Raiding an NGOs

Egypt has reassured the US that it will stop raids on the offices of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the US state department says. Officials said property seized in the raids would be returned to the groups, which include two based in the US.Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has spoken to Egypt’s military ruler by phone to discuss the issue, they added.

Egypt raided the offices of 17 NGOs in Cairo on Thursday, after expressing concern over foreign funding.The country’s ruling military council has said repeatedly it will not tolerate foreign interference in the country’s affairs. But the US reacted sharply to the move, condemning it as an attack on democratic values and hinting that it could review the $1.3bn (£0.84bn) in annual US military aid to Cairo if such incidents continued.

In a press conference held at the premises of Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) on Thursday, 27 human rights organisations denounced the raids, which were carried out on Thursday morning by officials from Egypt’s public prosecution office, with back-up from police and military personnel.

The Arab Center for Independence of the Judiciary ‎and the Legal Profession (ACIJLP); the Budgetary and Human ‎Rights Observatory; and the Washington-based National ‎Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and ‎Freedom House were among the NGOs that the government raided.

Head of Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Ahmed Saif Al-Islam, said that Egyptian NGOs are now exposed to attacks unprecedented in their magnitude at the hands of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).Saif Al-Islam pointed out that restrictions on public freedoms had been felt since the closure of Cairo’s Al-Jazeera Network office in September, along with the renewal of emergency law in the same month. Under the auspices of emergency law, freedom of expression is severely curtailed, and journalists and TV interviewers risk facing questioning or even prosecution.

Nasser Amin, head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, challenged state authorities by affirming that the center will continue with its work despite the closure.

‘Even if we are jailed, we will work from inside the jail,’ Amin declared.

Hafez Abu Saeda, head of EOHR, described the crackdown as “illegitimate” and expressed willingness to battle the raids through the courts.At the press conference, Abu Saeda welcomed any of the 17 closed NGOs to use the EOHR premises to resume their work.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

“I urge Egyptian security forces to respect and protect the universal rights of all Egyptians, including the rights to peaceful free expression and assembly,” she said. “We call upon the Egyptian authorities to hold accountable those, including security forces, who violate these standards.”

Clinton also implored the protesters to refrain from acts of violence against the police or military.

According to latest figures from the State Department, the violent clashes between protesters and police in Cairo have left at least a dosen people dead and upwards of 500 wounded in the continuing riots.

Wednesday is the sixth day of riots that pitted the Islamist protesters against Egypt’s civilian security forces. The violence had erupted on Friday in front of the government and parliament buildings. Protesters attempted to invade the buildings and, failing that, set fire to government vehicles and parts of the government buildings.

More than 100 security force members were reportedly injured after protesters threw rock and debris, and tossed Molotov cocktails at police and security officials on Cairo streets.

The violence erupted just as the parliamentary election proceeded in that Arab nation. According to reports, the Muslim Brotherhood and the radical Islamic group the Salafists were winning a majority of the parliamentary races.

The three-stage election, set to end on January 10, 2012, went to its second stage on Wednesday and Thursday.

While Secretary Clinton uttered her plea for both side to show restraint and hold peaceful elections, the Obama administration and the president have been conspicuously silent about conditions in Egypt.

“The Obama White House sold the Egyptian uprising as a transition from a dictatorship to a democratically elected moderate Muslim government. But Obama’s Arab Spring is turning into an embarrassment. Either the administration deceived Americans about the intelligence gathered and analyzed or the administration was oblivious to the threats,” said former military intelligence officer and police commander Mike Snopes.

“Either way, this is another example of government incompetence,” he said.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

This picture of soldiers beating and dragging this nwoman whose blue bra and belly have been exposed, has already become an icon of the way SCAF deals with its fellow Egyptians. Egypftian novelist Ahdaf Soueif wrote a beautiful piece about it in The Guardian.

Two versions have emerged of what has been happening these last days to the sit-in in front of the Cabinet building and on and around Tahrir Square in Cairo. One version was spread by the state media, the government and SCAF itself. It began with Prime Minister Kammal al-Ganzouri who on Saturday during a press conference denied that that the army used violence or live amunnition and called what was “happening not a revolution, but [rather] an assault on the revolution”.

Next was the state media that described the protesters in the street as thugs, street kids, drug addicts and forces from outside Egypt. State television even broadcasted interviews with people who said that they were protesters who had been paid by liberal groups to attack the military. It was, as the New York Times wrote, an echo of the propaganda from the last days of the Mubarak government.

After that SCAF repeated this story. There was the hair rising remark, by General Abdel Moneim Kato, an adviser to the military’s Morale Affairs Department, who talked to the private newspaper Al-Shorouk about the events and the violence used by the army. People had better worry about the country’s welfare, he said, in stead of being concerned about “some street bully who deserves to be thrown into Hitler’s ovens”.

Kato’s remarks were condemned by many. But on Monday afternoon a civilized version of what he said was presented during a press conference of General Adel Emara, one of the SCAF-leaders ‘The armed forces,’ Emara said, ‘does not use violence systematically. We exercise a level of self-restraint that others envy. We do not do that out of weakness but out of concern for national interests.”

On two sides walls built by the army of concrete blocs and in the middle the burnt out building of the Institute for the Advancement of Scientific Research. (Picture M Shestawy)

As reported by Al-Masry al-Youm of which the English section recently has been renamed Egypt Independent), the general said that violence erupted on Friday when demonstrators who had been holding a sit-in in outside the cabinet’s headquarters for the last three weeks attacked a military officer. Military personnel guarding the cabinet’s building came to the officer’s rescue, but they were subjected to “deliberate humiliation and provocation,” continued Emara, who affirmed later that the armed forces had no intention of dispersing the protest.

According to activists and eyewitnesses, however, the version of what happened during the past few days is completely the other way round. Military personnel picked a fight with protesters with the intention of dispersing the sit-in, whose main demands were the firing of the newly appointed Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri and the transfer of power from the military to civilians.

The military started to throw stones and office furniture at protesters from the roofs of nearby buildings. Soldiers in military uniforms were even photographed urinating on protesters from the rooftops. In the meantime, gunshots were heard. The next day more ugly scenes emerged of soldiers beating up demonstrators with sticks and dragging a woman through the street, stripping her naked and kicking her. Also 14 protesters died so far, most of them by gunshots

Emara didn’t challenge the authenticity of photos and videos showing the woman, which have gone viral in cyberspace and in the foreign media.Yet he argued that the footage didn’t prove that the military had resorted to excessive violence.“I say yes, this scene actually happened and we are investigating it,’ bu he added that the circumstances should be taking into account as well.

As Al Masry al-Youm/Egypt Independent wrote: The weekend’s violence brought back memories of earlier military brutality, including an attack on a Coptic-led protest in October and the dispersal of an anti-military rally in November. In the first incident, the military was held responsible for the killing of 27 people; in the second, both the armed forces and the police were blamed for the murder of at least 40. On both occasions, the military and the state-owned media invoked conspiracy theories, using the common refrain that “hidden” hands were fomenting chaos to ruin the state and thwart the transition to democracy.

The problem with the two versions, however, is that many ordinary Egyptians – indeed most Egyptians – tend to believe the version of the state media and the SCAF, in which the protesters are depicted as criminals and thugs, influenced by foreigners, who try to undermine the government and the army and in the process destroy Egyptian property.

That in itself is bad enough, as it clearly has the effect that the pro-revolution forces are marginalised. But it us not even the whole story. Al-Ahram Online reports that in the recent military raid on Tahrir Square, media personnel and cameras became a primary target. Men in military uniform, assisted by plainclothes men, confiscated cameras and smashed them.

Reporters and filmmakers on rooftops surrounding the square were not excluded from the attacks, Al-Ahram Online reports. Al-Jazeera English producer Adam Makary told the paper that 20 plain-clothed men stormed his hotel overlooking the square and smashed any camera they found.

Makary saw the men severely beating a French reporter and a female member of staff at the hotel, after which he hid in a closet and heard more people being beaten and equipment being smashed. According to Makary, the plain-clothed men who attacked the hotel – whilst protesters were being evicted from Tahrir – were “instructing each other and everything seemed very orchestrated.”

Filmmaker Cressida Trew, who was filming from a friend’s flat overlooking the square, was visited by a military officer, assisted by three others, who confiscated her cameras. According to Trew, she tried to negotiate with the officer to take her memory card and leave the camera but her proposal was refused. Two more media personnel accompanying Trew also had their cameras taken in addition to all their lenses.

This was not the first time the media had been targeted since military took power. Makary explained that this was the third time he had been attacked while doing his job. It had happened twice before in Alexandria.

Masry Al-Youm photographer Ahmed Abd El-Fattah lost his eye while covering clashes near the Ministry of Interior in Mohamed Mahmoud Street where 40 people were killed and over a thousand injured. Abd El-Fattah said police officers shot at his eyes. Although activists have also lost their eyes and even their lives, Abd El-Fattah said his injury was no coincidence as media were being targeted. “Five Masry Al-Youm reporters, in addition to ten working for other media institutions, were injured that day and they all had cameras,” he said. Moreover, Abd El-Fattah said media personnel often suffered accusations of spying while on the job. “People are affected by the military’s media and the military also has secret agents all around to stir such accusations,” he said.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

General Mokhtar al-Mulla

A rare press conference by the Egyptian leaders of the army, SCAF, on Wednesday fro the foreign press in Egypt, confirmed once more that the army wants to hold a decisive grip on events in Egypt, whatever the results of the current election are going to be. Major General Mokhtar el-Mulla – a leading member of SCAF – said the upcoming parliament would not be representative of all Egyptian people. Therefore those appointed in a 100 members counting assembly to write a fresh constitution must also be approved by the interim cabinet and a newly-created “advisory council” of intellectuals, civilian politicians and media personalities, both of which fall under the control of SCAF.

Mulla, who was speaking to a small group of mostly American reporters, made clear that the ruling military council, as the executive, will maintain ultimate authority over the functioning of the new parliament and government.

Asked whether the new council is an attempt to limit the influence of the hard-line Salafis, who want to impose strict Islamic law on Egypt, Mulla said: “Absolutely. … The Egyptian people won’t allow this to happen.”

“There will be standards agreed upon by all the Egyptian people,” Mulla said. “This is not out of mistrust of the parliament. What we are seeing is free and fair elections … but it certainly doesn’t represent all sectors of society.”

What Mulla said was not completely new. The Deputy Prime Minister of the former cabinet, Ali al-Selmi, presented a paper at the end of November which was thought to have been inspired by SCAF, and which contained the idea that the constituent assembly would consist of about 20 parliamentarians and the rest to be chosen from all strata of Egyptian society.

The paper raised a lot of anger at the time, from all parties and activists, but particularly from the islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafists, who were already somewhat convinced that they would obtain a majority in the new parliament. The the fact that SCAF reiterated ts position drew anew criticism from this side.Youssri Hamad, spokesman for the salafist Al-Nour party, said the military council is again trying to reassure the liberals in society at the expense of legitimate demands by popular Islamist groups. He called it a continuation of the Mubarak regime policies that ostracized Islamists. “We have a significant presence in parliament. They must also protect our opinions and protect our presence in governing institutions,” he said.

Saad al-Katatny, the Secretary General of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, said his group will continue to object to the military rulers’ attempts to force its hand. He said his group agrees that all sectors, and not the parliament, must be represented in the constituent. But he objected to the military council’s attempt to guide or oversee the process. “Why does the council want to interfere in the will [of the people]?” he said.

The discussion with the journalists was at times rather heated, when question were asked about the role of the army in recent clashes which have left more than 40 dead and thousands injured. Mulla acknowledged that the military had ultimate control over security affairs, but denied that the armed forces would ever commit violence against the Egyptian people. He brushed away any suggestions that live bullets had been used against protesters, in spite of all evidence brought by doctors and human rights activists. Mulla also refused to discuss the cases of the imprisoned blogger Maikel Nabil, who was found guilty by a military tribunal of insulting the army earlier this year and is on hunger strike during his appeal, or the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah, another blogger who was arrested for alleged crimes he committed during the Coptic demonstration at Maspero n October which was broken up violently by the army at the cost of some 24 people killed.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Courtesy Veterans today

After the Arab League hypocritically suspended the membership of Syria amid the mounting pressures of NATO and the United States, the resurgence of violence in Egypt and the increasing use of excessive force in Bahrain and Yemen and the unrelenting massacre of innocent civilians by the barbaric regime of Al Khalifa and Ali Abdullah Saleh once again attracted the attention of conscientious observers in the international community.

According to official figures released by the “Bahrain Center for Human Rights” website, so far 44 Bahraini citizens were killed at the hands of the mercenaries of Al Khalifa regime. The Bahraini martyrs include the 6-year-old Mohammed Farhan, 14-year-old Ali Jawad Alshaikh and 15-year-old Sayed Ahmad Saeed Shams. The Bahraini organization has reported that many of these martyrs were killed while in custody. The Center has also published documents indicating that more than 1,500 Bahrainis including about 100 women were incarcerated since the eruption of turmoil in the Persian Gulf country on February 14, 2011 and that more that 90 journalists face life threat.

It’s also said that the Bahraini government has blocked the citizens’ access to more than 1000 opposition websites which are mainly used to organize and plan protests and mass demonstrations.

The Bahraini regime commits all of these aggressive and brutal actions with the direct involvement of the Saudi Arabia and the implicit support and backing of NATO and the United States. The author of the “Hidden Harmonies China” blog in a March 14, 2011 post referred to the abuses of human rights in Bahrain with the flagrant, duplicitous support of the White House: “the Entry of Saudi security forces to crack down on the protesters with deadly force is a complication for U.S. policies, to say the least, since U.S. is reluctant to criticize its oil ally dictators in the region.”

He also called Bahrain the “Las Vegas” of the Middle East, host to the U.S. 5th Fleet and a haunt for the rich Saudis who are forbidden by Islamic laws at home from indulging in alcohol and other immoral enjoyments, “but who often vacation in Bahrain for these reasons.”

Image courtesy Veterans Today

Bahraini citizens have uploaded several video files on the internet, showing the cruel and ruthless torturing and persecuting of the protesters by the Al Khalifa lackeys. These videos depict the Bahraini forces using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters and killing many of them straight away. Some of these videos also show the Saudi and Bahraini cars nonchalantly running over Bahraini children and women, killing them at once.

The U.S.-Saudi project of crackdown on the Bahraini people was also empowered by many of the European cronies of Washington. In July 2011, Germany sold a set of 200 62-ton Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia which sparked a huge controversy among the German parliamentarians and anti-war activists. According to the Daily Telegraph, Wolfgang Gerhardt, former leader of the Free Democrats, the junior collation member to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said it was “unacceptable” the deal went through without the knowledge of his party’s MPs. However, the agreement which was worth around USD 1,252 million was concluded and the Saudi government dispatched many of these newly-bought tanks to Bahrain to accelerate and facilitate the bloody clampdown on the protesters.

The situation in Yemen, however, is far more deplorable and appalling. Allvoices.com has reported that as of September 25, 1,870 Yemenis were killed in the revolution and the majority of the martyrs were unarmed civilians taking part in anti-government demonstrations.

The Yemeni dictator who has remained defiant in the face of frequent calls by the tribal leaders, opposition groups and demonstrators to step down and give up power has turned his country into a bloodbath and made the Yemeni uprising the longest, most devastative revolution in the revolutionary wave of protests in the Middle East. The protests in Yemen started on February 3, 2011 and have continued so far. The only reaction of the international community to the brutality in Yemen was an indecisive and faltering resolution by the UNSC which called for “an end to violence” and asked President Ali Abdullah Saleh to accept a peace deal brokered by the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council. However, Abdullah Saleh who is tacitly supported by the U.S., kept up with the brutalities and according to Yemen Times, 94 protesters were killed after the Security Council adopted the resolution 2014.

In a report published on Yemen Times on November 17, it was revealed that “ninety-four Yemenis were killed and over 800 injured since UN Resolution 2014 was issued on October 21.”

“Tentative reports show that over the last three weeks in Yemen, 124 homes, seven mosques, six public institutions including one hospital, two community wells, and 17 vehicles were effectively destroyed,” Yemen Times reported.

In the days leading to the detainment and death of Moammar Gaddafi, the Western mainstream media were only talking about the Libyan civil war, and the reason was clear: NATO had secured a UNSC resolution to enact a no-fly zone over Libya and it was in the interests of the U.S. and its European partners to give coverage to the tumultuous situation in the North African country. However, the reports and news regarding the carnage in Bahrain and Yemen were predominantly shunned and boycotted, simply because these two despotic regimes were close allies of the U.S. in the Middle East.

In a report published on “Independent Australia,” Zaid Jiani alluded to the violent crackdown on the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and posed the question that “is the media downplaying these events because the two dictatorships are firm allies of the West?”

“A Think Progress analysis of press coverage by the three major U.S. cable news networks -CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News – from March 14 to March 18 finds that Bahrain received only slightly more than ten percent as many mentions as Libya and that Yemen received only six percent as many mentions as Libya.”

Now what concerns the independent thinkers, scholars, university professors, journalists and peace activists is that Syria has become the target of international pressure, simply because it has strong ties with Iran and resistant groups in Lebanon and Palestine, while the reactionary regimes of Bahrain and Yemen are getting away with the felonies which they commit by the virtue of their alliance with the United States.

Arab League has vindictively suspended the participation of Syria while it has taken no practical step to normalize the situation in the turbulent and chaotic Yemen and Bahrain in which innocent people are being killed on a daily basis by their tyrannical rulers and their loyalists

All that can be said is that the performance of the Arab League in neglecting the situation in Yemen and Bahrain and exaggerating the unrest in Syria which is mainly caused by the foreign intervention and the West’s indifference toward the plight of the suppressed nations in Yemen and Bahrain is an all-out hypocrisy and a clear, undeniable exercise of double standards. Who can really devise a clear-cut solution for this unsolvable dilemma?
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AUTHOR: Kourosh Ziabari
URL: http://www.intifada-palestine.com
E-MAIL: kziabari [at] gmail.com

Hundreds of thousands of Bahrainis taking part in the "March of Loyalty to Martyrs", honoring political dissidents killed by security forces, on 22 February.

In several postings throughout spring and summer 2011 (see the postings entitled: Western co-optation of Arab Revolts – April 2011; Middle East: mid-2011 Assessment of Arab Revolts, June 2011), I emphasized that the Arab revolts would not necessarily result in regimes that are accountable to their own people, but more likely to Western governments and business interests.

On 19 November 2011, violence erupted in Egypt and the rebels are claiming that in essence the Arab Spring revolt did not result in a new regime that represents the people, but new faces that represent the old policies. As guarantor of the old institutional structure and policies, the Egyptian military remains a major obstacle to free and open elections similar to those that took place in Tunisia and returned a parliamentary system.

But even in Tunisia where the two leftist political parties won almost as many seats in the Chamber as the Islamist Ennahda party, the government remains very committed to close economic and political ties to France and EU. Unlike Egypt and Algeria where the military historically has played a role in both politics and business – protecting their interests – the Tunisian military does not have such inordinate influence in politics and business, so the transition to a semblance of political power sharing under parliamentary rule was smooth so far.

This does not mean however, that even Tunisia with its relatively smooth transition will not suffer social unrest like Egypt. High ranking Tunisian military officers have been cooperating with the US and NATO; Tunisia has taken part in a number of US-NATO operations, and it has provided NATO ships to use its port facilities. If a segment of the population is convinced that the new regime is a Western puppet and serves a small segment of the political and business elites, and that the country is as much a Western satellite after deposed dictator Ben Ali as during his regime, there will be problems in Tunisia.

Yemen, which is more like Egypt and Algeria in terms of the military’s role in the political and business arena, remains extremely volatile, with the dictator-for-life Ali Abdullah Saleh insisting that he will only hand power to the military. This signals that there will be no real change in the political arena, and that Yemen will remain under the aegis of the US and Saudi Arabia, thus the revolution in Yemen is likely to continue.

Meanwhile, the US and EU hardly make any noise about Yemen, Kuwait, or any of the Gulf states, especially Bahrain, a major US satellite, where grass roots movements demand democratization; a concept that means the countries become as free of Western imperialism as their power leverage permits. The only focus of the US is on Iran and Syria, two countries that the US and EU want to see regime changes so that both come under pro-Western influence and become more closely integrated economically, militarily and politically with the West. One-time ally Turkey would love for the rebel movement in Syria to succeed, for it would make Ankara even stronger in the region to compete with Iran for regional hegemony.

Can we conclude that the US and EU are interested in ‘freedom and democracy’ in the Islamic countries, given what has taken place so far? Of course, there are those who argue that the real struggle is not between pro-democracy elements and authoritarian in the dress of the military in Egypt, but between the military and Islamists, a term that in the West is not equated with democracy because it is not secular and pro-West.

Maybe the EU countries and US are indeed interested in democratizing the Islamic countries for no other reason than to see democracy thrive. Does Libya now have a democracy, or is it about to be reduced into a much more dependent Western satellite than it has ever been since independence? If only the Libyan rebels fighting in the streets knew that their country’s future rests as a Western semi-colony, with lower living standards and lack of sovereignty? Maybe there has been no covert operational activity involving CIA and other intelligence agencies, no political, military or economic agenda, no geopolitics or balance of power issues at all on the part of the US and its EU partners. (see my posting entitled: CIA and the Arab Revolts – February 2011).

Maybe governments in the West just love to spread freedom and democracy around the world, just as they did during the Cold War. Thus far, all evidence shows that the West has its own agenda that includes plans of how to exert political, military and economic hegemony in the Middle East. This is exactly what the West has been doing for the last 100 years, from WWI when the Allies promised Arabs freedom if they fought against the Ottoman Empire and its German allies, to the formation of the Mandate system, to the creation of the state of Israel at the expense of Palestinians, and to the numerous wars in the post-WWII era where the West ardently defended Israel against the Arabs, to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recent NATO bombing of Libya. is there a single instance of evidence, just one piece of evidence that the West has ever acted to fulfill the pledge that it stated publicly, namely, to deliver freedom and democracy to the Islamic countries?

Freedom and Democracy are not cell phones or weapons that they can be handed over to a country. The people in the countries where revolts have taken place and are currently unfolding have a very different sense of what they want for themselves and what the US and EU want for their countries. Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” notwithstanding, in the history of Arab-Western relations dating back to the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji of 1774, is there even a single instance where any Western nation has acted in any manner other than self-interest to the detriment of the Islamic country that the Western nation claimed it wished to help democratize?

Do Islamic countries need Lawrence of Arabia-style PR, only to discover that in the end they must surrender sovereignty to the West? Why would there be a change in Western policies today when Western nations are on the economic warpath against their own citizens with detrimental fiscal and social policies? Should any rebel die or be injured in the Middle East and North Africa under the illusion that the new regime that will replace the existing authoritarian one will not be but a puppet of the West?

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

Makeshift tents are burning after the police on Sunday evacuated the protesters. (Photo EPA)

Fresh waves of protests started throughout Egypt after clashes between police and protesters refusing to leave Tahrir Square on Saturday left two dead and 676 injured as police violence escalated a few days before parliamentary elections. The police’s decision to evacuate Tahrir Square early Saturday morning backfired, as their heavy-handed tactics against the small overnight protesters enraged activists and prompted tens of thousands to flock to the epicentre of January’s revolution to insist on their right to protest. Waves of the notorious Central Security Forces (CSF) were being rushed to the scene in ever greater numbers in attempts to disperse demonstrators.

The clashes were the beginning of news protests and heavy fighting in Cairo and in other places in Egypt that according to firgures released by the Egyptian ministry of Health late Sunday evening left 10 people dead and more than 1700 wounded.

Following the clashes in Tahrir Square on Saturday, 18 political forces announced an open-ended sit-in early Sunday and have urged all national forces and movements to stage sit-ins across the country. In a statement, the forces said they have decided to stage the sit-in because they believe remnants of the old regime are still running the country, and given the lack of a clear timetable for a transition of power to an elected civilian government.

The forces said that the political movements and forces of the revolution are the only source of authority in the country and have decided to revive the January 25 Revolution. They added that they will continue their sit-in until Essam Sharaf’s government is immediately dissolved, a national salvation government, which will oversee the transitional period along with parliamentary and presidential elections, is formed, and the ruling military junta is stripped of its political cout.

The groups are also demanding that parliamentary elections are held on their scheduled date, that presidential elections are held on 1 April 2012, and that the Interior Ministry be reformed.

Among the 18 forces that released the statement are the Revolution Youth Coalition, the 6 April Movement (Democratic Front), the Revolution’s Protectors Council, the Revolution Youth Alliance, the Free Movement for Peaceful Change, and the Egyptian Current.

The security forces on Sunday afternoon again tried to evacuate the protesters from Tahrir. But the protesters came back in the early hours of the evening and succeeded to expell the military police and soldiers – dressed in riot gear and wielding bludgeons and electroshock weapons – who stood before rows of Central Security Forces (CSF) firing barrage after barrage of tear gas, runbber bullets and also birdshot The streets of downtown Cairo looked like battle zones, filled with toxic gas, fleeing protesters and fires burning. Heavy fighting continued in side streets off the central plaza, particularly around the area of the interior ministry where a large contingent of riot troops has been stationed to ward off protesters. Elswhere in Egypt, in Alexandria, Port Said, Tanta, Mansoura and Sohag also fights took place. In Suez, a large urban centre on the Suez canal, protesters clashed with armed police who fired teargas in an attempt to disperse crowds.

Presidential candidate Amr Moussa said in an tv-interview: “We are in a very dangerous situation. We have to end the use of force, which was not justified. We should engage in dialogue.” Moussa said that dealing with peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in such a violent way would only worsen the situation.”

Fellow presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei echoed Moussa’s sentiment, describing the excessive force used by the police as “barbaric.”“It’s yet another indication that Scaf and the current government are failing to govern and I fully sympathise with the increasing calls coming from different quarters, including Tahrir, for a new government of national salvation that represents all shades of Egyptian society, one with full power.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Hundreds of thousand of people all over Egypt have demonstrated on Friday, according to Al Ahram, against the way the military is handling the expected handover of the power to civilian institutions. The main ire of the protesters was directed towards a document about the make-up of a constituent assemble that has to be formed after the parliamentary elections of 28 November and that has the task of drawing up a new constitution. The disputed document, called the Selmy-document after deputy Prime Minisyter Ali al-Selmi who oversaw the process of drawing it up, gives the army an important say in the formation of this assemble and the process of writing the new constitution.

Of the participating Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), were the most visible, outnumbering their counterparts. The group has notably boycotted most of the million-man marches that took place following the popular 18-day uprising.

Apart from flags, shirts and green caps emblazoned with the groups logo, two criss-crossed swords, the Islamist group came readied with their banners bearing emblems of the FJP and the Brotherhood’s student groups. Several banners indicated the various members’ governorate of origin in a show of their mobilisation power.

Salafists were also heavily represented in Tahrir, particularly by Al-Nour (Light) and Al-Asala (Authenticity) parties, believed to be the two largest Salafist parties in Egypt.

Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya also participated in the demonstration, stating that the proposed principles “do not reflect the will of the people”. Al-Jamaa spokesperson Assem Abdel Maged said stressed that “the will of the people is the most important thing, and the ‘El-Selmi document’ goes against this will.”

The Selmy-document earlier raised objections from almost all political parties since it granted the Egyptian armed forces political powers far greater than those given parliament or the president. Among the communiqué’s most controversial points were Article 9, stipulating that the military budget remain confidential; Article 2 (second section), giving the military the right to “object” to certain articles of the new constitution; and Article 3, which notes that, in the event that the constituent assembly fails to draw up a new constitution within a six-month period, the SCAF – in its capacity as acting president – would have the authority to draw up a brand-new assembly.

Since then discussion have taken place between the government and the parties. Some points were dropped or amended in such a way that several parties dropped most of their objections. And the discussions still continue, writes Al-Ahram- However, a provison that the assemblee will be constituted from inside and outside the new parliament, and will be chosen from among a broad spectre of public figures, seems to be still standing. This is blocking the way for the islamists who are pretty sure of obtaining a strong position, if not a majority in the new parliament, and who therefore had counted on having also a majority in the new assemblee.

It is ironic that it is now the islamists that are on a confrontation course with the military, where it just some weeks ago still looked as if islamits and military were had in glove. However, the islamists are far from being the only ones with objections. The April 6 Youth movement already called for a new Demonstration, next Friday. After last Friday´s “Friday of One Demand” protest, they want to have a “Guarding Friday” to demand free parliamentary elections. The group also wants to demand the expulsion of candidates from the now-defunct National Democratic Party (NDP), who are seeking to get back into the parliament.

The Administrative Court of Dakahliya governorate returned a verdict that could prevent anyone from the former ruling NDP from running in elections. The ruling, nonetheless, was later reversed and now the remnants of the former regime seemed poised to be involved in the ballot.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

It is true, of course, that there is not a single country in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) that is not composed of (often) more than one different ethnic or religious groups of people. The factionalism of the populations could prove detrimental to the long-term success of any governance system that emerges in the various MENA nations. The right form of governance for the right society has never been easy to identify under the best of circumstances. Most of the current systems of governance around the MENA region were imposed to them by past colonial masters or short-sighted post-revolutionary uprisings. Therefore, the present revolutionary nations of the Arab Spring need to be very careful when it comes to choosing their new forms of governance.

Which system of governance is best suited to accommodate tribalism and factionalism in the emerging democracies of the Arab Spring? Is it possible for nations that are comprised of diverse ethnic/religious/linguistic/cultural groups to stay together and prosper? How can Libya, Yemen, Syria and Jordan, (but also Tunisia and Egypt) deal better with their internal tribal and factional divisions?

Diversity through Political Leadership

There are some recent examples worth considering. Nations such as Lebanon, Iraq, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, have to contend with similar internal divisions of ethnic or religious or linguistic or cultural nature. While Lebanon and Bosnia have only stayed together due to external intervention, Iraq is often on the verge of sectarian violence and separation. Therefore, in Iraq and Lebanon, balance among the factions is being maintained through the selective appointment of political leaders from the respective sides.

In Lebanon, the most recent statistics indicate that approximately 27% of the population is Sunni, 27% Shia, 21% Maronite, 8% Greek Orthodox, 5% Druze, 5% Greek Catholic, and 7% other Christian sects. Therefore, under constitutional mandate, the President has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shia Muslim, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Greek Orthodox.

In Iraq, according to some estimates, around 75%–80% of the population is Arab, 15%-20% Kurds, and other groups like Assyrians and Iraqi Turkmen could be up to 5%. On the other hand, although 95% of the population is Muslim, they are split among Shia (60% to 65%) and Sunni (30% to 35%). Therefore, the convention that has emerged in the post-Sadam Iraq has been to elect a President that represents the Kurdish people, while the Prime Minister has to come from the Shia community, and the Speaker of the Council of Representatives (parliament) from the Sunni community.

On the other hand, in Bosnia & Herzegovina, they tried a more ‘equitable system’ where every level of the executive and legislative branches has been proportionally divided among the three ‘constituent peoples’ in proportion to their population (1/3 for each group: Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats). The result (if you can keep track of the many institutions) is a three-member presidency (with one president from each constituent group), a bicameral legislature (where each group is represented equally in each chamber), and a sub-national structure of cantons for each of the three groups (a Bosniak-Croat federation, and a Serb republic).

The Great Compromise – Bicameral Legislature

Tribes and factions can be vital to the political and economic transition of the Arab Spring nations. They can fill the gap at the local level, since often in Arab countries with large tribal populations (like Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, and the Gulf oil monarchies) the state’s local administrative boundaries are drawn mainly on the basis of tribal lines, and local tribal sheiks are the local administrative officials.

For the MENA nations in transition, the impulse to follow the example of Iraq and Lebanon will be great. For a populous that has always been ruled by strongman (of either royal or military background), it’s only natural to gravitate towards ‘a few good man’ as leaders. However, the best way forward might be through the constitutional and institutional formalization of the various tribes and ethnic/religious factions, rather than rely on charismatic leaders to represent their respective tribes and factions. A governance structure which legitimizes the role and place of tribes/factions in every society, in proportion to and in accordance with conditions on the ground, will be more equitable then relying on just a handful of individuals at the executive level for representation of these ethnic/religious factions and tribes.

The key to such institutionalization could be the utilization of bicameral legislatures. In the U.S., just like the UK, bicameral legislatures were adopted as ‘the great compromise’ between the people and colonies/states (or between the people and nobility in the UK). In both countries it was recognized that all political power must arise from the legislative branch, and by adopting two legislative chambers of equal powers but divergent jurisdiction they were guaranteeing the fair representation of all parties involved and they were guarding against any overreach of power.

Similarly, the legislative process in the Arab world should be vested in a bicameral legislature, where one chamber represents the people while the other represents tribes or ethnic/religious sub-group of each national. Furthermore, both chambers should be equal in power in the legislative process, but with divergent responsibilities. For example, the people’s chamber might be responsible for selecting or consenting on a prime minister and a cabinet, but the tribal/factional chamber could be responsible for the appointment of judges, ambassadors and military generals. Competition among the two legislative chambers will help to strengthen the overall legislative process and provide a platform on which tribal/factional issues can be addressed (instead of resorting to ‘street justice’).

Economic Benefits of Decentralization and Devolution

On the other hand, during the early stages of the ‘democratic’ transition, when the national government and political institutions are busy debating and type and form of the new governance system, administration of the local economy is paramount. It is important to recognize the valuable role that sub-national administrative units (most naturally drawn on tribal/factional lines) can play in both administering and leading the local economy.

Existing tribal and factional institutions, which already have some degree of socio-political power over local people could better manage and administer the affairs of their communities. Formalizing administrative decentralization through the transfer of management, planning and administration to lower levels of government could relieve inefficiencies generally endemic in central government bureaucracies – especially in countries going through a political/constitutional transition. After all, although certain governing functions are best handled by the central government, others should be managed by lower levels of government.

In order to jump-start local markets and promote economic activity at the lowest lever, the central government will have to transfer the administration and regulation of local markets to local authorities. This will allow for the more efficient operation of these local markets, and free the central government to tackle bigger issues. Therefore, the collection of taxes and promulgation of licenses and local regulations will have to be performed at the local level, with respect to these local markets and small/medium size companies. Tribal and factional groups could fill that role much better at the local level, especially if they are also represented directly at the national legislature.

Such a decentralization, will allow the central government to concentrate its efforts in providing the necessary infrastructure (roads and transportation systems, power grids, telephone, internet), and venues/methods for adjudication and dispute resolution (courts and other legal services) – all very necessary for the proper functioning of a local economy.

The Need for Consensus Governance

Libya’s Transitional Council has been criticized as being week, indecisive, and at times disorganized, but it’s advancing a great cause for the region: leadership by committee. The people on the street think that what Arab countries need is strong leadership – but strong leadership is what turns into ‘authoritarian leadership’, and we have seen what that has done for the region.

Tribes and factions throughout the MENA region have often been skeptical of central governments because they have been abused and mistreated many times. Tribes and factions will always try to assert their influence over each-other and the central government because they don’t trust anyone.
A strong bicameral legislature, devolution of power to the local level, and meaningful representation for all societal factions – that is how you incorporate tribes and factions into the governing process. This is how you preserve the Arab Spring through this tumultuous transition process!

Some Sources:

• Tribes and Tribalism in the Arab Spring, by Khaled Fattah.
• Arab Spring: Does Tribalism Affect Democracy in the Middle East? by Jen L. Jones.

AUTHOR: Nasos Mihalakas
URL: http://mihalakas.wordpress.com and http://chinatrade.foreignpolicyblogs.com/
E-MAIL: nasos.mihalakas [at] gmail.com

Essam Atta was sentenced to two years in jail by military court on 25 February for a common crime. He was awaiting a revision of his verdict. According to his cellmates, prison officials attempted to punish him for apparently smuggling a mobile SIM card into the ward. Prison officers reportedly pushed hoses into Ali’s mouth and anus, which led to bleeding. An officer from Torah prison dropped Ali yesterday in a critical condition at the hospital. Attending physicians immediately noticed liquid secretions emitted from Ali’s mouth and suspected foul play.

Activists and supporters of Ali’s family wasted no time and set a facebook page to demand justice for the 24 year old man they called Egypt’s latest martyr. “We are all Khaled Said”, one of Egypt’s most popular facebook pages, and one that played a key role in organising for the uprising against ousted president Mubarak, called on doctors at the hospital to come forward and tell the pblic what they saw as they examined Essam Ali Atta Ali. News of Ali’s death at the hands of the police comes only hours after judges in Alexandria sentenced two police sergeants to 7 years in prison for their role in the murder of 28 year old Khaled Said. Many in Egypt consider this too lenient a punishment.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl