Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 21

Arguments on Syria

I understand misgivings about US military action in Syria, but I don't understand skepticism over the regime's use of chemical weapons. You don't need to argue that the rebels gassed themselves to be against intervention. The specter of Iraq hangs over us; but in this case there seems to be wide-spread agreement that the regime had the weapons (it's offering to give them up now, after all), the opportunity and the motive. Here for example is Human Rights Watch's report:

The evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces.

Meanwhile the Italian journalist Domenico Quirico -- just released after 152 days in captivity in Syria -- has this dispiriting description of his captors:  

"Our captors were from a group that professed itself to be Islamist but that in reality is made up of mixed-up young men who have joined the revolution because the revolution now belongs to these groups that are midway between banditry and fanaticism," he said.

"They follow whoever promises them a future, gives them weapons, gives them money to buy cell phones, computers, clothes."

Such groups, he said, were trusted by the West but were in truth profiting from the revolution to "take over territory, hold the population to ransom, kidnap people and fill their pockets".

But in the pages of the New York Times, Syrian dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues that jihadism isn't an argument against intervention, and is a by-product of the Assad regime's brutality: 

In the West, reservations about supporting the Syrian rebels that once seemed callous and immoral are now considered justified because of the specter of jihadism. But this view is myopic.

Jihadist groups emerged roughly 10 months after the revolution started. Today, these groups are a burden on the revolution and the country, but not on the regime. On the contrary, their presence has enabled the regime to preserve its local base, and served to bolster its cause among international audiences.

It is misguided to presume that Mr. Assad’s downfall would mean a jihadist triumph, but unfortunately this is the basis for the West’s position. A more accurate interpretation is that if Mr. Assad survives, then jihadism is sure to thrive.

Then there is this contribution to the argument against intervention, which I embarrassingly did not at first recognize as satire: 

"Someone needs to explain to me why gassing Arabs is such a bad thing," she replied. "I mean aren't these the same people that attacked us on September the 11th? Look, the system is working. Arabs are killing Arabs and that means in the future there will be fewer of them trying to kill us.

"I say we send them all the chemical weapons we have, and let them sort it out amongst themselves. Hopefully when it's all over we'd be left with some empty space to colonize. Personally I'd like to see megachurches and Home Depots outside Damascus."

This was too much even for a Fox anchor, who asked:  

"Yes, but these are innocent human beings caught in the crossfire of a terrible civil war," Kilmeade persisted. "Don't you feel any empathy for them at all? I mean Arabs are just as human as we are and should be entitled to the same level of dignity and respect, right?"

  

The Squid

Meet Adel Mohamed Ibrahim aka Adel Habara (meaning Squid - a reference to his resourcefulness and ability to reach anyone he wants) aka the al-Qaeda Chief in Sinai. The police says he is responsible for the second Rafaah attack that left 25 soldiers dead. They also think he is involved in the first attack that left 16 dead.

Habara reportedly confessed his involvement and reenacted the crime for them after he was arrested on September 1. This is a video of Habara  that was posted to YouTube on Sept. 2 (by a certain Emad El Ramadi, who appears to reside in the UAE) and circulated on talk shows, in which Habara tells his side of the story with state security before the revolution up until his escape from Wadi al-Natrun prison in January 2011. It's not clear where or when this was recorded, and Habara does not refer directly to the Rafaah attacks in it.

Dressed in white, with a blanket covering one leg, Habara explains that he has been a committed, religious man for ten years, minding his own business and with no connection to islamist groups, which is why state security informers showed no interest in him. Except for a strangely candid one agent.

“Give me your ID, so I can make a file about you in SS,” he says officer Ali Ameen asked him. Ameen, Habara says, has long harbored a grudge against him and was the source of all his troubles with the police.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Habara said, but Ameen insisted. He tried to solicit his sympathy, telling him about his one-armed wife and the two daughters they have take care of, but to no avail.

Some time later, Habara traveled to Libya hoping distance would blunt Ameen’s obsession with him. It did not. In the following months, Ameen kept harassing his wife and family, prompting him to return and speak to Ameen’s superior, an officer named Essam. After interrogating him, Essam let him go and asked him to work as a police informant. Habara said he would, but he wasn’t going to because it’s haraam to point out the sins of Muslims.

Eight months later, Ameen vindictively added Habara’s name on the wanted list for the next security crackdown. When they came to arrest him, Habara was not home. He was later tipped off that the police was looking for him and decided to lay low and look for employment in Cairo.

By some unfortunate stroke of luck, Habara went to fix his motorcycle at a mechanic, whose shop was juxtaposed next to the state-security-affiliated the Future Association, whose owner is a good friend of none other than Ali Ameen himself.

Shortly after Habara left the mechanic, three toktoks carrying armed men and Ali Ameen came out of nowhere. They attacked him, forcing him to defend himself with a knife. After they broke his nose, badly hit his head and his arms, they took him into custody.

There he was told by another oddly honest officer called Ahmed el-Lamhawy that they, the state security officers, were not Muslims. They were Jews.

Habara admitted to assaulting the officers, in self-defense, and so was sent to Al Wadi Al Gadeed prison, where he was kept in a 160 x 250 cm room for 49 days, before he was moved to a solitary cell in the wards, where he spent 11 months and was not allowed to have visitors. He refused to comment on the food and water quality, or lack thereof.

He tried to explain to the judge at the Supreme State Security Criminal Court that he was not a threat to national security, just an imagined one to a hateful informer. However, the judge sentenced him to one more year in Wadi Al Natrun prison (where deposed president Morsi was held before he became president and pardoned Habara among others, according to Ibrabim Eissa). There Habara was told that since he had served two thirds of his sentence, he was eligible for early release and that they had already sent a request to the prison authorities. He was going to be out any day now, they said.

But then the revolution happened, and the prison was open for all to leave, so he did. Now the same informer, Ali Ameen, is using his escape to frame him for further crimes, namely, the Rafaah attacks. But here the video-taped narration ends. 

According to Al-Ahram, al-Watan and Alyoum7, Habara's neighbors in Sharqiya are very much pleased with his arrest because he has been terrorizing them, with the help of his armed, white-galabya-clad friends, since the revolution.

You can watch Habara's narrated arrest over here, where two officers impressively climb a flight of stairs two steps at a time, while a confused on-the-ground colleague strains his neck to look for Habara in the sky and another looks in drawer. There are dramatic sepia shots to inspire awe near the end.

 

Sexual harassment and super-heroines

The online comic Qahera shows an avenging munaqaba fighting  sexual harassment in Cairo. It is a very powerful work, which captures perfectly the social dynamics surrounding harassment (the police officer who tells the victim: "Honestly, you have to look at what you're wearing, too," and that if she files a charge against her harasser, "you'll ruin his future.") 

Although I tend to think that vigilante fantasies (and I have many) -- and real vigilantism, like that of some anti-harassment groups, who catch and beat and spray-paint offenders -- far from being empowering are actually the expression of despair and rage. Sexual harassment is so pervasive that we can only counter it in extreme, even fantastical, ways. 

Syrian rebels and refugees

In the Guardian, Martin Chulov reports from rebel-held towns in Syria on the tensions between different anti-Assad groups and the preparations of jihadis for the US attack. The best part is this incredible description of a restaurant patronized by rebel fighters:  

Kalashnikovs are laid across tables next to salt and pepper shakers, which the waiters gently rearrange to serve plates of grilled chicken and salads. "Let him have it," joked one hulking Libyan as a waiter shifted a rifle to find space for a plate of hummous. "We can take him outside and show him how to use it."

Meanwhile, Karl reMarks is trying to help Western powers find the moderates among Syrian's militias (although "It’s not even clear why moderates would join a revolution, but let’s not pull on that string"). Among the groups he identifies:

The Red Unicorn Brigade

The red unicorns are the true visionaries and utopians of the Syrian revolution. They are the most radical moderate group intellectually, even though their fighting skills leave much to be desired. The unicorns’ slogan is ‘why can’t we all just get along?’ which their vicious enemies have attempted to portray as a rhetorical question. 

And the plight of Syrian refugees in Egypt -- who have fallen victim to the rabid anti-Islamist sentiment (because the Brotherhood was welcoming to them, suddenly now they are accused of being terrorists) and xenophobia of the moment -- is getting increased attention. In the Washington Post, Abigail Hauslohner reports that: 

Syrian refugees say they are insulted and taunted on the streets, charged double for commodities and services, increasingly mugged and robbed, and are harassed by police. Many said they hope to leave.

This petition says many, including children, have also been arrested. 

 

Understanding Cairo

Lovely piece by Nael Shama in Le Monde Diplomatique on how Morsi and other Egyptian presidents did not understand Cairo, unlike Nasser who made it the centerpiece of his modernist societal project: 

Only Nasser — who clipped the wings of the aristocracy and uplifted the poor, creating a viable middle class — bonded with Cairo. The expansion in education and health services and the establishment of an industry-oriented public sector gave rise to, and consolidated, Egypt’s middle class in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, he vowed steadfastness against the tripartite aggression (Suez) from the rostrum of the widely revered Al-Azhar mosque, in the heart of Cairo’s old Islamic city. “I am here in Cairo with you and my children are also here in Cairo. I did not send them away [for protection from air raids],” he said, to affirm his loyalty to the city.

Nasser did not travel much during his reign. He was not a big fan of the tourist retreats of Egypt’s pre-revolution aristocracy. He stayed in Cairo, and there he died. In the autumn of 1970, Nasser resided for a few days in Cairo’s posh Nile Hilton during the emergency Arab summit convened to put an end to the bloody Palestinian-Jordanian conflict — Black September. On the night of September 27th, on the balcony of his hotel room that overlooked River Nile, Kasr El-Nil Bridge and the lights of the city that never sleeps, he told his friend Mohamed Heikal: “This is the best view in the world.” On the following day, he died.

Islamists Seize Town in Southern Egypt and Attack Christians

An account from Dalga, in Upper Egypt, where things seem to be totally out of control.  

“The fire in the monastery burned intermittently for three days,” Father Yoannis said. “The looting continued for a week. At the end, not a wire or an electric switch is left.”

The monastery’s 1,600-year-old underground chapel was stripped of ancient icons, and the ground was dug up in the belief that a treasure was buried there. “Even the remains of ancient and revered saints were disturbed and thrown around,” Father Yoannis said.

 

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The New Yorker: The Battle of the Archives

In which Egyptian "intellectuals" conjure a non-existent threat to possibly non-existent documents to justify the crack-down on the Brotherhood. Ridiculous. 

“This is one of the ones I was most worried about,” she said, as we approached a colorful Persian astrology book. It was open to a page depicting the Zodiac goddess Virgo, dressed in a bright, purple flowing robe. “They don’t believe in this, so who knows what they would do.” We moved on to some hand-drawn history books with knights riding on gold-painted horses, and a book of early fables that had been translated from Sanskrit. One told the story of a group of white rabbits who teamed up to “seek revenge on a herd of elephants who had thoughtlessly trampled upon them.” In another room, there was a giant, Mamluk-era edition of the Koran, from the fourteenth century. “I wasn’t really worried about this one,” Ezzeldin said with a wink. Then she added, “Although, I didn’t want them to give it away to their friends in Qatar.”

Neither Ezzeldin or any of the other people I spoke to were able to cite any specific evidence that the Brotherhood had plans to dismantle or interfere with Egypt’s historical artifacts—just vague warning signs, and a personal sense of certainty. “If you are traveling to an area that you know is full of thieves, you have to take precautions,” Ezzeldin said when I asked. “You don’t have to wait until you are robbed.”

 

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The tragedy of Mohamed El Beltagi

The video of Beltagi's arrest

My latest column for the Latitude blog of the New York Times tells the story of Mohamed El Beltagi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader I first met quite a few years ago and whose career I have followed.

At the time, the question of the day was whether Egypt could democratize and the Brotherhood could be integrated. One wonders, if the Brotherhood's entrance into the political system had been much more gradual and managed (requiring them to register and open to public scrutiny their organization, requiring explicit commitments to democracy), if the outcome might not have been different. It's worth remembering that it was the military leadership who empowered the MB as a partner in maintaining "stability" after the revolution. 

Anyway, here's how my column starts:  

In the leaked footage that shows his arrest, a balding middle-aged man with a prayer bruise on his forehead is surrounded by police officers and balaclava-clad special forces. There is a sickly grin on his face. He raises four fingers — a symbol of solidarity with Islamist protesters killed in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square (rabaa means four). A soldier swats down his hand.

Mohamed El Beltagi, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had been on the run for several weeks before he was captured last week and charged, like most of the organization’s leaders, with inciting violence. His is the story of a moderate Islamist option that never quite materialized, thanks to the intransigence of both the Brotherhood and its enemies.

 

A video message from Beltagi -- denying the charge that the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization -- broadcast by Al Jazeera the day before his arrest

In Translation: Belal Fadl chats with a general

This translation of a column by Belal Fadl in El Shorouk newspaper is courtesy the professional translation service Industry Arabic. 

Chat with a Modern
Major General

Belal Fadl

Sir Major General --
rather, sir Lieutenant General -- that is, sir General of the Army sir! [1]
You majestic pillar of strength, you Colonel of distinction, Our Father, who
art in all sorts of investigations and secret services… you really don’t
realize what you’ve done to the country, do you?

To make a long story short -- and just in case you forgot,
in your ecstasy over what you imagine to be a landslide victory --  there once was a failing gang who came
into power [2]. They betrayed their promises, allied themselves with you, and I
thought they would buy your satisfaction by leaving your special privileges
just the way they are. This gang bit off more than they could chew, and acted
like a man who hasn’t seen meat in a year - they took one look at power, and
made a fool of themselves. So of course, they failed spectacularly. They went
down in flames and the people rose up against them, demanding that the gang
leave and early presidential elections be held, so they could choose someone
more respectable and appoint him as president instead. But of course, you’ve
conveniently forgotten the part about those early elections, and instead
imposed a roadmap that guarantees your immediate control of the country. And
you’ve brilliantly taken advantage of the Brotherhood’s appalling foolishness -
all of it. First they offered you their necks - and they didn’t wake up until
it was too late; meanwhile, you’re reaping the benefits of their crimes: their
loathsome sectarian discourse; allowing armed men in their sit-ins; shouting words that they can't back up; and depending on people like Safwat Hegazi
and Essam Abdel Maged, men who would cause civilization to sink entirely.

So after you won people over and they came out in the
millions to remove this gang from power, instead of finishing up right and keeping
your eye on the prize for the first time in your life… you decided to give this
group CPR, so they could play the role of the oppressed, and gather their
scattered members underground, just like in 1954 and 1965. And thanks to your
politics, you’ll find that people will sympathize with them once again -- not
out of love, but out of hatred, after their behinds are handed over to your men in
the security headquarters, to be electrocuted once again.

Just as greed was the Brotherhood’s downfall, believe me -
your policies will be your undoing. Your desire to take everything will lead
you to lose everything. We will discover that an iron fist rules over this
generation of revolutionaries, and they have turned a blind eye to it because
they want to see where it will lead. Trust me, believe me, it’s not a
misunderstanding; they are testing what you do. See how you decided to ruin
that man with pure intentions, a stutter, and a clear stance [3] -- the one
who agreed to work with you in hopes that you might have learned a lesson from
those who came before you? And when he refused to do what you wanted, you
mistreated him, forcing him to follow you. Even al-Azhar, which has
consistently spoken about respect for you -- why did you circumvent it, cast it
aside, and force it to issue a statement saying you didn’t consult their opinion
on the massacre you committed… and as for the respectable people who agreed to
work with you in government, you overpowered them, bullying them until they had
second thoughts before taking a respectable position, and those thoughts
multiplied a thousand times over. And of course, in the midst of all this, you
are quite pleased with the media, working in your service, without thinking of
the price society might pay for embracing hatred, violence, and anger, for
vilifying others and accusing them of treason, for its lust for revenge.

Of course, you must feel quite safe sitting in the middle of
your security, your servants, and your entourage, protecting yourselves and
your children’s futures. Each of your men is protecting himself and his
children’s futures; he does it in his own way, and with whatever it takes. In
the end, it will be the average people who pay the price, the honorable
citizens. Or to be more accurate: it will be the people you boast about when
they join your ranks, and who you call fools as soon as they are against you.
Because to you, they’re just numbers - just like to its leaders, the members of
the Muslim Brotherhood are just numbers of martyrs and victims. Unfortunately,
in the end it will be the little man -- the original inhabitant of Egypt  -- who pays the price, led by the
officers and the army recruits. And on the day he is killed, they’ll come to
have their photos taken at his funeral. They’ll use his blood to quash and
suppress others, and to cover up your political failure. And in the end,
unfortunately, no one will care about him other than his family and loved ones.

I can’t blame you if you don’t understand what you’ve done
to this country - the consequences get more and more dire as you march on with
the same policies. There are many people who have read countless books, and who
have taken respectable positions their whole lives. We figured they were savvy
intellectuals… but the most important men and women keep on applauding you. And
making excuses for you, just as the generations of intellectuals before them
applauded and justified the actions of those before you, and those before them.
It must be said that the generations who have applauded before were much more
cultured and talented… but applause hasn’t prevented us from stupidity, nor
protected us from defeat, nor stopped the wheel of regression from spinning
onward. If you’re pleased that the people whose phones you used to tap in the
past have now opened up a hotline between you and them, you won’t be able to enjoy
it for long, because this land is teeming with people, and even if they swallow
bullshit when forced or tricked, you eventually discover that no people can
live off bullshit. Because of this, you’ll be faced with it all again, until you or
those after you have tamed them - or until those who come after them defeat
you, and get this country its rights. It will all continue, again and again,
until a majority of the people discover that we can be more pure and more
beautiful without those who squander our freedoms and dignity, our principles
and our humanity.

Of course, you don’t realize that while you’ve solved one
problem, you’ve created more problems in its place. These problems are just
beginning to take shape, problems that nourish injustice, bitterness, and vile
hatred, problems that will blow up in all of our faces one of these days, and
without warning. I hope it disturbs you and you alone - I’ve had it in for you.
You’ve opened the gates of hell, thinking you wouldn’t burn -- because after
all, hell’s flames don’t sear the devils who live there. But you don’t
understand that once hell’s gates are opened on earth, the destiny of hell’s guardians
is to burn -- no matter how much they think they are protected, or
secure, or seated on an eternal air conditioner.

Finally, as our good friend Ibn Arous [4] said: “It is
inevitable that on a given day, grievances will be redressed.” Many
people thought that this day had arrived, but it turns out that it's still on
its way. We will work for it, and we just might see it -- us, or those who come
after us, or those who come after them. In the end, this day will come, because
Egypt isn't going anywhere -- and Egypt is the only one among us that is everlasting.

 

1. General Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi.

2. The Muslim Brotherhood.

3. Mohamed ElBaradei.

4. Ibn ‘Arous is an Egyptian
poet, though whether he was a real person or a fictional character is debated.
The verse continues: “White on all the oppressed / Black on all the
oppressors.”

 

Egypt and its patrons

Egypt's new patrons? A poster in Cairo thanks the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE -- and Russia.  

Why does Egypt receive between $1.3 and $1.5 billion of US aid annually?

"Because of Israel" is the most common answer to that question. Certainly, that is driving much of the American political wrangling over whether aid should be suspended. The New York Times reports that during the back-and-forth among the US and its allies leading up to Morsi's ouster, Israeli officials argued against cuts, and told the military not to put stock in US threats to cut off aid. The Israelis, like the US, greatly prefer the Egyptian security forces to be in charge of the country. Whatever, the depredations of Mubarak, the Brotherhood, or the counterrevolution, Egypt is too valuable for any American leader to risk "losing."

But though the Muslim Brotherhood signaled it might be less hostile to Hamas or Iran than Mubarak was, in practice the former president did little to change existing policies. Under Morsi's short presidency, the Egyptians even stepped up the destruction of smuggling tunnels into the coastal strip (moreover, the Egyptians were reportedly instrumental in negotiating an end to Operation Pillar of Cloud last winter).

Both Israel and Egypt have many shared interests in the Sinai, especially as the security situation deteriorates. Though Egyptian pressure on Gaza is massively increasing now, it was never seriously in jeopardy under the Brotherhood given that the terrorists and criminal gangs in the Sinai were going after both the SCAF- and Brotherhood-led Egyptian state, and it served Morsi little to champion the Palestinian cause while in office.

The massive corporate investment in Egyptian or Saudi defense expenditures certainly contributes to Congressional deliberations against aid cuts. And while one might examine the head of President Obama, and whether his reluctance to "take sides" really suggests a desire to reduce a US commitment to Egypt, the fact that the aid has not yet been publicly cut off suggests that Washington has tacitly taken a side: that of the military's, guarantor of the status quo.

It was, in fact, not just the Israelis telling General Sisi et al. to pay no mind to the US law that requires all aid to be suspended to a country if a coup takes place there. It was King Abdullah telling the Egyptian generals that the Kingdom would make up for any cutoffs in economic or military aid - the latter, almost assuredly in the form of American-made weapons in Riyadh's possession.

Riyadh's role is extremely important in all of this, especially with respect to Iran's containment. As the CNAS think tank noted in February 2011, Egypt's strategic importance in the wider region has nothing to do with the current deployment of US forces in the country, where the only fully staffed America military station is a US Navy medical center. It instead has to do with the nightmare scenario that would threaten the US's interests in the Persian Gulf: the sudden collapse of any one of the Gulf monarchies that host the radar sites, listening posts, airfields, and weapon emplacements pointing at Iran:

"The United States has no military bases of its own in Egypt. Its headquarters for directing air and ground troops in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq, are in Qatar. Stockpiles of tanks, ammunition, fuel, spare parts and other war materiel are warehoused in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. U.S. missile batteries are deployed along the Persian Gulf's west coast. The U.S. Navy's regional headquarters is in Bahrain.

But in contingencies or crises, American forces have depended heavily on Egyptian facilities built with U.S. aid to U.S. specifications to accommodate U.S. forces as they move from the United States and Europe to Africa or westward across Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the Persian Gulf. American nuclear powered aircraft carriers, whose jets are playing a major role in Afghanistan, rely critically on their expedited use of the Suez Canal, giving them easy access to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf."

Jane's Defence Weekly presented an analysis of commercial satellite imagery compiled between 2011 and 2012 to illustrate the expansion of US, UK, and GCC "conventional combat capabilities" in the Persian Gulf. The analysis highlighted the most salient points of this cooperation, which all ultimately leads back over that waterway and the Saudi desert to Egypt's own airspace and port facilities.

Meanwhile, the suggestion that the failure of the Brotherhood's political experiment in Egypt may be necessary for the House of Saud's survival is not farfetched. Though security concerns largely determine American actions, for the Saudis, there is also the matter of not wanting competition from the transnational Brotherhood as a mass Islamist movement.

While in years past, the Saudis supported the Brotherhood in Egypt - against Nasser, primarily, whose pan-Arabism and meddling in Yemen during the Cold War threatened the House of Saud's shaky legitimacy. But then the Brothers' messaging and aspirations began to appeal to dissidents within the Kingdom, as did other rival Islamist precepts, threatening absolute monarchy with the prospect of replacement. In recent years, top Saudi officials have made extremely negative remarks about the Brotherhood, most notably the late Crown Prince Nayef. Last month, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal fired a Kuwaiti preacher from his Al Resalah channel for having pro-Brotherhood leanings. As a Foreign Policy article recently noted about Saudi efforts to arm anti-Assad Syrian militias, "Saudi Arabia does not only despise the Muslim Brothers, but political Islamic movements and mass politics in general, which it sees as a threat to its model of absolute patrimonial monarchy."