Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Is Turkey Finally Ready to Make Peace with the Kurds?

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 No comments

Last week's massive funeral in Turkey of three Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) activists killed in Paris last week speaks volumes about the PKK's appeal among the Turkish Kurds in Turkey's southeast.

Turkey recently entered peace talks with the PKK, and if these talks succeed, they could bring an end to the bitterest aspects of the four-decade-old conflict between Ankara and the group. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to achieve a settlement with the PKK, if for no other reason than that brokering a peace deal will effectively eliminate the last hurdle to achieve his goal of getting elected as the country's next president in 2014.

Turkey has engaged in talks with the PKK before, but they were always in secret. This time, however, Erdogan is comfortable going public with the negotiations, suggesting that he is confident that the talks will succeed. This optimism most probably stems from the predicament of his counterpart, the PKK's jailed founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was caught by Turkish security forces, with U.S. assistance, in 1999, and sent to solitary confinement after standing trial. Ocalan, who has spent over a decade by himself on the Imrali island jail in the middle of the Marmara Sea, is aching to go free, and hence wants to strike a deal with Erdogan.

Such an agreement would involve a "ceasefire" between the Turkish government and the PKK, after which the PKK would pull its estimated 3,000 members out of Turkey. The PKK would then disarm. Next, Turkey would allow the PKK's top leadership to find a home in Europe while the group's rank and file would be allowed to return to Turkey and integrate into civilian life and politics.

In return, Ocalan would get his freedom, most likely entering house arrest. Even if Erdogan publically denies he will make this concession, the writing is on the wall.

For Erdogan to maximize his gains from the deal, the PKK needs not only to lay down its arms, but also to stay quiet. Fighting with the PKK has resulted in over 900 deaths since August 2011, according to a tally by the International Crisis Group, constituting the heaviest toll on Turkey in more than a decade.

The hawks’ wings are clipped

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 No comments

YAIR LAPID, a former television talk-show host whose secular, middle-of-the-road party soared into second place in Israel’s election on January 22nd, wrote a popular column for years in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, in which he would ask, “What is it to be Israeli?” What, in other words, does it take to feel you belong in the Jewish state? The question became his trademark. Now a large chunk of the electorate—a lot larger than the pollsters predicted—has given an answer that may reshape Israel’s future, not least by improving the chance of a durable peace with the Palestinians.

Mr Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid (There is a Future), running for the first time, got 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament, against 31 for Likud-Beitenu, led by the incumbent prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is still expected to retain his post. But he will find it much harder in the next month or so to rejig his ruling coalition. Hawkish and religious parties that have been generally loth to offer the sort of territorial and other compromises needed to revive the peace process got half the seats. But the election result shows that Israelis on the more malleable middle ground are still a force to be reckoned with. The post-election bargaining will be a lot trickier than Mr Netanyahu expected.

Two key consequences may ensue. One is that Naftali Bennett, the religious hawk who rejects the idea of Palestinian state altogether, may not have to be brought into a government. Pollsters had expected his new party to do so well that Mr Netanyahu would have had to give him a senior post.

The other is that it may prove impossible for Mr Netanyahu to include both Mr Lapid’s secular party and other religious parties in a ruling coalition.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

The Death of Fatah and the Future of Palestine

Saturday, January 19, 2013 No comments

RAMALLAH -- After nearly a half-century of existence, Fatah has left many loyalists and critics alike pondering its accomplishments. On New Year's Eve, the Palestinian political party -- which has led the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades and currently holds the presidency of the Palestianian Authority (PA) -- celebrated its 48th anniversary. In Ramallah, a few thousand mostly young men marched across the West Bank city to the Muqata', the headquarters of the PA president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. The streets were lined with the party's younger supporters, some elderly veterans clad in military fatigues and several high-ranking members of the group's leadership who are based in the West Bank.

As the marchers converged upon the headquarters -- once a ravaged icon of the second Intifada, today it stands a revamped modern military compound -- many started to trickle away. Addressing the enthusiastic group that remained, Abbas, looking every day of his 77 years, spoke of Palestinian leaders of years past. He started with Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian figure unrivaled in his persona, then moved on to Abu Jihad and Abu Eyad -- both icons of Palestinian resistance -- and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas's late spiritual leader, whose group Fatah has been at loggerheads with since it wrested control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Abbas recited the litany of names as if lamenting his party's failure to deliver a unifying leader since Arafat to guide Palestinians through exceptionally troubling times: a moribund peace process, dire economic circumstances brought about by dwindling international aid, mushrooming Israeli settlements, and a political and geographical rift with the Gaza Strip.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Al Jazeera: Must do better

Friday, January 18, 2013 No comments

AL JAZEERA, the Qatari satellite television network that revolutionised Arab news coverage a decade ago, has long defied its critics. No other network has seen its bureaus both bombed by the American air force and torched by Egyptian revolutionaries. None has been damned by so diverse a range of governments and politicians. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi blasted it for fomenting revolution. Syria’s embattled regime accused it of building Potemkin sets of Syrian cities to stage fake anti-government protests. And Al Jazeera was recently described on Fox, a rival American news network, as an “anti-American terror mouthpiece”.

Since launching a 24-hour Arabic satellite news channel in 1996, Al Jazeera has added others devoted to sports, documentaries, local news and children’s programmes, as well as a widely admired English-language current-events channel. Although Al Jazeera English is popular in the State Department cafeteria in Washington, the network’s unfair notoriety as a supposed promoter of jihadism has largely shut its channels out of the broader American market. But its recent purchase of Current TV, a cable network partly owned by Al Gore, a former vice-president, for a reported $500m may extend its footprint to 40m American households, paving the way to launch another dedicated local service, Al Jazeera America.

In militias we trust: Libya's conundrum

Friday, January 18, 2013 No comments

Libya

Uthman Mleghta, commander of the powerful al Qaaqa brigade from the Nafusa Mountains town of Zintan, rejects being described as a qatiba (militia). On a recent foreign NGO’s visit to his heavily guarded headquarters in Tripoli, Mleghta presented his “group’s” activities, including a newly launched print newspaper and an education programme for Libyan youth.

But his visitors were more interested in al Qaaqa’s security role. Al Qaaqa is responsible for, among others, controlling the border pass with Tunisia, guarding certain oil fields and the protection of some high profile Libyan politicians. When asked about al Qaaqa’s well-armed fighters, Mleghta matter-of-factly answered “we are the army”.

The rapid disintegration of Muammar al Gaddafi’s armed forces and police meant that the militias born out of the revolution were the only ones equipped to fill the security vacuum left behind. This scenario led to a number of the cities or towns seeing their militias play key roles in the revolution, gaining significant influence.

Zintan, the small town in the Nafusa mountains where al Qaaqa hails from and where Saif al Islam Gaddafi is being held, went from being politically insignificant to being awarded the Defence ministry portfolio of the last transitional government, assigned to Zintani commander Osama al-Juwali

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Syrian forces launch push on rebel-held Aleppo

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 No comments

Syrian forces mounted an offensive in central Aleppo on Wednesday, a day after two explosions at a university in the west of the city killed at least 87 students and wounded almost 200 others.

The military and opposition units have continued to blame each other for the attack, one of the deadliest single acts of violence in the Syrian civil war.

Aleppo university is in the north-west of the city, an area firmly controlled by regime forces and the loyalist militia known as the Shabiha. It has been a hotbed of activism throughout the 22 months since the uprising began, with numerous students abandoning their studies and joining the armed push to oust the regime of the president, Bashar al-Assad, which began in March 2011.

However, many more have remained and some were sitting exams on Monday at the time of the attack. What caused the blasts has yet to be determined, but suspicion is focusing on rocket fire from the western outskirts, an area mostly held by rebel groups, including the jihadist organisation Jabhat al-Nusra.

Obama wants Netanyahu to recognize that Israel’s settlement policies are foreclosing on the possibility of a two-state solution

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 No comments

Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

A large settlement in E-1, an empty zone between Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement city of Maaleh Adumim, would make the goal of politically moderate Palestinians -- the creation of a geographically contiguous state -- much harder to achieve.

The world reacted to the E-1 announcement in the usual manner: It condemned the plans as a provocation and an injustice. President Barack Obama’s administration, too, criticized it. “We believe these actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

‘Best Interests’

But what didn’t happen in the White House after the announcement is actually more interesting than what did.

When informed about the Israeli decision, Obama, who has a famously contentious relationship with the prime minister, didn’t even bother getting angry. He told several people that this sort of behavior on Netanyahu’s part is what he has come to expect, and he suggested that he has become inured to what he sees as self-defeating policies of his Israeli counterpart.

In the weeks after the UN vote, Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation.

And if Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah -- one that alienates even the affections of the U.S., its last steadfast friend -- it won’t survive. Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel’s survival; Israel’s own behavior poses a long-term one.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Ben Affleck was surprised by Best Director and Best Drama wins for 'Argo'

Monday, January 14, 2013 No comments

The Golden Globes left Hollywood muddled on Sunday with Iran hostage thriller “Argo” winning best drama and director for Ben Affleck (pictured) while presumed big-winner “Lincoln” by Steven Spielberg received only one prize.

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“Argo” won the top prize, best dramatic movie, and Ben Affleck was named best director for the film, three days after he failed to get an Oscar nomination in the same category.

Sour U.S.-Russia relations threaten Obama’s foreign policy agenda

Monday, January 14, 2013 No comments

By Anne Gearan

A poisonous unraveling of U.S. relations with Russia in recent months represents more than the failure of President Obama’s first-term attempt to “reset” badly frayed bilateral relations. It threatens pillars of Obama’s second-term foreign policy agenda as well.

From Syria and Iran to North Korea and Afghanistan, Russian President Vladimir Putin holds cards that he can use to help or hurt Obama administration objectives.

Obama badly needs Russian help to get U.S. troops and gear out of landlocked Afghanistan. He also wants Russian cooperation — or at least a quiet agreement not to interfere — on other international fronts.

Putin, however, appears to see little reason to help. Since his election last year to a third term as president, his political stock has risen among many Russians as he has confronted the West, and the United States in particular. The pro-democracy street demonstrations of a year ago have evaporated, leaving the former KGB officer in clear control.

In December, both countries passed punitive laws that capped a year of deteriorating relations. A U.S. law targeting Russia’s human rights record and a tit-for-tat law banning American adoption of Russian children reflected domestic politics and national chauvinism, and they reinforced many of the worst suspicions that each nation holds about the other.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Over 100 dead in French strikes and fighting in Mali

Saturday, January 12, 2013 No comments

More than 100 people including rebels and government soldiers were killed in Mali during French air strikes and fighting over the strategic town of Konna, Malian military sources and witnesses said on Saturday.

An army officer at the headquarters of Mali's former military junta in Bamako said nearly 30 vehicles carrying Islamist fighters had been bombed and "over 100" rebels had been killed in fighting.

"We have driven them out, we are effectively in Konna," Malian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Diaran Kone told Reuters. "We don't know if they have planted mines or other traps, so we are moving with caution. There were many deaths on both sides."

A shopkeeper in Konna said he had counted 148 bodies in four different locations in the town. Among the dead were several dozen uniformed government soldiers. Others wore traditional robes and turbans.

Fighters from the Islamist coalition that currently controls northern Mali do not wear military clothing.