and other topics on his English-language blog, Saudi Jeans.

Ahmed Al-Omran is not a household name outside of Saudi Arabia. Neither is Eman Al Nafjan, a 31-year-old mother of three, whose Saudi Woman's Web Blog in English has a solid, growing base of 500 visitors a day. And few outsiders may have heard of Basma Al-Mutlaq, whose English-language blog, Saudi Amber, advocates an end to what Eman Al Nafjan calls the kingdom's "gender apartheid," the religious- and cultural-based laws and traditions that have kept Saudi women both separate and unequal in their own land for decades.

But within the kingdom, such bloggers are Internet stars. Their readers and fans flood the Internet with spirited, supportive and angry commentary that is expanding the limits of what can be spoken about in this conservative, traditionally closed and painfully diplomatic society.

While the Saudi Ministry of Interior sees the Internet mostly as a threat — the nation's top venue for the recruitment of young, impressionable Saudis to the ranks of Al Qaeda and its affiliated and inspired violent groups — thousands of open-minded young Saudis have embraced the blogosphere to shatter the silence about problems long considered taboo — the separation of the sexes, sexual abuse of women and children, child marriage, the lack of democracy in the kingdom, the repression of the minority Shiite Muslim community, and even corruption among the nation's senior officials, if not yet the royal family.

While the kingdom's 15 daily newspapers and many magazines are created by royal decree and subject to government censorship, the World Wide Web offers Saudis a vast, relatively unregulated new frontier of self-expression about sensitive political, economic, and social topics. While most Arab newspapers tend to follow the lead of their state-run news agencies on whether to publish stories on sensitive issues, the estimated 5,000 Saudi blogs have given the more than 6 million Saudis who are online an outlet not only to vent their considerable frustrations, but a place to press for political and social change.

Initially, the Saudi government responded with force, apparently panicked by the implications of the technology. In December 2007, the government detained blogger Fouad al-Farhan for "violating the kingdom's regulations." But Ahmed al-Omran and other Saudi bloggers pummeled the government online. Protests from human rights groups and Western governments, publicized by the mainstream media, led to al-Farhan's release four months later. Since then, the government has invested heavily in security systems that can block access to Web sites it deems offensive. From time to time, such sites are shut down. But as in Iran, where government critics find alternatives to blocked sites, Saudi bloggers are also finding ways to get their message out, frustrating Riyadh's episodic efforts to reign in debate.

The government's blocking of sites is often arbitrary, Al-Omran said. For instance when his site was blocked for a few days in the summer of 2006 -- "by mistake," a government official later told some of his relatives and friends -- other sites that had nothing to do with politics were blocked as well. "One of them was a web site dedicated to donating goats to drought-ridden African countries," he said.

"The government is finding that censorship just doesn't work anymore," he said. "We've all become reporters without borders. The red lines of our society are slowly crumbling."

According to a Harvard University study last year, Saudi Arabia ranked second only to Egypt in the number of Web sites in Arab countries. But the kingdom's blogosphere is a decidedly mixed universe, one that devotes "far less attention to domestic political leaders" and issues than sites in other countries. Plus, 46 percent of bloggers are female, a higher ratio than in other Arab countries, perhaps because there are so many restrictions on their movement and activities.

Eman Al-Nafjan, for instance, said over coffee on the "all-female" second floor of the Kingdom Mall in Riyadh that she began blogging in English two years ago, after she returned from studying in the United States, in an effort to "break through stereotypes" about her country at home and abroad. "I believe in the Saudi monarchy," she said. "And I don't hate Saudi Arabia. But restrictions that people think are religiously based are actually rooted in our culture, not our religion. They must change. But I'm not optimistic that they will."

Many Saudis say that the ruling family — and King Abdullah and his daughters, in particular — are promoting the integration of women in society and what is known as "gender mixing." Indeed, hardly a day passes without an article appearing in the press about another breakthrough for women. In Jeddah, the nation's first "mixed" university has opened, and not without controversy. The king has appointed a woman to the post of vice minister for women's education, the only high-ranking woman to serve in government, and he has taken a woman financier on a trade delegation to China. The justice minister announced late last month that his department was drafting a law that would allow female lawyers to argue cases in court for the first time. Women may be permitted to vote in municipal elections, which have been postponed for two years.

But each action prompts a strong reaction from the powerful, entrenched conservative forces of the country. Last week, Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Barrak issued his infamous fatwa threatening death to those who advocate the mixing of the sexes, presumably including the king, in response to what conservatives see as a collapse of moral order in the kingdom. The liberal blogosphere promptly savaged the sheik. Ahmed al-Omran called him a "caveman," and Eman al-Nafjan denounced him as the "last living member of the traditional, misogynist ... rat pack of sheikhdom."

But even she acknowledged that 27 other reactionary sheiks signed a petition supporting his view. And when the government blocked his Web site due to the incendiary nature of his ruling, al-Barrak simply stole a page from the liberal bloggers' rulebook and popped up on another site.

"In Saudi Arabia, it is two steps forwards and ten steps backwards," said Basma Al-Mutlaq, whose "Saudi Amber" Web site is among the kingdom's most sophisticated English-language advocates for women's rights.

The majority of Saudi blogs dwell on personal and lifestyle issues, avoiding contentious political issues that many Saudis still feel uncomfortable debating in public. The English-language bloggers also agreed that blogging in English gave them greater leeway, and generated less government scrutiny, than an Arabic-language blog might create. Al-Omran noted that though he writes most often about the need for greater political freedom in Arabia — his "noble goal," he called it — many of his most popular postings have little to do with politics. For instance, he said, 3,000 people view his blog daily, but a satiric feature he composed on "how to wear a Ghotra" — the checkered headdress worn by Saudi men — drew 20,000 viewers, his most popular recent posting.

"It's a little discouraging at times," he said.

Fawziah Al-Bakr, a Saudi feminist who led the public protest over the ban on women driving 20 years ago — a prohibition that still prevails in the kingdom — called the Internet "the structure for non-governmental change in the kingdom."

But since most change in Saudi Arabia seems to come from the top down — often against the will of a more conservative majority of Saudis — Al-Omran and other bloggers say they are disappointed that the greater freedom of expression of the Internet has not resulted in the political change or enhanced accountability they seek.

"In Saudi Arabia, there are no elections, no real political culture, so venting and blogging is about all we can do," he said.

Still, he says, he won't stop blogging. "My family would like me to stop," he said, a sentiment echoed by Eman Al-Nafjan and other liberal bloggers. "They would like me to be one of those quiet Saudis. But I can't do that. We need to reform the kingdom. And we need voices who will

Seeing History Through Arab-American Eyes - VOA

Mohamed Elshinnawi | Washington, DC 01 December 2009

Photo: Mohamed Elshinnawi

Author Alia Malek says she wrote "A Country Called Amreeka" to put a "human face" on the Arab-American community, and to counter the public fear and misunderstanding fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Alia Malek, a successful Syrian-American civil rights attorney, was shocked by what she saw as a dangerous and misguided public backlash against Arab-Americans. Malek was confident that somebody would write a book that would put a human face on the Arab-American community and educate Americans about a culture that was so poorly understood.

"People seemed to think that Arabs only existed 'over there,' that there weren't actually Arab-Americans who had been part of the United States since the late 1800s. And I sort of went about my life practicing law, thinking that inevitably, somebody was going to write a book like this. And by the time I decided to do a career switch and go to journalism school at Colombia University four years later, nobody had yet written the book that I thought was so inevitable. So that is why I decided to write the book," Malek says.

Her new book is titled, "A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories." It is a collection of narratives about some of the 3.5 million people of Arab descent who live in the United States - individuals with roots in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Syria. Set against the backdrop of the past 40 years of American history and international developments, Malek's subjects share their stories and demonstrate that, even as they play football, work assembly lines and hold public office, they have remained largely shut out of the national conversation.

Malek, who began her legal career as a civil rights attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, contends that U.S immigration laws before 1965 were racially biased. And she says they hindered the naturalization of Arab immigrants to such an extent that most Americans were unaware there was an Arab-American community.

"I think that is why they assimilated and became almost invisible. And then, in that post-1965- immigration pop culture, [in] the media, Arab-Americans were not part of their discourse, it was not a part of the American consciousness. You did not have a TV show of Arab-Americans; there was something that remained very foreign about 'Arabs'," she says.

Stories mark historic moments in past 40 years

Each chapter of "A Country Called Amreeka" focuses on a major historical event as seen through the eyes of an Arab-American, allowing readers to relive the moment in that person's skin. In the chapter exploring how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict played out for Arabs living in the United States, Malek tells the story of Luba, the wife of a Palestinian refugee who yearns for her hometown of Ramallah after it is occupied by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In one passage from the book, Luba struggles to explain her heartache to her young American-born daughter, Mona, whose puzzlement at her mother's distress highlights the gap between Arab heritage and life in Amreeka:

"Now all Jerusalem is with the Jews and now it is Ramallah's turn to be taken," Luba explained. "And that is why I am crying and that is why I want you to shut up and stop asking questions!"

But Mona continued: "The Jews, aren't they human beings? Aren't they people?"

"Yes, of course they are human beings," Luba responded. "They are people like us."

"Then why can't they be in Ramallah?" Mona demanded.

"Mona, this is your house. Do you want your neighbors to come and tell you to get out and take your home and they live here? Is this right?" (Malek, 2009).

In another chapter, the reader sees the 1963 burning of a black church in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, through the eyes of a dark-skinned Lebanese-American. There's a Palestinian-American surrounded by anti-Arab violence during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 and a homosexual Arab-American who was afraid to be gay in the Middle East and is now afraid to be an Arab in America.

And there is Lance Corporal Abraham, a Yemeni-American Marine who is deployed to Iraq in the 2003 U.S. invasion. Because he is an Arab, Abraham is rebuked as a traitor by an Iraqi mother, whose two young daughters had been killed during a U.S. military operation.

Malek says,"I hope people sort of sympathize with Abraham and the difficulties he was going through, both as a young married father with a wife half-way across the world, and also the concerns he has as he and his Marine brothers come back alive from the war, as well as just seeing 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of the American invasion of Iraq."

Book mentions earlier immigrants

The author also recalls the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian Christians who were part of America's first great wave of immigration starting in the 1880s, and who found work in the mines and opened grocery stores. She examines the impact of the 1965 immigration reform legislation that allowed Arabs to escape political upheaval in their own countries and settle in Detroit, Michigan, where many found work Ford Motor Company assembly lines. Malek hopes her American readers will come to know these people in a new and more positive light.

"I hope they can see that the history of Arab-Americans is basically as old as the history of a lot of immigrant groups that we easily accept as part of the American mosaic. And that they see that we are in American society; we are voters and consumers and producers and teachers, and husbands and wives and neighbors and everything else that we think that other fellow Americans are. I mean, there needs to be rightful re-insertion into the American imagination of the place of Arab-Americans," she says.

Iraq Steps Out of Iran’s Shadow

Nuri al-Maliki wants to keep Tehran at bay.

Larry Kaplow

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Jun 15, 2009

Decades later, the memory still rankles Iraq's prime minister. Nuri al-Maliki was an exile in southern Iran at the time, running covert Iraqi networks against Saddam Hussein, and Iran and Iraq were at war. Maliki needed official Iranian clearance to enter the border area, but Maliki's Iranian handlers liked to make life difficult: one of them announced that a pass could be obtained only from another Iranian official, a 12-hour drive away in blustery winter weather. When the road-weary Maliki finally got there, his application was summarily rejected.

In isolation, the incident might have been merely a nuisance, but to Maliki it was just another piece in a vast pattern of condescension and sabotage by the Iranians. Years after being sent on that fool's errand, Maliki spotted the former handler from a distance at an official function in Damascus. As the prime minister recounts the story now, according to his ally Sami al-Askari, Maliki quietly warned a friend: "If he comes near me, I'll take my shoes off and hit him in the head."

With America's involvement in Iraq beginning to wind down, many Westerners share the concern of Arab leaders that the big winner will be Iran. Maliki's domestic opponents, the Sunni hardliners especially, already complain that his Shia-led administration is a proxy for its coreligionists in Tehran—that "an Iranian government" controls Iraq. And the fact is that the Iranians now exert more influence inside Iraq than they have for centuries. The leverage takes many forms: not only cross-border trade and direct lobbying by envoys in Baghdad, but also covert links to Shia militants and assassination teams. Even so, Iraq's leaders are scarcely inclined to take orders from Tehran. They're Arabs, not Persians, and they've learned what confidants say Maliki long ago found out the hard way: Iran rigorously pursues its own national interests, regardless of their shared Shia faith. The Iraqis respond in kind: Maliki's government uses the Iranian threat as a way to extract concessions from Iraq's nervous Arab neighbors and the West—if they don't help Maliki, the Iranians will. Nevertheless, the prime minister's personal view might be better summed up in an old Iraqi proverb he's been known to quote when speaking of Baghdad's "friends" in Tehran: "They'll take you to the water and bring you back thirsty."

Maliki's personal experiences say a lot about the limits of Iran's influence over Iraq's leaders. The prime minister's political organization, the Islamic Dawa Party, began as a Shia revivalist movement—in Iraq, not in Iran—and gained national importance in the 1970s as Saddam's main internal opposition. (Al Dawa is Arabic for "The Call.") Saddam did all he could to eradicate the group. The party says more than 200,000 Iraqis died in the purges: Dawa members, relatives of members, friends of those relatives, anyone with connections of any sort to the party.

Maliki fled Iraq in October 1979, only steps ahead of Saddam's police. He would return many times with Dawa guerrilla bands to Iraq's southern marshes or the mountains of northern Kurdistan. In those years he adopted pseudonyms—"Mr. Mohseni" in Iran and "Jawad Maliki" in Syria—to protect his relatives from Saddam's secret police. Still, dozens in his extended family were killed.

Dawa members credit Iran with giving them sanctuary when no one else would. They and the Iranians shared a hatred of Saddam when most other countries, including the United States, backed their enemy in Baghdad. Tehran's support for the Iraqi guerrillas grew with the 1980 outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, and a year later the Iranian government let them set up housekeeping at a camp that had been abandoned by a South Korean oil company. The camp, about 13 miles from the Iranian city of Ahwaz, was in a predominantly Arab area near the border, convenient for staging raids into Iraq. The group named its new home after Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, a Dawa founder and venerated Shia cleric who had been tortured and executed by Saddam. Several hundred fighters bunked in joined wooden trailers, usually four to a room, well supplied with electricity and water. They received military training from Dawa members who had served in Saddam's Army.

With daily religious and political indoctrination, the camp became what Dawa elder and camp founder Hussein al-Shami calls "a lush oasis." Dawa shared the Iranians' enthusiasm for the fledgling Islamic Revolution, even though they answered to a different clerical leadership. Jaafar Sadek al-Dujaili, a mullah who lived in the camp, recalls how the fighters at midday and evening prayers would chant: "Religion is always victorious! Long live Sadr!" Maliki gave regular seminars on politics and hung out in fatigues with an egalitarian mix of doctors, clerics and unschooled Dawa loyalists. "Martyrdom will strengthen our roots, not uproot us," he promised.

But Dawa's idyll didn't last. The Iraqis disliked the Iranian model of an Islamic government led by a supreme cleric, and the Iranians kept trying to take control of the Iraqis' guerrilla war against Saddam. There were disputes over control of the camp's entrances and access to the border. "We used to ask why, as religious people, they were doing this to us," says Dujaili. He remembers Maliki urging patience, but finally the Iranians unilaterally decided to reorganize the anti-Saddam Iraqis into a new group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Some Dawa members joined but most refused or eventually dropped out. "SCIRI was the spoiled son [of Iran]," says Izzat al-Shabander, who split from Dawa in the 1970s but lived in Iran and stayed friendly with party members. (He's now a member of the Iraqi Parliament.)

Iraqis who were at the camp describe the run-up to its handover to SCIRI. They say Maliki, a camp leader at the time, held meetings to promise the angry rank and file that Dawa's struggle would continue. Talib al-Hassan, a Maliki adviser who has recently been named governor of Thiqar province in southern Iraq, recalls the day in early 1983 when Maliki stood at the camp's main mosque and told the fighters that they were free to stay or go. "But the Dawa Party will have nothing to do with this camp anymore," he announced.

Tehran gave its full support to the camp's new occupants. Captured Iraqi Shia troops were allowed to join SCIRI's fighting ranks, rather than being tossed into a POW camp. While Dawa's influence dwindled, its run-ins with the Iranians continued. Hassan recounts how he went to renew his and Maliki's immigration cards, only to be told by an Iranian functionary that written approval from SCIRI was needed. One of the worst moments came when Saddam threatened airstrikes on Ahwaz. Townspeople were fleeing for their lives when Maliki knocked on Hassan's door and asked for his help; Maliki's wife had just delivered a son by Caesarean, and the hospital was being evacuated. The two men raced to carry her, her IV drip and the baby down the hospital steps to a car heading out of town—with no help from the Iranians. "They didn't care about us," Hassan says.

Acquaintances say Maliki was anything but sorry to leave Iran when he moved to Syria. (Sources differ on the date, but his official biography says it was in 1990.) His Farsi is even worse than his English, according to friends. "You can only learn a language if you love the people," Shami remarks. All the same, Maliki and other Shia leaders in Iraq have not forgotten that Iran was the first neighbor to recognize the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Governing Council in 2003. Nor have they forgotten the snubs of Arab governments in the region. While other powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt refused to open embassies in Baghdad, Iran kept its mission open and stayed engaged. And during the sectarian bloodshed of 2006, money and weapons from Iran helped Iraq's Shia defend themselves. No other regional head of state had visited Iraq before Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid a call last year. (An Iraqi official says American diplomats tried to discourage the trip but finally gave in and facilitated Ahmadinejad's travels from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone.)

Maliki has grown bolder lately about asserting Iraq's independence. "As he sees his fortunes go up, you can see him trying to put distance between himself and the Iranians, [just] as he's tried to put more distance between himself and the Americans," says Wayne White, a former State Department analyst. But the Iranians have been pushing back. Dawa parliamentarian Haider al-Abadi quotes the prime minister as saying that last year's drive against militants in Basra uncovered a "snake" that stretched across the eastern border. After government forces captured a notorious Iranian-backed militant, the Basra resistance intensified. "This is from the Iranians," Maliki told colleagues gathered in his improvised Basra war room. To save face, Iran organized talks between senior Dawa figures and radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose troops were armed by Iran. Shabander remembers Maliki at a security conference after the shooting stopped, warning the Sadrists that their Iranian backers could not be trusted. "Those who give you rockets to attack others today will give rockets to others to attack you tomorrow," he told them.

Skeptics say Dawa will always be in bed with Iran, willingly or otherwise. Shabander, who has known Dawa's leadership since the 1970s, says Maliki is surrounded by senior party members with Iranian loyalties who enable Tehran to "run Dawa by remote control," in his words. On the other hand, Dawa members know from experience what a fickle ally Tehran can be. "The Iranians are not necessarily straight. They may say one thing and do something else," says Zuhair al-Naher, Dawa's spokesman in London. "With the Americans there will also be some level of skepticism—but often the Americans have said things and followed through."

There's no way to eliminate Tehran's influence. Iraqi officials note that Iran's $4 billion annual trade with their country is second only to Turkey's $5 billion. And, if necessary, the Iranians can create chaos through the armed militants they continue to support. Maliki suspects one Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander in particular, Qassam Suleimani, of now and then subtly threatening to engineer his ouster, according to Shabander. (Maliki aides deny any such worries.) An American adviser in Baghdad, who asked not to be named discussing Iraqi internal matters, says ranking Iraqis even fear that Iran could attempt to assassinate leaders who stand in their way.

Still, Dawa may finally be settling old scores with the upstarts who took over its exile camp a quarter century ago. This past January, Maliki's party defeated the Supreme Council for the first time in local elections. Tensions are rising between the two longtime rivals, and Tehran seems worried that its favored party may be in trouble. With parliamentary elections due early next year, Iran is pushing Maliki to maintain a coalition with the Supreme Council. "They want everyone to return to one united power," says senior Dawa figure Ali al-Adeeb.

This time, however, Maliki is expected to insist on leading the coalition. Otherwise, party allies say, he has enough support from Sunnis to form a mixed coalition. If they're right, it would bring Iraq that much closer to national reconciliation, and push the country that much further outside Iran's ambit. The question is whether the Iranians are prepared to let that happen—and how far they might go to prevent it.

With Hussam Ali and Saad Al-Izzi in Baghdad and Hassan Al-Jarrah in Najaf

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/200865

Unlikely Ally for Residents of West Bank

By ETHAN BRONNER

SAFA, West Bank — Ezra Nawi was in his element. Behind the wheel of his well-worn jeep one recent Saturday morning, working two cellphones in Arabic as he bounded through the terraced hills and hardscrabble villages near Hebron, he was greeted warmly by Palestinians near and far.

Watching him call for an ambulance for a resident and check on the progress of a Palestinian school being built without an Israeli permit, you might have thought him a clan chief. Then noticing the two Israeli Army jeeps trailing him, you might have pegged him as an Israeli occupation official handling Palestinian matters.

But Mr. Nawi is neither. It is perhaps best to think of him as the Robin Hood of the South Hebron hills, an Israeli Jew helping poor locals who love him, and thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt. Those army jeeps were not watching over him. They were stalking him.

Since the Israeli left lost so much popular appeal after the violent Palestinian uprising of 2000 and the Hamas electoral victory three years ago, its activists tend to be a rarefied bunch — professors of Latin or Sanskrit, and translators of medieval poetry. Mr. Nawi, however, is a plumber. And unlike the intellectuals of European origin with whom he spends most Saturdays, he is from an Iraqi Jewish family.

“My mother gave birth to me in Jerusalem when she was 14,” said Mr. Nawi, who is 57 and one of five siblings. “So my grandmother raised me. And she spoke to me in Arabic.”

His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer.

“I don’t consider my work political,” he said between phone calls as he drove. “I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”

For his activist colleagues, Mr. Nawi’s instinctual connection to the Palestinians is valuable.

“Ezra knows Palestinians better than any of us,” said Amiel Vardi, a professor who works closely with him. “This is not only because of the language, but because he gains their confidence the minute he starts talking with them. He has all sorts of intuitions as to what should be done, what are the internal relations — things we hardly ever notice.”

The difficulties of Palestinian life in the West Bank have been well documented: Israeli military checkpoints, a rising separation barrier and Israeli settlers. But in this area, the problems are more acute. The Palestinians, many of them Bedouin, are exceptionally poor, and the land they bought decades ago is under threat by a group of unusually aggressive local settlers. The settlers have been filmed beating up Palestinians. Settlers have been killed by Palestinians. But Mr. Nawi said that the law inevitably sided with the Israelis, and that occupation meant there could be no equity.

“The settlers keep the Palestinian farmers from their land by harassing them, and then after several years they say the land has not been farmed so by law it is no longer theirs,” Mr. Nawi said. “We are only here to stop that from happening.”

That is not the view of the settlers.

“He is a troublemaker,” asserted Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Israeli settler communities in the area. “It’s true that from time to time there is a problem of some settlers coming out of their settlements to cause problems. But people like Nawi don’t want a solution. Their whole aim is to cause trouble.”

True or not, Mr. Nawi is now in trouble. Having spent several short stints in jail for his activism over the years, he now faces the prospect of a long one. He is due to be sentenced Wednesday for assaulting an Israeli policeman two years ago during a confrontation over an attempt to demolish Palestinians’ shacks on disputed land on the West Bank. The policeman said Mr. Nawi struck him during that encounter. Mr. Nawi denied it, but in March a judge convicted him.

What is left of the Israeli left is rallying around him, arguing that Mr. Nawi is a known pacifist who would not have raised his hand against anyone.

“Since I’ve known the man for decades and seen him in action in many extreme situations, I’m certain that the charge is untrue,” David Shulman, a Hebrew University professor and peace activist, wrote in the newspaper Haaretz. Of Mr. Nawi, he added, “He is a man committed, in every fiber of his being, to nonviolent protest against the inequities of the occupation.”

Mr. Nawi attributes his activism to two things: as a teenager, his family lived next door to the leader of Israel’s Communist Party, Reuven Kaminer, who influenced him. And he is gay.

“Being gay has made me understand what it is like to be a despised minority,” Mr. Nawi said.

Several years ago, he had a relationship with a Palestinian from the West Bank and ended up being convicted on charges of allowing his companion to live illegally in Israel. His companion was jailed for months.

Mr. Nawi said harassment against him had come in many forms. Settlers shout vicious antigay epithets. His plumbing business has been audited, and he was handed a huge tax bill that he said he did not deserve. He is certain that his phone calls are monitored. And those army jeeps are never far behind.

He is not optimistic about his coming sentencing, although he is planning an appeal. And he says the Israeli news media have lost interest in the work he and his fellow activists do. But he does not stop.

“I’m here to change reality,” he said. “The only Israelis these people know are settlers and soldiers. Through me they know a different Israeli. And I’ll keep coming until I know that the farmers here can work their fields.”

Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: 'Why Not Us?'

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 26, 2009

CAIRO, June 25 -- Mohamed Sharkawy bears the scars of his devotion to Egypt's democracy movement. He has endured beatings in a Cairo police station, he said, and last year spent more than two weeks in an insect-ridden jail for organizing a protest.

But watching tens of thousands of Iranians take to the streets of Tehran this month, the 27-year-old pro-democracy activist has grown disillusioned. In 10 days, he said, the Iranians have achieved far more than his movement has ever accomplished in Egypt.

"We sacrificed a lot, but we have gotten nowhere," Sharkawy said.

Across the Arab world, Iran's massive opposition protests have triggered a wave of soul-searching and conflicting emotions. Many question why their own reform movements are unable to rally people to rise up against unpopular authoritarian regimes. In Egypt, the cradle of what was once the Arab world's most ambitious push for democracy, Iran's protests have served as a reminder of how much the notion has unraveled under President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 30 years.

"I am extremely jealous," said Nayra El Sheikh, 28, a blogger and Sharkawy's wife. "I can't help but think: Why not us? What do they have that we don't have? Do they have more guts?"

The frustration comes against a backdrop of deep-rooted skepticism among pro-democracy activists that U.S. policies under President Obama will help transform the region, despite his vow to engage the Muslim world in a highly publicized speech here last month. Some view Obama's response to Iran's protests, muted until Tuesday, as a harbinger of U.S. attitudes toward their own efforts to reform their political systems. The Egyptian government, they note, is a key American ally, and U.S. pressure on Egypt for reforms began subsiding in the last years of the Bush administration.

"When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal. This is a test for his government," said Ayman Nour, a noted Egyptian opposition politician who was recently released from jail. "If they can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action here in Egypt."

When the Iranian protests erupted, Ahmed Abd el-Fatah wrote on his blog, "We Egyptians are like youth watching pornography because they can't practice sex. Congratulations to Iran for its democracy."

"I was very happy about what was happening. But I was also very sad. I know I can never do this here," the thin, 22-year-old activist said. "You need a far greater movement than in Iran to achieve any change in Egypt."

For years, Egypt's democracy movement has used Internet technology, banners and slogans to galvanize its supporters, rallying often against U.S. policies and taking the lead in championing core Arab causes such as the plight of Palestinians or opposition to war in Iraq. Today, the movement is facing a crisis of leadership and vision and is torn by internal disputes, activists said.

Meanwhile, the government has taken advantage of the void to crush the opposition through arrests, beatings and round-the-clock surveillance. Dissent, even online, is not tolerated. Egyptian security officials routinely monitor cellphones and social networking sites such as Facebook and hack into the e-mails of anyone they deem suspicious, activists said.

"We have a very weak opposition. We don't have a civil society. The police are very powerful," said Fahmy Howeidy, a columnist for Ahram, an independent newspaper. "In Iran, at least there are real elections. We've never had any real elections here in 50 years. Our society has been weakened. We have not allowed political groups to grow."

Many believe Nour is one leader capable of capturing the imagination of Egyptians. But the government keeps a close watch. He's not allowed to work. He can't have a bank account, and his travel is restricted.

Fatah noted that many of the Iranian protesters appear to be from the social elite. In Egypt, most people are more concerned about food and other basic necessities than politics. More than a quarter of Egypt's 80 million people are illiterate, and only 8 percent have access to the Internet.

"The elite here are limited, and most are working in hand with the regime," Fatah said. "And the only reason the Egyptian street has risen up is over money, salaries or prices. The minute the police arrive, there is silence."

"We're too passive," El Sheikh said. "Protesters go downtown, perhaps 20 or 30 at a time. The security forces come. They beat them senseless. They detain them. And that's as good as it gets."

Ali el din Hilal, chief spokesman for the ruling National Democratic Party, noted that opposition newspapers and parties are allowed to operate in Egypt. "It isn't true that the government cracks down on every movement or demonstration," he said. "Egyptians have many freedoms."

On Wednesday, Fatah said he received a Facebook message announcing a protest in downtown Cairo the next day to support "democracy" in Iran and to mourn the death of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman whose killing, captured on video, has become a global symbol of the Iranian uprising.

On Thursday, 10 large green trucks filled with riot police arrived at the meeting place. Not a single protester showed up.

"It's a demonstration. It doesn't matter what it is about. They will stop it," Fatah said.

Arab activists on the street have not been inspired by the Iranian protesters as they have been by Palestinians or Iraqis in recent years. In part, this reflects the religious and ideological fissure between the mostly Sunni Arab world and an ascendant Shiite Iran that has deepened across the region since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

"There are some religious groups who stress that they are Shiites and that they are different than Sunnis," said Mohamed Mustafa, 35, a lawyer who has participated in anti-government demonstrations. "It is easy to manipulate the feelings of Egyptians through religious beliefs."

"Shiites are more disciplined and organized. It's a part of their culture and religion," said Anwar Ahmed, 62, another lawyer, offering his explanation for why predominantly Sunni Egypt has not risen up against Mubarak.

The two sat with other lawyers in a courtyard of the lawyers' syndicate building, a hot spot for demonstrations in downtown Cairo.

Most of the group said they admired Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and wanted him to remain in power -- chiefly because he was America's foe. "Anyone who can stand up to the United States and force his nation's interest forward, we'll support him," said Ahmed Mattar, 29.

In the blogosphere, too, activists are divided into two camps, further explaining the subdued Arab response to Iran's clashes. One side views Iran's disputed June 12 election as fair and argues that the protests were orchestrated by the West. The other side views the protests as a mass movement that needs to be supported. Many question whether opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is actually a reformist.

"I am somewhere in the middle," Fatah said. "But I support Ahmadinejad."

Resentment is also growing among Arabs over the condemnations by European nations and by Obama on Tuesday of the state-sponsored violence against Iranian protesters. Many say they see a double standard.

"Here, in the last presidential election, the police used live ammunition," Sharkawy said. "Why didn't the West speak out against what was happening to us, when we had much smaller numbers? You become skeptical. We understand the United States and the West will pursue their own interests. They don't want a strong Egyptian government that will have separate opinions from the West."

Egypt and other Sunni Arab governments have also been silent on Iran, despite their wariness of the Iranian regime's influence on Shiite militant groups in Lebanon and Iraq and on Palestinian Islamist groups. Some analysts say the governments worry about triggering similar popular upheavals at home. Hilal, the ruling party spokesman, acknowledged that Egypt did not want to interfere because it expects other nations not to interfere in its domestic affairs.

"We may face a similar situation in the future," he said.

That's precisely what 28-year-old blogger Ahmed Maher wants. He said he was arrested and beaten last year for organizing a Facebook protest. Today, he keeps a low profile, changing his online passwords and cellphone numbers frequently.

But the Iranian protests have inspired him to think of new ways to organize people and raise political awareness in Egypt. He said he has two years to figure it out.

"It makes me think of 2011 -- our next presidential election," Maher said. "I think we will become like the people they are beating up in Iran now."

Special correspondent Sherine al-Bayoumi contributed to this report.