Yemeni Opposition Says GCC-Backed Political Plan Is ‘Dead’

Bloomberg
By Mohammed Hatem
May 15, 2011

May 15 (Bloomberg) — Yemen’s Joint Meetings Party, a coalition of six opposition groups, says a plan to end the country’s political crisis is dead following a visit by the chief envoy of Arab Gulf states seeking to broker a deal.

While the coalition is willing to meet Abdel Latif al- Zayyani, the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, again to explore new options, the current proposal was considered “dead,” Mohammed Qahtan, spokesman for the opposition, said in a telephone interview today.

Thousands of protesters returned to the streets in Sana’a, the capital, today calling for an end to the 32-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Several people marched through the streets carrying a makeshift coffin with the words “GCC Initiative” written on the side.

Protests have persisted since the government and the Joint Meetings Parties failed to sign a GCC-brokered plan last month. Under the terms of the plan, Saleh would have ceded power within a month of signing the deal and would be granted immunity from prosecution. Al-Zayyani visited Sana’a yesterday to revive the group’s stalled peace initiative, the official Saba news service said. Continue reading “Yemeni Opposition Says GCC-Backed Political Plan Is ‘Dead’”

Tahrir Square fills again as Egypt holds Mubarak’s wife for crimes against state

Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk
13 May 2011

Largest rally in recent weeks comes on day ousted president’s wife detained on suspicion of illegally acquiring wealth

Tens of thousands of Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday in a show of national unity against sectarian tension, and to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The largest rally to be held in the Egyptian capital in recent weeks took place as Suzanne Mubarak, wife of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was detained by investigators for 15 days on suspicion of illegally acquiring wealth.

Cheers erupted in the square as news broke of Mrs Mubarak’s incarceration. The 70-year-old former first lady now joins her husband, two sons and more than 20 other ministers and business figures from the Mubarak regime on the list of those being investigated for crimes against the state.

Last week former interior minister Habib Al-Adly was sentenced to 12 years in prison for financial fraud. He also stands accused of having ordered the killing of peaceful protesters, a charge that can carry the death penalty.

In a sign of how vibrant and fragmented Egypt’s political landscape has become since the toppling of Mubarak in February, protesters came together on Friday to support a multitude of causes from local anti-corruption campaigns to unity with Arab uprisings elsewhere in the region.

Following a week of sectarian violence in Cairo in which at least 15 people were killed in clashes at a church in the poor neighbourhood of Imbaba, many demonstrators held aloft placards depicting the Christian cross and Muslim crescent, and chanted: “We are all Egyptians.” Continue reading “Tahrir Square fills again as Egypt holds Mubarak’s wife for crimes against state”

Thousands rally for Syrian dead

Al Jazeera
14 May 2011

More than 8,000 people attend funeral of protester who was killed by security forces in restive city of Homs.

More than 8,000 people are attending the funeral in Homs of one of three protesters killed by Syrian security forces in the restive city, an eyewitness told Al Jazeera.

Mourners for Fouad al-Rajoub, who was killed on Friday, gathered near Bab al-Dreib and began making their way through the city chanting for an end to the siege on Homs, Baniyas and Deraa, the major flashpoints in the uprising.

The eyewitness said that due to the size of the procession the military had removed and relocated some of the checkpoints it had established throughout the city since mass anti-regime protests erupted there last month.

“Everything is peaceful now but we will be passing government buildings and I fear the snipers will open fire on us,” he said. Continue reading “Thousands rally for Syrian dead”

High turnout in Egyptian constitutional poll

Voters to decide on a package of constitutional reforms in the first election since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow.

Aljazeera
19 Mar 2011

Millions of Egyptians have turned out for today’s constitutional referendum, the first vote following the overthrow last month of Hosni Mubarak, the country’s long-serving president.

Voters are deciding on a package of nine amendments, about half of which deal with the conduct of elections. One would make it easier for independent candidates to run for president; another would re-establish judicial oversight of elections.

The amendments were drafted by an eight-man constitutional committee, which was appointed by the ruling military junta. They must be approved or rejected as a bloc.

There were early reports of high turnout, with voters in some districts predicting an hours-long wait before they would be able to cast their ballots.

“This is an historic day for Egypt,” said Yahya al-Gamal, the country’s prime minister, after casting his vote in Cairo. “I have never seen such large numbers of voters in Egypt. Finally, the people of Egypt have come to realise that their vote counts.” Continue reading “High turnout in Egyptian constitutional poll”

Yes, It Could Happen Here – Why Saudi Arabia is ripe for revolution

BY MADAWI AL-RASHEED | FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Foreign Policy.com

In the age of Arab revolutions, will Saudis dare to honor Facebook calls for anti-government demonstrations on March 11? Will they protest at one of Jeddah’s main roundabouts? Or will they start in Qatif, the eastern region where a substantial Shiite majority has had more experience in real protest? Will Riyadh remain cocooned in its cloak of pomp and power, hidden from public gaze in its mighty sand castles?

Saudi Arabia is ripe for change. Despite its image as a fabulously wealthy realm with a quiescent, apolitical population, it has similar economic, demographic, social, and political conditions as those prevailing in its neighboring Arab countries. There is no reason to believe Saudis are immune to the protest fever sweeping the region.

Saudi Arabia is indeed wealthy, but most of its young population cannot find jobs in either the public or private sector. The expansion of its $430 billion economy has benefited a substantial section of the entrepreneurial elite — particularly those well connected with the ruling family — but has failed to produce jobs for thousands of college graduates every year. This same elite has resisted employing expensive Saudis and contributed to the rise in local unemployment by hiring foreign labor. Rising oil prices since 2003 and the expansion of state investment in education, infrastructure, and welfare, meanwhile, have produced an explosive economy of desires. Continue reading “Yes, It Could Happen Here – Why Saudi Arabia is ripe for revolution”

History’s shifting sands

The revolutions sweeping the Arab world indicate a tectonic shift in the global balance of people power

by Mark LeVine
Aljazeera
26 Feb 2011

For decades, even centuries, the peoples of the Arab world have been told by Europeans and, later, Americans that their societies were stagnant and backward. According to Lord Cromer, author of the 1908 pseudo-history Modern Egypt, their progress was “arrested” by the very fact of their being Muslim, by virtue of which their minds were as “strange” to that of a modern Western man “as would be the mind of an inhabitant of Saturn”.

The only hope of reshaping their minds towards a more earthly disposition was to accept Western tutelage, supervision, and even rule “until such time as they [we]re able to stand alone,” in the words of the League of Nations’ Mandate. Whether it was Napoleon claiming fraternité with Egyptians in fin-de-18e-siècle Cairo or George W. Bush claiming similar amity with Iraqis two centuries later, the message, and the means of delivering it, have been consistent.

Ever since Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, the great Egyptian chronicler of the French invasion of Egypt, brilliantly dissected Napoleon’s epistle to Egyptians, the peoples of the Middle East have seen through the Western protestations of benevolence and altruism to the naked self-interest that has always laid at the heart of great power politics. But the hypocrisy behind Western policies never stopped millions of people across the region from admiring and fighting for the ideals of freedom, progress and democracy they promised.

Even with the rise of a swaggeringly belligerent American foreign policy after September 11 on the one hand, and of China as a viable economic alternative to US global dominance on the other, the US’ melting pot democracy and seemingly endless potential for renewal and growth offered a model for the future. Continue reading “History’s shifting sands”

U.N. votes to impose sanction on Gaddafi

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 27, 2011

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday night to impose military and financial sanctions against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and his inner circle and to refer his regime’s crackdown on protesters to a war crimes tribunal for an investigation of possible crimes against humanity.

The move came as President Obama for the first time called on Gaddafi to step down, deepening the Libyan leader’s international isolation as he struggles to contain a revolt that threatens his 41-year rule. It also marked the first U.S. vote in support of a Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court, which the United States has not joined.

Speaking by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said that “when a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,” according to a White House account of the conversation. The statement brings U.S. policy in line with the position that European leaders adopted several days ago.

Obama had taken a more cautious approach, in part because he feared that hundreds of Americans in Tripoli could be in danger if he called for regime change. Those diplomats and other citizens have now been evacuated.

In a statement Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. would work with others to provide humanitarian assistance to Libyans in need. “We will continue to look at the full range of options to hold the Libyan government accountable and support the Libyan people,” she said. “Moammar Gaddafi has lost the confidence of his people and he should go without further bloodshed and violence.” Continue reading “U.N. votes to impose sanction on Gaddafi”

The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil

by Robert Fisk
Independent.co.uk
Saturday, 26 February 2011

The Middle East earthquake of the past five weeks has been the most tumultuous, shattering, mind-numbing experience in the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman empire. For once, “shock and awe” was the right description.

The docile, supine, unregenerative, cringing Arabs of Orientalism have transformed themselves into fighters for the freedom, liberty and dignity which we Westerners have always assumed it was our unique role to play in the world. One after another, our satraps are falling, and the people we paid them to control are making their own history – our right to meddle in their affairs (which we will, of course, continue to exercise) has been diminished for ever.

The tectonic plates continue to shift, with tragic, brave – even blackly humorous – results. Countless are the Arab potentates who always claimed they wanted democracy in the Middle East. King Bashar of Syria is to improve public servants’ pay. King Bouteflika of Algeria has suddenly abandoned the country’s state of emergency. King Hamad of Bahrain has opened the doors of his prisons. King Bashir of Sudan will not stand for president again. King Abdullah of Jordan is studying the idea of a constitutional monarchy. And al-Qa’ida are, well, rather silent. Continue reading “The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil”

Libya: Past and future?

After alienating powerful tribes, Qaddafi’s regime seems to be falling, but it is unclear who could fill vacuum.

George Joffe
24 Feb 2011
Aljazeera

Many believed that Colonel Qaddafi’s regime in Libya would withstand the gale of change sweeping the Arab world because of its reputation for brutality which had fragmented the six million-strong population over the past forty-two years.

Its likely disappearance now, after a few days of protest by unarmed demonstrators is all-the-more surprising because it has systematically destroyed even the slightest pretence of dissidence and has atomised Libyan society to ensure that no organisation – formal or spontaneous – could ever consolidate sufficiently to oppose it.

Political Islam, whether radical or moderate, has been the principle victim, especially after an Islamist rebellion in Cyrenaica, the country’s eastern region, in the latter 1990s. Other political currents have been exiled since 1973, when “direct popular democracy” was declared and the jamahiriyah, the “state of the masses”, came into existence.

Even the Libyan army was treated with suspicion, with its officer corps controlled and monitored for potential disloyalty. No wonder that major units now seems to have broken away from the regime and made the liberation of Eastern Libya possible. Continue reading “Libya: Past and future?”

Libya’s falling tyrant

Gaddafi reaps what he has sown during his four-decade rule: terror, nepotism, tribal politics and abuse of power.

by Larbi Sadiki: 21 Feb 2011
Al Jazeera

Libya cannot escape the infection of democratic revolutionary wind blowing through the Middle East and North Africa. If longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi falls, it will be a sweet victory for the heirs of Omar al-Mokhtar, the legendary anti-fascist and anti-colonial hero. But a lot of blood will spill before the Libyan colonel abandons ship.

After Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Gaddafi is the worst of the Arabs’ surviving illegitimate rulers. He is now reaping what he has sown: terror, nepotism, tribal politics, and abuse of power.

In Gaddafi’s Libya, the so-called People’s Congress, universities and other regime-affiliated organisations have had to toe the official line: worship of the “brother leader”, read his Green Book, and the brand of Pan-Africanism that no Libyan except Gaddafi and his henchmen believed in.

While visiting the country with a group of students from Exeter University, the hollow slogans of Gaddafi’s “Great Revolution” covered all public space. “Partners not salaried” one says. Another declares “People’s rule” (sultat al-sha’ab). Nothing could be further from the truth.

Gaddafi has ruled the country with the delusion of grandeur of a man who rose to power in a 1969 coup with fairly acceptable political ideals that got corrupted and abandoned. Gaddafi’s much vaunted socialism turned into distribution in favour of the Colonel’s clansmen. Continue reading “Libya’s falling tyrant”

Dilemmas of a young Malaysian abroad

by Alea Nasihin (loyarburok.com)
The Malaysian Insider
February 24, 2011

FEB 24 — When I first stepped off the plane in Heathrow Airport three years ago, I was your average idealistic 19-year-old who thought she knew everything, and who thought she had it all planned out.

I was going to come to the UK, finish up my law degree and go home to Malaysia and single-handedly change the system. Everyone else who had trodden this path before me and failed just hadn’t tried hard enough. Everyone who went abroad and never came back were cowards who didn’t love their country.

Now, three years on, as I face my imminent graduation and the prospects of returning home for good, I find myself questioning the very beliefs I once held so dear.

It’s hard to leave the fact that I can walk a mile to class everyday and not fear for the safety of my handbag (or my lungs). It’s hard to leave the fact that I can discuss religion and race openly without getting accused of being an “infidel” or “ungrateful.”

It’s hard to leave the way I am allowed to think and question and express and explore for myself, and where my views are respected. It’s hard to leave when, here, youths are given a voice and never patronised, and nobody says “because I said so.”

It’s hard to leave the fact that I can walk down the street wearing anything I want and nobody will give me odd looks or whisper behind my back, or even force me to “cover up.” Continue reading “Dilemmas of a young Malaysian abroad”

One Libyan Battle Is Fought in Social and News Media

Middle East
By EMAD MEKAY
The New York Times
February 23, 2011

CAIRO — While Al-Jamahiriya, the Libyan state-owned television channel, was broadcasting nonstop patriotic songs, poetry recitations and rowdy rallies supporting the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, on Tuesday, Al Jazeera, the Arabic satellite channel based in Doha, was showing images of angry Libyan demonstrators throwing shoes at a giant street screen carrying live pictures of Colonel Qaddafi’s speech.

The contrast highlighted a fierce battle between Colonel Qaddafi’s supporters, who were using the state-run news media, and Libyan protesters, who were turning to social media and the foreign news media, to win over hearts and minds, inside and outside Libya.

This tug-of-war has been going on since a public uprising started on Feb. 17 calling for Colonel Qaddafi’s ouster. His rivals have clearly made a global impression through multiple amateur video Web posts, visceral pictures, twitter posts and dozens of heartfelt interviews on Arab television stations telling stories of a ruthless repression unleashed by troops loyal to Colonel Qaddafi.

But the Libyan leader, who has ruled this tribal society unopposed since 1969, has demonstrated that he will not easily be outmaneuvered. His television channels appealed on Tuesday for amateur images showing support from his base and beseeched viewers to place them online, too.

Government channels have run a written appeal: “For the dear brothers whose hobby is photography and video taping, please put up videos online that show the massive support for our beloved leader.”

In Colonel Qaddafi’s all-out media counteroffensive, a sports channel and a music channel that are popular among the young have instead been showing 24-hour programs of poetry reciters eulogizing his achievements and films of pro-government rallies waving his pictures. Continue reading “One Libyan Battle Is Fought in Social and News Media”

Unrest in the Middle East and Africa — country by country

By the CNN Wire Staff

(CNN) — Demonstrations have spread across a swath of the Middle East and Africa. Here are the latest developments, including the roots of the unrest:

Wednesday’s developments:

LIBYA

An opposition figure told CNN that a pilot who had been ordered to bomb oil fields southwest of Benghazi refused to do so and instead ejected from the plane. Citing military sources, the Libyan newspaper Quryna reported that the two people aboard — the pilot and co-pilot — parachuted out and that the plane then crashed into an uninhabited area west of Ajdabiya, 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Benghazi.

The Swedish tabloid Expressen reported that Libya’s former justice minister has accused Moammar Gadhafi of ordering the 1988 bombing of a jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

Various nations worked to evacuate their citizens for Libya.

Roots of unrest:

Protests in Libya began in January when demonstrators, fed up with delays, broke into a housing project the government was building and occupied it. Gadhafi’s government, which has ruled since a 1969 coup, responded with a $24 billion fund for housing and development. A month later, more demonstrations were sparked when police detained relatives of those killed in an alleged 1996 massacre at the Abu Salim prison, according to Human Rights Watch. High unemployment has also fueled the protests.

BAHRAIN

Bahrain has released about 25 high-profile political detainees, following an order by the king to free those he described as “prisoners of conscience” and halt proceedings against others, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said Wednesday.

Among those released were the prominent blogger and human rights activist Ali Abdulemam, who runs bahrainonline.org; Abdul-Ghani Khanjar, a member of Committee for the Victims of Torture; and Mohammed Saeed, who works with the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Roots of unrest:

Protesters initially took to the streets of Manama last week to demand reform and the introduction of a constitutional monarchy. But some are now calling for the removal of the royal family, which has led the Persian Gulf state since the 18th century. Young members of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority have staged protests in recent years to complain about discrimination, unemployment and corruption, issues they say the country’s Sunni rulers have done little to address. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights said authorities launched a clampdown on dissent in late 2010. It accused the government of torturing some human rights activists. Continue reading “Unrest in the Middle East and Africa — country by country”