The beginning of internal wars among Syrian rebels: When Islamists killed A Free Syrian Army leader

The beginning of internal wars among Syrian rebels: When Islamists killed A Free Syrian Army leader

    Friday, July 12, 2013   No comments

Syrian rebels said on Friday the assassination of one of their top commanders by al Qaeda-linked militants was tantamount to a declaration of war, opening a new front for the Western-backed fighters struggling against President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Rivalries have been growing between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Islamists, whose smaller but more effective forces control most of the rebel-held parts of northern Syria more than two years after pro-democracy protests became an uprising.

"We will not let them get away with it because they want to target us," a senior FSA commander said on condition of anonymity after members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant killed Kamal Hamami on Thursday.

"We are going to wipe the floor with them," he said.

Hamami, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Bassir al-Ladkani, is one of the top 30 figures on the FSA's Supreme Military Command.

His killing highlights how the West's vision of a future, democratic Syria is unraveling.

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Mubarak's Old Guard Allies with Salafists

Mubarak's Old Guard Allies with Salafists

    Friday, July 12, 2013   No comments

Egypt's transitional government is moving forward rapidly with its plans to restore stability and hold new elections. On Tuesday evening, Hazem el-Beblawi, a liberal economist and former finance minister, was named temporary prime minister, while Nobel laureate pro-democracy politician Mohamed ElBaradei was named vice president. The latter was nearly named prime minister just days ago, but that move was hastily blocked by an Islamist party.

The announcement came less than a full day after the government had announced far-reaching decisions as to how the country would proceed following last week's removal of Mohammed Morsi, its first democratically elected president. The rules of the transition were defined by constitutional decree, and for the first time, a timetable was laid out. The Al-Ahram newspaper has even published a scanned version on their website.
The transitional government plans to keep things moving at a rapid pace, probably to outpace critics and quickly set new precedents. Morsi was overthrown just over a week ago, and has since been detained at an undisclosed location without contact with the outside world. Meanwhile, his supporters continue to demand that he be returned to his post, and have planned their latest protest for Tuesday evening. Leading members of the now-weakened Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that backs Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party, have rejected the timetable, which would be used until new elections could be held.

The tight schedule is also meant to assuage concerns from abroad, where leaders are asking whether Egypt has strayed from its path toward democratization. The latest reaction from Washington was cautious -- the White House said it was taking time to review the situation.

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The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized as legal the ruling of a court in the Stavropol region that banned the wearing of headscarves in schools

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized as legal the ruling of a court in the Stavropol region that banned the wearing of headscarves in schools

    Friday, July 12, 2013   No comments

School is not a place for religion and religious attributes

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized as legal the ruling of a court in the Stavropol region that banned the wearing of headscarves in schools. Pravda.Ru asked Olga Timofeeva, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, to share her views about the problem.

"It's about time the Supreme Court should put an end to the controversial and scandalous process when we started using school and children for selfish gains of adults. Let's go back to what happened in a small village of the Stavropol region. The girls began to wear Muslim hijab scarves at school. Teachers said that it was not the way students should look. The next day, a lawsuit was filed to the regional court. Moreover, those people found an opportunity and money to resort to lawyer's assistance. Clearly, it was a provocation, in which children had been involved.

"My fundamental position as a deputy from the Stavropol region is as follows. One has to leave schools alone - this is not a place for religion, not a place for social stratification. Schools are for knowledge. Our children need to understand that there are educational institutions and there are other types of schools: evening and religious schools, where one can follow special dress code rules.

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Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE compete for influence in Egypt

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE compete for influence in Egypt

    Wednesday, July 10, 2013   No comments

 Two of the Persian Gulf’s richest monarchies pledged $8 billion in cash and loans to Egypt on Tuesday, a decision that was aimed not only at shoring up a shaky transitional government, but also at undermining their Islamist rivals and strengthening their allies across a newly turbulent Middle East.

...

Qatar, in alliance with Turkey, has given strong financial and diplomatic support to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also to other Islamists operating on the battlefields of Syria and, before that, Libya. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, by comparison, have sought to restore the old, authoritarian order, fearful that Islamist movements and calls for democracy would destabilize their own nations.

...
The Qataris suffered two other, lesser setbacks in recent days: on Monday, 22 journalists at Al Jazeera resigned en masse, citing what they said was the station’s biased coverage of the Brotherhood. Al Jazeera’s bias in favor of the Islamist group has often been cited as a grievance against Qatar’s rulers, who are accused of using the station as an arm of their activist foreign policy.

Also on Tuesday, Ghassan Hitto, the prime minister of the main Syrian exile opposition group — who was seen as favorable to Qatar — resigned. Although the reasons for his resignation were not clear, it was generally viewed as a concession to Saudi Arabia, which had signaled its discontent with him.

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Après l'Égypte, des appels à la "rébellion" lancés en Libye

Après l'Égypte, des appels à la "rébellion" lancés en Libye

    Monday, July 08, 2013   No comments

Des appels à la "rébellion" en Libye inspirés par le soulèvement en Égypte font craindre la contagion, poussant les deux partis rivaux dominant l'Assemblée nationale à reléguer au second plan leur rôle législatif pour ne pas être la cible des protestataires.

Plusieurs pages Facebook ont été créées, telles que "Mouvement refus" qui comptait dimanche plus de 9.000 membres, ou "Mouvement Tamarrod de la nouvelle Libye pour faire tomber les partis" (5.600 membres). Ces groupes réclament notamment la dissolution des partis et des milices armées.

Ils tentent d'imiter le mouvement Tamarrod (rébellion) en Egypte qui a abouti à la destitution du président islamiste Mohamed Morsi.

Les militants derrière ces groupes estiment que la lutte pour le pouvoir entre les deux partis rivaux, l'Alliance des forces nationales (AFN, libérale) et le Parti pour la Justice et la Construction (PJC), bras politique des Frères musulmans en Libye, paralyse les travaux de l'Assemblée nationale et retarde la rédaction d'une Constitution.

L'AFN et le PJC s'accusent mutuellement de s'appuyer sur des milices pour accaparer le pouvoir.

Le Congrès général national (CGN), la plus haute autorité du pays, issu des élections du 7 juillet 2012, a pour mission de conduire le pays, en 18 mois, à des élections générales après la rédaction d'une Constitution établissant la nature du régime politique.

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The final moments of Mohammed Morsi's one-year Presidency before he was ousted by his Egyptian military have been dramatically recounted by army, security and Muslim Brotherhood officials

The final moments of Mohammed Morsi's one-year Presidency before he was ousted by his Egyptian military have been dramatically recounted by army, security and Muslim Brotherhood officials

    Sunday, July 07, 2013   No comments

Speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, allies of the President said they had foreseen the end of Morsi's leadership up to a week before the opposition planned its first major protests and painted a bleak picture of the Brotherhoods decline.

In recent months, the former President had reportedly been at loggerheads with a series of the country's most powerful institutions, including religious clerics, the police and intelligence agencies.

The effect was isolating, officials said. According to some, there was such pervasive distrust between the political leadership and the civil service that the latter began withholding information from Morsi.

The police also refused to protect Muslim Brotherhood offices when they came under attack in the latest wave of protests.

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Egyptian Lessons to Assad and His Opponents

Egyptian Lessons to Assad and His Opponents

    Sunday, July 07, 2013   No comments

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s first reaction to the protests that broke out in his country two and

Within a few months, as the opposition became militarized, Damascus could only see a conspiracy in the making, as the descent into violence opened up a big wound across the nation.

The regime’s initial response was either guided by security concerns or took the form of a series of political concessions that had no real impact on people’s lives. As a result, the opposition, which was still not completely in the grip of foreign forces, registered a surge in its popularity.
But rather than using this to its advantage at the negotiating table, the Syrian opposition believed al-Jazeera’s propaganda campaign that the regime’s days were numbered, so they chose to up the ante and escalate their armed insurgency against the regime to finish it off.

Today, Syrians find themselves before an opportunity to reassess their situation and possibly bring the bloody confrontations to a stop. They should use the developments in Egypt to reflect on the course of their actions and where they are taking their country. This would require a series of steps by both sides along the following lines.

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half years ago was to dismiss any relation between them and events in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently

When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently

    Friday, July 05, 2013   No comments

For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup. The army take over, depose and imprison the democratically elected president, suspend the constitution, arrest the usual suspects, close down television stations and mass their armour in the streets of the capital. But the word ‘coup’ does not – and cannot – cross the lips of the Blessed Barack Obama. Nor does the hopeless UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon dare to utter such an offensive word. It’s not as if Obama doesn’t know what’s going on. Snipers in Cairo killed 15 Egyptians this week from a rooftop of the very university in which Obama made his ‘reach-out’ speech to the Muslim world in 2009. Is this reticence because millions of Egyptians demanded just such a coup – they didn’t call it that, of course – and thus became the first massed people in the world to demand a coup prior to the actual coup taking place? Is it because Obama fears that to acknowledge it’s a coup would force the US to impose sanctions on the most important Arab nation at peace with Israel? Or because the men who staged the coup might forever lose their 1.5 billion subvention from the US – rather than suffer a mere delay -- if they were told they’d actually carried out a coup.

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Turkey calls for immediate release of Egyptian leaders

Turkey calls for immediate release of Egyptian leaders

    Thursday, July 04, 2013   No comments

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has criticized the military intervention in Egypt, saying Turkey does not accept the removal and detention of elected leaders from power through “illegitimate means,” adding that he hoped the military’s move would not overshadow the original Jan. 25, 2011 revolution.

“Whatever the reason is, it is unacceptable that a democratically elected government was overthrown by illegitimate means, even more, with a military coup. A national consensus politics is possible only with the participation and support of democratic institutions, actors, opposition and civil society,” Davutoğlu told reporters in Istanbul. “Leaders who come to power with open and transparent elections reflecting the will of the people can only be removed by elections, that is, the will of the nation.”

Egypt’s army held the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in detention, hours after abruptly forcing him out of office following days of deadly protests against his turbulent rule. Morsi’s defense minister, armed forces chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, announced Morsi’s overthrow on state television on Wednesday. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of a total of 300 Muslim Brotherhood officials.

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Crisis in Egypt: Morsi at Precipice after Disastrous Year

Crisis in Egypt: Morsi at Precipice after Disastrous Year

    Tuesday, July 02, 2013   No comments

On Monday, the Egyptian Army issued President Mohammed Morsi an ultimatum: He has 48 hours to come up with a plan for the country or it will intervene with one of its own. The tens of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters who had been demonstrating since Sunday in Tahrir Square broke out into cheers when the ultimatum was announced.

Yet Morsi has shown no indication that he is prepared to back down. On Tuesday, despite widespread dissatisfaction with his rule and a crumbling cabinet, he released a statement of his own, saying that he will continue on the course he has charted. As if to underline Morsi's increasing isolation, his foreign minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, threw in the towel on Tuesday morning. He is the sixth member of Morsi's government to quit over the escalating crisis.

Disillusionment with Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's first democratically elected president, is widespread following the past year of his rule. Results, after all, have been disastrous. Instead of freeing his country from an ongoing political and economic crisis, Morsi has deepened the suffering. Instead of bringing reconciliation to Egypt, he has sown discord. Mass protests have repeatedly shown how polarized the most populous country in the Arab world has become. Indeed, just on Sunday, several people lost their lives in violent anti-Morsi protests in the heart of Cairo.

"My country has never been as divided, frustrated and radicalized as it is today," says German-Egyptian author Hamed Abdel-Samad.

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