Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Egypt's president calls early elections and the opposition responds with a boycott

Thursday, February 28, 2013 No comments

EGYPTIANS have reason to fear the domestic news these days. If it is not about events such as a freak ballooning accident that killed 18 tourists, or the death of nine villagers who fell, one after another, into an open manhole, or a plague of locusts sweeping in from the Red Sea, it will surely be about something at least as grim: Egyptian politics. Two years after an uprising toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak, the country’s public affairs remain as miserably unsettled and accident-prone as ever.

It might seem a good thing, for instance, that the president, Muhammad Morsi, should recently have set a date, April 22nd, for fresh parliamentary elections. Egypt has had no lower legislative house since June, when courts dissolved the last one after declaring the election rules which produced it to be unfair. The weak upper house, elected last year with a voter turnout of barely 10%, functions as a temporary lawmaking body. Its 85% dominance by Islamists, led by Mr Morsi’s own group, the Muslim Brotherhood, renders its deliberations suspect in the eyes of many.

The Taliban's New, More Terrifying Cousin

Thursday, February 28, 2013 No comments

Abdul Amir (as we'll call him), a chemistry teacher in Quetta, Pakistan, was taking an afternoon nap on Feb. 16 when his house began to shake and the earth let out an almighty roar. His mother and sisters started screaming and ran out of the house, but by the time they gathered in the street, the noise had already stopped. He climbed to the roof to get a better view of what happened and saw a thick cloud of bright white smoke, a mile south, suspended above the market place where his students would be buying snacks after their weekend English classes. He rushed back down to the ground, started his motorcycle and took off toward ground zero, knowing all the while that this was foolish - during a bombing five weeks before, the people who came to help were killed by a second explosion.

Still he raced through the streets, swerving around people running away from the bomb, finally arriving at a scene even worse even than he'd feared. The blast had been so powerful that the market hadn't been destroyed so much as it had been deleted, as had the people shopping there and those in buildings nearby. Everything within 100 meters was simply flattened, and all that remained were the metal skeletons of a few flaming vehicles and the chemical smell of synthetic materials burning. Abdul would find more than fifty of his students were injured. One of his favorite students would die from her wounds six days later.

In all, 17 students and two teachers in just one school would be killed, their bodies mostly unrecoverable. No secondary bomb went off that day, but it didn't need to, because the message to first responders had been heard: So few ambulances showed up that people were relegated to ferrying their dead and dismembered in their own cars.

For the Hazaras, a group of Shia Muslims from Afghanistan with a large population in Pakistan, leaving the house has become a fraught enterprise. Schools have emptied, students stay home and parents try to explain to their children why people want them dead. They believe their government is at best uninterested in protecting them, and many are so traumatized they believe it's complicit. The Feb. 16 bombing killed 85 people, almost all of them Hazaras, and the number is still rising as people succumb to their wounds. About a month prior, another attack had killed 96 people who were also almost all Hazaras. The victims are not bystanders; they are a people who are being exterminated.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Saudis Step Up Help for Rebels in Syria With Croatian Arms

Tuesday, February 26, 2013 No comments

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

Saudi Arabia has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to antigovernment fighters in Syria in a drive to break the bloody stalemate that has allowed President Bashar al-Assad to cling to power, according to American and Western officials familiar with the purchases.

The weapons began reaching rebels in December via shipments shuttled through Jordan, officials said, and have been a factor in the rebels’ small tactical gains this winter against the army and militias loyal to Mr. Assad.

The arms transfers appeared to signal a shift among several governments to a more activist approach to assisting Syria’s armed opposition, in part as an effort to counter shipments of weapons from Iran to Mr. Assad’s forces. The weapons’ distribution has been principally to armed groups viewed as nationalist and secular, and appears to have been intended to bypass the jihadist groups whose roles in the war have alarmed Western and regional powers.

For months regional and Western capitals have held back on arming the rebels, in part out of fear that the weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists. But officials said the decision to send in more weapons is aimed at another fear in the West about the role of jihadist groups in the opposition. Such groups have been seen as better equipped than many nationalist fighters and potentially more influential.

The action also signals the recognition among the rebels’ Arab and Western backers that the opposition’s success in pushing Mr. Assad’s military from much of Syria’s northern countryside by the middle of last year gave way to a slow, grinding campaign in which the opposition remains outgunned and the human costs continue to climb.

Washington’s role in the shipments, if any, is not clear. Officials in Europe and the United States, including those at the Central Intelligence Agency, cited the sensitivity of the shipments and declined to comment publicly.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

'Unprecedented' Conversation Yields Proposals for US-Iran Negotiations

Saturday, February 23, 2013 No comments

With the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 world powers group just days away, Asia Society brought together Iran's highest-ranking official in the United States, Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee, and former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering to discuss breaking the nuclear impasse and the future of U.S.-Iran relations.

The result was an unprecedented public conversation between knowledgeable and influential individuals from Iran and the U.S., speaking in their official and personal capacities respectively, focused on arguably the most intractable foreign policy challenge today. Award-winning journalist and author David Ignatius moderated the discussion, which took place Wednesday night before a full auditorium at Asia Society in New York.

On the upcoming talks to be held on February 26 in Kazakhstan, Khazaee stated that Iran "does not oppose negotiation in any way," but cautioned that the U.S. approach to the process is undermining the chance for success. "As long as pressure is on Iran, as long as there is a sword on our neck to come to negotiations, this is not negotiations, therefore Iranians cannot accept that," he said.

While welcoming the suggestion put forward by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden for direct bilateral talks, Khazaee also expressed doubt over the seriousness of the offer as the United States continues to impose "new and harsher sanctions" against Iran.

Khazaee suggested a series of "ingredients" for successful negotiations, including "mutual respect, respect for Iran's national sovereignty, non-intervention in Iran's domestic affairs, and discarding the two-track policy of pressure and engagement."

Watch the video

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Who are the Kurdish people?

Tuesday, February 19, 2013 No comments

Kurdish mountain guerrilla fighter

About 25 to 30 million live in the Middle East. Throughout history, the majority inhabited the mountains and plateau regions where Iran, Iraq and Turkey meet. About half the Kurds live in Turkey, accounting for an estimated 20 percent of the total population there. There are believed to be approximately 5.7 million Kurds in Iran and about 1.5 million in Syria. There also important communities of Kurds in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

America’s involvement with Iraq, where Kurds make up about 20 percent of the population, has led to the creation of a semi-autonomous region that is the closest thing to a Kurdish state since the end of World War I.

But while the Kurds of northern Iraq have prospered, the growth of their power there has been at the price of the dream of true independence. And while they have exploited their role as holding the balance of power in a country divided between a Shiite Muslim majority and a resentful Sunni minority, their position will remain vulnerable as long as Iraq lurches from political crisis to crisis.

On top of the tensions in Iraq and long-simmering Kurdish autonomy movements in Iran and Turkey, the civil war in Syria is presenting the Kurds with a new set of hopes and dangers.

The Kurdish militias in northern Syria had hoped to stay out of the fighting there. They were focused on preparing to secure an autonomous enclave for themselves within Syria should the rebels succeed in toppling the government. But slowly, inexorably, they have been dragged into the fighting and now have one goal in mind, their autonomy, which also means the balkanization of the state.

Analysts fear this combustible environment could presage a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict that will resonate far beyond Syria’s borders. There is concern that Iraq’s Kurds, who are already training Syrian Kurds to fight, may jump into the Syria fight to protect their ethnic brethren. That could also pull in Turkey, which fears that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would become a haven for Kurdish militants to carry out cross-border attacks in the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.

Visiting Libyan doctor reports harsh treatment by FBI

Tuesday, February 19, 2013 No comments

By Alexa Vaughn

Three Libyan doctors, visiting Boston and Seattle to begin a health-care partnership with U.S. physicians, say they were detained and interrogated as soon as they arrived in the U.S.

When Dr. Laila Taher Bugaighis landed in the United States with two other Libyan physicians Sunday, all she was expecting was the beginning of an exciting partnership with hospitals in Seattle and Boston — one that would help elevate sorely lacking health care in her own country.

The partnership was the kind of outreach former U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens had been trying to create when he was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. His sister, Seattle Children’s Dr. Anne Stevens, has since collaborated with Dr. Thomas Burke of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital to make that dream happen.

So it shocked everyone when, as soon as they landed in Boston, Bugaighis and the other physicians were immediately detained by people she believed to be Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and then interrogated for hours, she said.

Bugaighis, deputy director general of Benghazi Medical Center, hadn’t been to the United States since before Stevens’ death. So when their passports were taken and their baggage searched, Bugaighis said, she thought the security measures might be routine, considering the current uneasy relations between Libya and United States. The trip, after all, had been cleared through her government and the U.S. State Department.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Extra-Juridical Killing Is the Opposite Of Justice In A Free Society

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

Last week, Senators threatened to put a “hold” on the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director over his refusal to answer questions about the use of drones to kill Americans on US soil. That the president’s nominee to head the agency that has used drones to kill perhaps thousands overseas could not deny their possible use at home should be shocking. How did we get to this point?

The Obama administration has rapidly expanded the use of drones overseas, as they appear a way to expand US military action without the political risk of American boots on the ground. In fact they are one of the main reasons a recent Gallup survey of Pakistan, where most US drone strikes take place, found that 92% disapprove of U.S. leadership. This is the lowest approval rate Pakistan citizens have ever given to the United States. And it is directly related to US drone strikes. The risk of blowback increases all the time. However the false propaganda about the success of our drone program overseas leads officials to believe that drones should also be used over US soil as well.

Islamic extremists are an increasingly multilingual bunch, especially online

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

ARABIC was for long the unchallenged language of Islamic extremism. Its speakers far outnumber any other linguistic group. Arab lands are the most fruitful recruiting grounds. Without Arabic, tyros may struggle at training camps and on the battlefield. And fluency implies piety: the language of the Koran also connotes learning and wisdom.

But the once monoglot world of jihad is increasingly multilingual. Al-Qaeda has long advocated the creation of self-starting, independent terrorist cells. Materials are being produced in the language of any part of the world that has a Muslim minority and thus potential sympathisers, says Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on violent extremism. Translations are appearing in the languages of countries where jihadist leaders want to see further activity.

Counting the Dead in Syria

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

The U.N. is using a number that suppresses the true extent of the number of people killed in Syria. Do they have an better alternatives -- and would it even matter if they did?

The death count in Syria's ongoing civil war was revised upwards on Tuesday. Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, now says that the toll is "probably now approaching 70,000," an increase of 10,000 from the end of November, when a U.N.-commissioned report found 60,000 individual instances in which a name, date and location of death could be determined. The data set from that report suggested that the true number of dead in the Syria conflict was even higher than that, and one of the report's authors told The Atlantic that the figure was "a very conservative under-count." Pillay's 70,000 number has some relationship to two unknown figures: the number of deaths that can be estimated given currently available information, and the actual number of deaths in the conflict, a total which might not be known for several years (if it is ever conclusively known at all). Both of these numbers are higher than 70,000. Perhaps they're even much higher.

Whether intended or not, Pillay's claim masks the actual gravity of the Syria conflict. The widely-cited 60,000 and 70,000 numbers bear some kind of statistical relationship to the true death count; though at present, we have no idea what that relationship is. The numbers are a reflection of what is currently known about the conflict -- and not, in fact, a reflection of the realities of the conflict. Official and popular adherence to such an obviously deflated figure is troubling, given the enormity of the Syria conflict and the still-unfolding debate over how and whether the United States and the international community should intervene there. A misleading number is now woven into a debate of global importance: because Pillay and the news media are using the 60 or 70,000 figure without any meaningful qualification, the conflict's true humanitarian scope is being unintentionally yet insidiously distorted.

United Arab Emirates helps Joplin ‘think big’ in rebuilding tornado-scarred schools

Monday, February 18, 2013 No comments

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

JOPLIN, Mo. — Two weeks after a mile-wide tornado tore through this city, killing 161 people and rendering a landscape of apocalyptic devastation, the public school system here received a telephone call from a man working for the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington.

“Tell me what you need,” the embassy staffer said.

Six schools, including the city’s sole high school, were destroyed in the May 2011 disaster. Insurance would cover the construction of new buildings, but administrators were scrambling to replace all of the books that had blown away.

Instead of focusing on books, the staffer wanted “to think big.” So the school system’s development director pitched the most ambitious plan that came to mind, a proposal to obviate the need for high school textbooks that had been shelved two years earlier because nobody — not the cash-strapped school system, not the state of Missouri, not even local charities — had the money for it: Give every student a computer.

Today, the nearly 2,200 high school students in Joplin each have their own UAE-funded MacBook laptop, which they use to absorb lessons, perform homework and take tests. Across the city, the UAE is spending $5 million to build a neonatal intensive-care unit at Mercy Hospital, which also was ripped apart by the tornado.

The gifts are part of an ambitious campaign by the UAE government to assist needy communities in the United States. Motivated by the same principal reasons that the U.S. government distributes foreign assistance — to help those less fortunate and to influence perceptions among the recipients — the handouts mark a small but remarkable shift in global economic power.