Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[Groucho]

The way forward
There's an opportunity for Middle Eastern states in the unrest engulfing the region

After the dramatic changes in Tunisia and Egypt in less than a month, the wildfire of political and economic unrest is now raging in Libya, Yemen, Iran, Algeria and even in Morocco. But it's Bahrain where things seem to have entered a critical phase, sparking alarm across the region.

All efforts and appeals by Bahrain's leadership to end the protests offering "unconditional and inclusive dialogue" are yet to produce results. Thousands of jubilant protesters returned to the Pearl Square, the focal point of anti-government demonstrations over the past couple of weeks, yesterday after riot police fired teargas and shotgun rounds before withdrawing.

Understandably, Gulf Cooperation Council states have thrown their weight behind Bahrain's leadership warning against outside meddling and foreign interference in the nation's internal affairs.

Given Bahrain's delicate sectarian equilibrium and the distinct possibility of outside forces trying to exploit it, GCC states have every reason to be concerned about the tiny but strategic Gulf state. The fact that Bahrain is a close US ally and home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet only adds to the complexity of the whole issue.       

Meanwhile, the situation in Muammar Qaddafi's Libya is deteriorating fast. The US-based Human Rights Watch has claimed that over 100 people have been killed in the government crackdown on the widening protests. However, as Tunisia and Egypt have demonstrated, an iron-fisted approach is the last thing we need in the affected countries right now. Patience, empathy and a greater willingness by governments concerned to understand and address people's concerns and insecurities may be the way forward.

It is no coincidence that most countries affected by what is being termed as the Berlin Wall moment of the Middle East are those that have been battling unemployment, poverty and a strong dissident movement demanding greater political freedom. While economic deprivation, unemployment and lack of basics have been the driving force behind the current unrest across the region, there's no doubt that an absence of political empowerment and participation has also contributed to some of the anger that one sees on the streets today, from Sanaa to Tehran.

Just a cursory look at the Arab human development report issued by the United Nations after the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt would offer an amazing insight into the issue at the heart of the current turmoil. While some states in the region have consciously invested in the infrastructure, education, health and well being of their people, most do not have a very impressive record in providing good governance and delivering on the basics like jobs, education and health. No wonder many of them today have their young people out in the streets angrily demanding change. Of course, Bahrain is an exception. Its problem is apparently more complex.

Others cannot afford to be complacent though. The Middle East can no longer remain stuck in a time warp while the world around it has moved on. Arab states will have to do more to address the economic problems and aspirations of their people. They must reform for their own sake, if nothing else.  Institutional ineptitude, internal conflicts and regional rifts cannot be an excuse for governments to neglect their fundamental responsibility — the well being of their people.  History will not forgive the Middle East's leaders and elites if they fail to respond to the winds of change sweeping the region. There's an opportunity for them in this unprecedented crisis.

[mylestheslasher]

I think the people in these countries are setting an incredible example. In Bahrain they have stuck two fingers up to the dictator who offers reform. Its all or nothing it seems and only right too as we should know in this country how oppressors work - offers of reform are really methods to stall and slow and infiltrate to destroy the opposition. The best of luck to these people I say.

[johnneycool]

I think the people in these countries are setting an incredible example. In Bahrain they have stuck two fingers up to the dictator who offers reform. Its all or nothing it seems and only right too as we should know in this country how oppressors work - offers of reform are really methods to stall and slow and infiltrate to destroy the opposition. The best of luck to these people I say.

Whilst any meaningful reform will take time to filter down to the masses I'm still very skeptical of how a lot of this will pan out in the foreseeable future.

There's too many powerful people with vested interests in these places like Egypt and Bahrain to let the status quo be changed in any meaningful way.

We'll have to wait and see.

[Banana Man]

I think the people in these countries are setting an incredible example. In Bahrain they have stuck two fingers up to the dictator who offers reform. Its all or nothing it seems and only right too as we should know in this country how oppressors work - offers of reform are really methods to stall and slow and infiltrate to destroy the opposition. The best of luck to these people I say.

Whilst any meaningful reform will take time to filter down to the masses I'm still very skeptical of how a lot of this will pan out in the foreseeable future.

There's too many powerful people with vested interests in these places like Egypt and Bahrain to let the status quo be changed in any meaningful way.

We'll have to wait and see.

would have to agree

i see David Cameron is away out visiting Egypt this week, he didn't waste any time, no doubt to deal the boys what constitutes acceptable reform in the UK's eyes...

[theskull1]

I'd have similar concerns JC

Who knows how it will pan out and what impact these insurrections will have further afield. The possibilities for global conflict are much higher now as I'm sure the different oil addicted power brokers try to assert their influence behind the scenes.

Oil has us all by the balls. We really need to be throwing Rnd into developing cost efficient sustainable alternatives.

[Groucho]

Mickey should have stuck to the acting

[DrinkingHarp]

CNN has just reported that Gadhafi has just declared war on his citizens, freaking lunatic.

[StGallsGAA]

Uncle Sam should invade Lybia and bring liberation and democracy.  Worked in Iraq didn't it?

[Hardy]

RTÉ were reporting earlier that there are rumours he's decamped to Venezuela. Surely Chavez wouldn't provide a hidey-hole for a despot?

[mylestheslasher]

RTÉ were reporting earlier that there are rumours he's decamped to Venezuela. Surely Chavez wouldn't provide a hidey-hole for a despot?

If chavez turns him down he could always try meath.

[Hereiam]

Uncle Sam should invade Lybia and bring liberation and democracy.  Worked in Iraq didn't it?

Too early yet for that. They need to arm lybia a bit more so the whole thing isn't just one sided.

[give her dixie]

Well today seems to have turned into another bloodbath in Libya. Reports of helicopters and jets firing on the people, killing scores of people. Depending on various reports, it seems over 200 people have been killed today, bringing the total now killed to over 500 in 5 days.

Gaddafi has turned on his people in a ruthless fashion, and there is certainly no way back for him and his family now. Numerous ministers have now disowned him and resigned, and 2 senior air force generals defected to Malta in fighter jets!

BP and Shell have apparently abandoned their offices and fled, and others are scrambling to get flights out. Turkey sent in a plane today, and it had to turn back without permission to land.

Egypt have opened their borders to let anyone needing mediacl attention reach hospitals, and have sent aid convoys in. Hospitals are struggling to treat the wounded, and blood supplies are running out.

Many rumors are suggesting Gaddafi has fled to South America, however, there is no confirmation just yet, and Venezuala have denied that he is en route.

The only place Gaddafi needs to go to is the Hague to face crimes against humanity. He should also be joined by Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Tony Blair, George Bush, and practically every former Israeli Prime Minister.

[give her dixie]

As Libyans die, a New Jersey town subsidizes Gaddafi

By SHMULEY BOTEACH 
02/21/2011 23:37

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=209267

Snipers are picking protesters off from rooftops, and goons are mowing them down in the streets. But in Englewood, the Libyan flag continues to fly high.
 
As Libya burns and as the foundation of its brutal 40- year-old regime shakes and shudders, it is not just the thuggish family of tyrant Muammar Gaddafi who should be worried. It is also the many Westerners who collaborated to keep him in power.

There's a rekonin' a comin' for all those who did deals with the Gaddafi regime, whose morality vanished in the face of his black-gold billions, who – in the words of Bob Dylan – closed their eyes and pretended not to see the brutality of one of the cruelest governments on earth.

Many are known to us already, like BP which four years ago signed a $900 million oil exploration deal with Gaddafi. There are the British ministers who gave Gaddafi advice as to how to have the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, freed as he made clear when he publicly thanked Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth after the mass murderer's release. "This step," he said, "is in the interest of relations between the two countries... and of the personal friendship between me and them, and will be positively reflected for sure in all areas of cooperation between the two countries."

Most infamous is the Scottish government and its justice minister Kenny MacAskill, who released Megrahi (who continues to live in Tripoli, but perhaps not so peacefully now that his sponsor's government is teetering).

Others who have worked with Gaddafi are not as famous but have been mentioned in the media, like Matthew Beckerman, the Jewish head of Natural Selection, who accepted a $100 million investment from the tyrant's son.

AND THEN there are those who stood by, and now continue to stand by, as Libya burns, like my own home town of Englewood, New Jersey, which was the site of a major battle in September 2009 when Gaddafi, who owns the home next door to mine, tried to pitch a tent and move in for a few weeks. Our community came together and pushed him out. But the house, an official residence of Libya's ambassador to the UN, remains. It is sovereign Libyan territory and the ambassador, whose boss reportedly stole tens of billions of dollars from the Libyan people, lives there tax free.

We, the residents of Englewood, pay for his trash removal, police protection and other basic services.

My city allows this shameful state of affairs. There has not been a lawsuit to try to push the Libyans out, or get them to at least pay taxes in almost 30 years! When Gaddafi withdrew and I continued the fight against the Libyan mission, Congressman Steve Rothman, who has not had a serious challenger in 14 years, first told the media: "I hope everyone will be appropriately good neighbors."

Later, he took the unbelievable step of issuing a threepage press release attacking me and defending the Libyans' right to remain in Englewood based on agreements between them and the State Department that were brokered by Rothman himself when he was Englewood's mayor. I responded in print by reminding Rothman that he represents the hard-working citizens of New Jersey, and not the oil-rich dictator in Tripoli.

Englewood garnered world acclaim when it pushed Gaddafi out. Now our community is utterly silent as Libya burns. Brave Libyan citizens are being murdered in the streets. The number of dead is growing by the day. Habib al-Obaidi, head of the intensive care unit at the main Al- Jalae hospital, spoke of the bodies of 50 people, most killed by gunshots, being brought in on Sunday afternoon alone. "The problem is not the number of those killed," he said, "but how they were killed. One of the victims was obliterated – after being hit by an RPG to the abdomen."

That's right. The people of New Jersey, which already saw 30 of its citizens murdered among the 270 who were on Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, are subsidizing the diplomatic mission of a government that fires rocket propelled grenades against nonviolent protesters.

Snipers are picking them off from rooftops, and Gaddafi's goons are mowing them down in the streets. But in Englewood the Libyan flag continues to fly high. I see it every day right across my yard. It makes me sick to my stomach. That our mayor, city council and police allow it without a single legal challenge is a disgrace to a onceproud city.

I launched a lawsuit against the Libyans in federal court, only to see it quashed due to their diplomatic immunity.

Imagine that. A terrorist-funding state that blows up airliners and kills its people in front of the world's cameras can live tax-free in an American suburb, where there it has no diplomatic interest, because of diplomatic immunity.

I am writing this column from Boston, where I am attending a family wedding. I took my children to the site of the Boston Massacre, where on March 5, 1770 British soldiers fired into a crowd of a hundreds of colonists, killing five.The event was the spark that would ignite the American revolution.

As it happens, we Americans could not have achieved our freedom entirely on our own. The French were instrumental in helping us defeat the British, and it is a lesson we all ought to remember as Arabs throughout the Middle East rise with great courage to demand the same simple freedoms for which the American patriots fought. They are our brothers, and require our assistance. And this is especially true of those who are fighting to defeat the man Ronald Reagan accurately called "the mad dog of the Middle East."

[give her dixie]

When tyrants want tear gas, the UK has always been happy to oblige

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/20/teargas-for-tyrants

When Robin Cook tried to tighten rules on British arms sales to dodgy regimes in 1997 he was told by Tony Blair's team to grow up. Planned changes to criteria for weapons exports were so watered down that they made no inroads into the trade. Cook's professed "ethical dimension" to foreign policy was stillborn.

Downing Street had been heavily lobbied, but it needed no convincing. This is one area where the boardroom and the unions are in harmony, and one that does not change whatever the government. Britain is a market leader in fighter jets, electric batons, sub-machine guns and teargas. Why add to the jobless total for the sake of morals? If we don't sell the kit someone else will.

The announcement, therefore, of a revoking of licences to Bahrain and Libya should be taken with a pinch of salt; I predict that British firms will be back at it as soon as the coast is clear.

The coalition government's commendable, but limited improvements in civil liberties at home have not been replicated in foreign policy, which is brazenly mercantilist. Go forth and flog Britain's wares is the message. The notorious Export Credits Guarantee Department, responsible for some of the most economically foolhardy and unethical business deals of the past 20 years, has been boosted. From arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, to oil and gas pipelines in central Asia, to mega-dams in sub-Saharan Africa, the ECGD has backed projects that have been implicated in corruption, environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

At the weekend, the UK arms industry descended on Abu Dhabi for Idex, the region's most important weapons fair. A tenth of all the global exhibitors are from Britain. Gerald Howarth, the minister leading the delegation, declared that "we have ambitious plans".

The most unequivocal message since the election was made by Peter Luff, the defence equipment minister, who told a defence show in June: "There will be a very, very, very heavy ministerial commitment to arms sales. There is a sense that in the past we were rather embarrassed about exporting defence products. There is no such embarrassment in this government."

Indeed there is not. The regimes currently using brute force to put down pro-democracy protests are all longstanding partners of the UK. As the Campaign Against Arms Trade notes on Bahrain: in 2010, equipment approved for export included teargas and crowd control ammunition, equipment for the use of aircraft cannons, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and submachine guns. No requests for licences were refused.

Algeria, Egypt and Saudia Arabia have provided rich pickings for UK arms exporters. Of all the bilateral arrangements of recent years, perhaps the most despicable is the one with Libya. Colonel Gaddafi morphed from terrorist sympathiser to friend of the west, which then turned a blind eye to his internal repression. Libya is regarded as a priority partner, with the UK boasting the largest pavilion at the Libya's arms fair.

CAAT figures show that in the third quarter of 2010, equipment approved for export to Libya included wall-and-door breaching projectile launchers, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition and teargas/irritant ammunition. No requests for licences were refused.

Earlier this month, the trade minister, Lord Green, announced that ministers will be "held accountable" if companies fail to secure deals and foreign investors favour Britain's economic rivals. Beside him was business secretary, Vince Cable.

In opposition the Lib Dems were vocal about arms sales. In government they have grown silent. In January 2009, Nick Clegg wrote on these pages that Britain should stop supplying Israel following its bombardment of Gaza. He made a broader point: the UK should not supply weapons to countries involved in external aggression or internal repression. I have heard nothing significant from Clegg on the issue since he became deputy prime minister.

He may believe that if he spoke out, he might suffer a similar fate to Cook. There is too much riding on an industry that abets authoritarian regimes, while providing rich profits for UK firms and jobs. In the current economic climate, who would stand in their way?

[give her dixie]

Cruel. Vainglorious. Steeped in blood. And now, surely, after more than four decades of terror and oppression, on his way out?

Robert Fisk on Muammar Gaddafi, tyrant of Tripoli
Tuesday, 22 February 2011

So even the old, paranoid, crazed fox of Libya – the pallid, infantile, droop-cheeked dictator from Sirte, owner of his own female praetorian guard, author of the preposterous Green Book, who once announced he would ride to a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade on his white charger – is going to ground. Or gone. Last night, the man I first saw more than three decades ago, solemnly saluting a phalanx of black-uniformed frogmen as they flappered their way across the sulphur-hot tarmac of Green Square on a torrid night in Tripoli during a seven-hour military parade, appeared to be on the run at last, pursued – like the dictators of Tunis and Cairo – by his own furious people.

The YouTube and Facebook pictures told the story with a grainy, fuzzed reality, fantasy turned to fire and burning police stations in Benghazi and Tripoli, to corpses and angry, armed men, of a woman with a pistol leaning from a car door, of a crowd of students – were they readers of his literature? – breaking down a concrete replica of his ghastly book. Gunfire and flames and cellphone screams; quite an epitaph for a regime we all, from time to time, supported.

And here, just to lock our minds on to the brain of truly eccentric desire, is a true story. Only a few days ago, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi faced the wrath of his own people, he met with an old Arab acquaintance and spent 20 minutes out of four hours asking him if he knew of a good surgeon to lift his face. This is – need I say it about this man? – a true story. The old boy looked bad, sagging face, bloated, simply "magnoon" (mad), a comedy actor who had turned to serious tragedy in his last days, desperate for the last make-up lady, the final knock on the theatre door.

In the event, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, faithful understudy for his father, had to stand in for him on stage as Benghazi and Tripoli burned, threatening "chaos and civil war" if Libyans did not come to heel. "Forget oil, forget gas," this wealthy nincompoop announced. "There will be civil war."

Above the beloved son's head on state television, a green Mediterranean appeared to ooze from his brain. Quite an obituary, when you come to think of it, of nearly 42 years of Gaddafi rule.

Not exactly King Lear, who would "do such things – what they are, yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth"; more like another dictator in a different bunker, summoning up non-existent armies to save him in his capital, ultimately blaming his own people for his calamity. But forget Hitler. Gaddafi was in a class of his own, Mickey Mouse and Prophet, Batman and Clark Gable and Anthony Quinn playing Omar Mukhtar in Lion of the Desert, Nero and Mussolini (the 1920s version) and, inevitably – the greatest actor of them all – Muammar Gaddafi. He wrote a book – appropriately titled in his present unfortunate circumstances – called Escape to Hell and Other Stories and demanded a one state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which would be called "Israeltine".

Shortly thereafter, he threw half the Palestinian residents of Libya out of his country and told them to walk home to their lost land. He stormed out of the Arab League because he deemed it irrelevant – a brief moment of sanity there, one has to admit – and arrived in Cairo for a summit, deliberately confusing a lavatory door with that of the conference chamber until led aside by the Caliph Mubarak who had a thin, suffering smile on his face.

And if what we are witnessing is a true revolution in Libya, then we shall soon be able – unless the Western embassy flunkies get there first for a spot of serious, desperate looting – to rifle through the Tripoli files and read the Libyan version of Lockerbie and the 1989 UTA Flight 722 plane bombing; and of the Berlin disco bombings, for which a host of Arab civilians and Gaddafi's own adopted daughter were killed in America's 1986 revenge raids; and of his IRA arms supplies and of his assassination of opponents at home and abroad, and of the murder of a British policewoman, and of his invasion of Chad and the deals with British oil magnates; and (woe betide us all at this point) of the truth behind the grotesque deportation of the soon-to-expire al-Megrahi, the supposed Lockerbie bomber too ill to die, who may, even now, reveal some secrets which the Fox of Libya – along with Gordon Brown and the Attorney General for Scotland, for all are equal on the Gaddafi world stage – would rather we didn't know about.

And who knows what the Green Book Archives – and please, O insurgents of Libya, do NOT in thy righteous anger burn these priceless documents – will tell us about Lord Blair's supine visit to this hideous old man; an addled figure whose "statesmanlike" gesture (the words, of course, come from that old Marxist fraud Jack Straw, when the author of Escape to Hell promised to hand over the nuclear nick-nacks which his scientists had signally failed to turn into a bomb) allowed our own faith-based Leader to claim that, had we not smitten the Saddamites with our justified anger because of their own non-existent weapons of mass destruction, Libya, too, would have joined the Axis of Evil.

Alas, Lord Blair paid no heed to the Gaddafi "whoops" factor, a unique ability to pose as a sane man while secretly believing oneself – like miss-a-heart-beat Omar Suleiman in Cairo – to be a light bulb. Only days after the Blair handshake, the Saudis accused Gaddafi of plotting – and the details, by the way, were horribly convincing – to murder Britain's ally, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But why be surprised when the man most feared and now most mocked and hated by his own vengeful people wrote, in the aforesaid Escape to Hell that Christ's crucifixion was a historical falsehood and that – as here I say again, a faint ghost of truth does very occasionally adhere to Gaddafi's ravings – a German "Fourth Reich" was lording it over Britain and America? Reflecting on death in this thespian work, he asks if the Grim Reaper is male or female. The leader of the Great Libyan Arab People's Popular Masses, needless to say, seemed to favour the latter.

As with all Middle East stories, a historical narrative precedes the dramatic pageant of Gaddafi's fall. For decades, his opponents tried to kill him; they rose up as nationalists, as prisoners in his torture chambers, as Islamists on the streets of – yes! – Benghazi. And he smote them all down. Indeed, this venerable city had already achieved its martyrdom status in 1979 when Gaddafi publicly hanged dissident students in Benghazi's main square. I am not even mentioning the 1993 disappearance of Libyan human rights defender Mansour al-Kikhiya while attending a Cairo conference after complaining about Gaddafi's execution of political prisoners. And it is important to remember that, 42 years ago, our own Foreign Office welcomed Gaddafi's coup against the effete and corrupt King Idriss because, said our colonial mandarins, it was better to have a spick-and-span colonel in charge of an oil state than a relic of imperialism. Indeed, they showed almost as much enthusiasm as they did for this decaying despot when Lord Blair arrived in Tripoli decades later for the laying on of hands.

As a Libyan opposition group told us years ago – we didn't care about these folks then, of course – "Gaddafi would have us believe he is at the vanguard of every human development that has emerged during his lifetime".

All true, if now reduced to sub-Shakespearean farce. My kingdom for a facelift. At that non-aligned summit in Belgrade, Gaddafi even flew in a planeload of camels to provide him with fresh milk. But he was not allowed to ride his white charger. Tito saw to that. Now there was a real dictator.