At a conference in Portugal over the weekend, NATO countries agreed to hand over responsibility for Afghanistan’s security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. In his speech, President Obama claimed there has been significant progress in the fight against the Taliban. But reports from the ground in Afghanistan question these upbeat claims about the ongoing NATO operation. Last spring, NATO launched a major operation in the Taliban-held town of Marjah. The offensive was supposed to showcase America’s new counterinsurgency campaign and demonstrate that victory is still possible. Independent filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films recently traveled to Marjah and discovered the counterinsurgency campaign in crisis. [includes rush transcript]
In 2008, I had the opportunity to travel to Tunisia and meet with private citizens and public officials to discuss American foreign policy towards the Muslim world. It was fortuitous time to be in a Muslim country. It was during the height of the race for the US presidency and all three candidates, Obama, Clinton and McCain, were still in the running. The direction of where the next US president was on the minds of the local Tunisians as well.
Wrong Assessment?
US spy chief: Muslim Brotherhood secular / Yitzhak Benhorin
Director of National Intelligence tells congressional hearing that Egypt's branch of Islamist organization has 'eschewed violence and decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.' They run 29 hospitals 'not under the guise of an extremist agenda,' Clapper says
The overwhelming majority of the individuals I spoke to all saw Obama as the best thing that could happen to US-Muslim relations. The locals identified him as the candidate who best understood the Muslim mindset. Furthermore, as far as the Middle East at large is concerned, Tunisia saw itself as a model for moderation and believed that they could export this model to the Middle East. This belief included Israeli-Palestinian relations where Tunisians believed they could play instrumental role in bringing peace.This somewhat naïve sentiment was something I was willing to entertain, given Tunisian acceptance of its Jewish minority. The Jewish community of Djerba is today unique in a Muslim country. But it is key to stress here that when questioned about what Tunisia is doing to promote these aspects of “moderation,” it was assumed that the global community should “of course” know who and what they stand for. Moderation was defined by moderates, and the reverse. What it really meant in terms of attitudes or behaviors could not be quite specified.History shows that Tunisian moderation has many sides. Recall for example that after Israel went into Lebanon in 1982, Arafat and his “kitchen cabinet” were evacuated from Beirut and with the help of the US were able to set up shop in Tunis. Sympathy for the PLO and Arafat were great, and in recent decades this has solidified in Tunisia. One of the major roads is named Yasser Arafat Boulevard.Fast forward three years. Tunisia has been congratulated by Hamas for their Intifada and for overturning the corrupt Ben Ali regime. Hamas has also called the Tunisian revolution a “milestone in contemporary Arab history,” and has asserted that injustice can only be countered with sacrifice. “What occurred in Tunisia confirms that the path of dignity and confronting injustice, aggression and tyranny is not by solicitation, but by sacrifices and paying the price of pride and dignity. The Tunisians, who offered dozens of martyrs and hundreds of wounded, deserve this great achievement.” Hamas speaks from experience about “martyrs” and wounded.
Speak out against Islamists
Hamas went a step further to remind Tunisia of its struggle against French colonialism in the mid-1900s and the support they have provided to the Palestinians in their “resistance” against the Israeli “occupation.” Hamas thinks it has seen the future in Tunisia and even more so in Egypt as illustrated by the approximate 1,000 supporters of Hamas who rallied in front of the Egyptian representative office in Gaza, waving Palestinian and Egyptian flags and chanting, “Mubarak, you must leave.”Others carried banners in Arabic and English that read, “The Egyptian people want to change their regime, we must support and respect that.”
The spirit of the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution - or Intifada, depending on who you ask - has reached the streets of Cairo where the Egyptian proletariat is driven by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which Hamas grew out of. The Brotherhood is now one of only two political institutions that would survive Mubarak’s downfall; the other is the military. And if we look at the model established in the mini-state of Gaza, the security forces, the military and the Islamists, including the Brotherhood, will increase the fighting or cut a deal, or create some combination of both.For moderate Muslim voices to be heard they need to speak out against the Islamists and the likes of the Brotherhood, not embrace it as the “voice of the people.” It is this tactic that allowed Hamas to come to power in Gaza in 2007. The Obama administration is mistaken if it believes that the Brotherhood has any intention to change its tone or methodology.
Finally, if the Obama administration truly believes in change in the region, it is in for a rude awakening if it continues to see the Brotherhood as that outlet of moderation. It was a mistake to invite Brotherhood to the president’s 2009 Cairo speech and it’s a mistake now to believe that this group is the voice of reason. Internalizing the fact that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah use catch phrases that seem democratic and then turn them around to promote their own Islamist agenda should be a given.
Asaf Romirowsky is a Philadelphia-based Middle East analyst, a lecturer in history at Pennsylvania State University and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum
'The Arab world is on fire," al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies "are quickly losing their influence". The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator's brutal police.
Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed.
One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt's vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.
A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.
A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).
"The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control," says Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. "With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground."
Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.
The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against "a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems", ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.
Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks "documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren't asleep at the switch" – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)
"America should give Assange a medal," says a headline in the Financial Times, where Gideon Rachman writes: "America's foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the US on any given issue is usually the private position as well."
In this view, WikiLeaks undermines "conspiracy theorists" who question the noble motives Washington proclaims.
Godec's cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do,, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec's information in hand, Washington provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere.
Heilbrunn's exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.
Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered.According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).
Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington's policies that a majority (57%) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control" (as Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.
Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington's nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of "legal and constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya."
The embassy concluded that "there is no doubt that the military, supreme court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch". Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.
Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.
The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also "risks destabilising the Pakistani state" and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Again, the revelations "should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch" (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.
Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's burgeoning reform movement drew tens of thousands of people, undeterred by deadly clashes and government crackdowns, to Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for a mass rally with a single message for the president: "Leave."
The central Cairo plaza transformed from a bloody battleground to the scene of a largely peaceful political rally dubbed "Day of Departure" as Egyptians gave embattled President Hosni Mubarak until the end of the day to relinquish power.
Protesters did not get their wish and thousands remained in the square well into the night, defying a curfew that has been widely ignored. Heavy gunfire was heard in and around Tahrir Square.
Among the demonstrators were the secretary-general of the Arab League and the spokesman for the largest center of Sunni Muslim learning, two men representing pillars of authority.
Attempts to defuse the crisis, meanwhile, were halting but ongoing. Government brass had signaled a wish to meet with opposition leaders but those talks have not yet gained traction, a senior U.S. official told CNN Friday.
Vice President Omar Suleiman's offer to meet opposition groups fell flat, said the official, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the rapidly evolving situation. No key opposition leaders showed up.
CNN ordered not to film Egypt protests
Egypt's 'day of departure'
Anderson Cooper takes on intimidation
Fire truck mows down protester
At a glance: Nations facing unrest
That opposition, a disparate group of at least six factions and political groups nominally headed by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, is still "jockeying," the official said, hedging their bets on how events will play out. Some have refused to negotiate until Mubarak steps down.
"The so-called dialogue is the first step to exhaust this revolution. The president must go," said Mohammed Habib, deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, an opposition Islamist group officially banned by the government.
Some opposition parties that had previously refused to meet with government officials, however, told CNN Friday they have agreed to meet with Suleiman on Saturday.
Refat Said, head of the left-leaning Tagammuparty, said his group will meet with the vice president, as will the liberal Wafd party. Ayman Nour, head of the al-Ghad party, said members of his group will decide soon on whether they will accept the government's invitation to meet.
"Based on promises that the government gave us that they will investigate into the Tahrir Square clashes, we agreed to meet tomorrow," said Fouad Badrawi, secretary-general of the Wafd party.
And 19 men, including veteran diplomat Amre Moussa, have formed a so-called "Committee of the Wise" in a bid to calm the crisis. The group of independents, which wants to be at the table during crucial government talks, has called for Mubarak to remain as a symbolic leader and to delegate to Suleiman responsibility for the transition period.
Day 11 of the uprising was mostly jubilant in Cairo's downtown square, but tensions remained high.
In another plaza just half a kilometer away from Tahrir Square, supporters and foes of Mubarak fought running street battles. Youths wielding sticks and rocks engaged in fights and the sound of gunfire rang out.
The Muslim Brotherhood reported that a security force accompanied by a "gang of thugs" stormed the office of its news website Friday and arrested the journalists, technicians and administrators. The satellite news network Al-Jazeera reported a similar attack on its Cairo office.
Those attacks came after two days of violence and a government crackdown on journalists and human rights activists bearing witness to the crisis. Some had predicted the demonstrations might lose their momentum.
That was hardly the case as anti-government protesters jammed TahrirSquare chanting slogans like "He leaves, we don't leave" and "The blood of the martyrs will not be forgotten." A massive banner in the middle of the square said in English: "The people demand the removal of the regime."
The demonstrators built a barbed-wire barricade and stacked piles of rocks throughout the square, surrounded Friday by soldiers in riot gear and tanks.
Volunteers checked identification cards of people entering the square and searched them for weapons. Others stood by with emergency medical kits.
Large screens showed coverage of the demonstrations on state television and Al-Jazeera as people played music, sang patriotic songs and danced. A man with an Egyptian flag wrapped around his head sat on a curb, flashing a victory sign.
It was a remarkable change from the scenes that unfolded in the square Wednesday and Thursday when pro- and anti-Mubarak supporters clashed repeatedly, leaving at least 11 people dead and more than 900 others injured.
The Health Ministry reported that at least 5,000 people have been injured since the demonstrations began in Egypt early last week.
Many believe the violent clashes were orchestrated by the embattled regime and on Friday, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a "transparent and impartial" probe.
But defenders of Mubarak were notably absent from the square Friday. Instead, they staged a "Day of Loyalty" rally at a nearby mosque.
Mubarak has said he will not seek another term in the September election, but now faces increasing pressure from the United States and other world powers to step aside much sooner.
U.S. President Barack Obama skirted the question of whether Mubarak should resign immediately Friday, saying instead that the "key question" the Egyptian president should be asking himself is "how do I leave a legacy behind" that helps Egypt get through the current transition.
"There needs to be a transition process that begins now. That transition must initiate a process that respects the universal rights of the Egyptian people and that leads to free and fair elections," Obama said.
Later, a senior U.S. official said that Obama's remarks reflected the fact that the United States recognizes that certain legitimate legislative hurdles must be taken care of before Mubarak steps down. While pressing for Mubarak to act quickly, the U.S. official said the White House recognizes the process will take some time.
The Obama administration is hopeful negotiations will begin Saturday between members of Mubarak's government and various opposition representatives, the senior U.S. official said.
Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told the Al-Arabiya network that it would take until September to work out constitutional issues so that a new government could come to power.
At this juncture, said Shafiq, compromises were key as the country pursues dialogue with opposition groups.
Opposition leader ElBaradei told CNN's Eliot Spitzer late Friday that he has been in contact with various parties, united in their belief that Mubarak must go.
"We have been in agreement right now that we'd probably have a presidential council of three members including somebody from the army. We have a caretaker government ... who would then run the country for a year, prepare the grounds for the necessary changes in the electoral process to ensure that we will have all what we need for a free and fair election," he said.
ElBaradei did not rule out the possibility of his running for president.
The thirst for immediate change was evident as rallies took place in several Egyptian cities.
In Alexandria, thousands made their way from the city's central mosque down the wide seaside Corniche.
"This is a great revolution and the whole regime, the entire system needs to be changed. The revolution must continue until all objectives are met," the mosque's imam told the crowd.
Writing on the walls leading to the mosque, where police and anti-government demonstrators clashed last Friday, said "Game OVER" and "Pharaoh's last day."
Roughly 35,000 people took to the streets Friday in the city of Suez, a spokesman for opposition leader Ayman Nour told CNN.
Among the protesters in Cairo was Moussa, the Arab League's secretary-general, and Muhammad Rifaa al-Tahtawi, spokesman for Al-Azhar University, the prestigious center for Sunni Muslim education.
Al-Tahtawi told CNN he resigned from his Al-Azhar position and joined the anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square.
"I am against the regime. And I am supporting the revolution," he said.
Mubarak told ABC News Thursday that he would like to step down right away, but cannot because he does not want to risk plunging his nation into chaos.
"I don't care what people say about me," Mubarak told ABC. "Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt.
"I was very unhappy about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other," he said in the interview conducted at the heavily guarded presidential palace, where the embattled leader has been staying with his family.
He accused the Muslim Brotherhood for instigating the violence, while his deputy also laid blame on the media.
"I actually blame certain friendly nations who have television channels, they are not friendly at all, who have intensified the youth against the nation and the state," Suleiman said on Nile TV. "They have filled in the minds of the youth with wrongdoings, with allegations, and this is unacceptable."
The government cracked down Thursday, arresting and beating journalists and human rights workers documenting events.
The harassment continued Friday with the storming of Al-Jazeera's office in Cairo. The network reported its office was attacked and burned by "gangs of thugs."
In the last week its bureau was forcibly closed, all its journalists had press credentials revoked, and nine journalists were detained at various stages. Al-Jazeera has also faced unprecedented levels of interference in its broadcast signal as well as persistent and repeated attempts to bring down its websites, the network said.
Late Friday, Human Rights Watch, a rights organization, said that Egyptian authorities had released researchers from its group, Amnesty International and two foreign journalists. It called on officials to also free its Egyptian colleagues, who it says are still detained.
"Why doesn't the government want us around?" asked New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, "What is it that it plans to do in the next few days that it really doesn't want cameras to be able to report on?"
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy organization, said Friday it has documented at least 101 attacks on journalists and news facilities this week. The advocacy group cited numerous media reports claiming that Ahmad Mohamed Mahmoud, a journalist working for the newspaper Al-Ta'awun, had died of wounds suffered while filming the protests.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration continues "to receive very disturbing reports" of "systematic targeting" of journalists in Egypt.
Appalled by the attacks, U.S. officials encouraged Mubarak's government to plan a path out of power.
Vice President Joe Biden urged his Egyptian counterpart to ensure that "credible, inclusive negotiations begin immediately" with opposition political groups to expedite the creation of a new democratic government, according to a statement from Biden's office.
The U.S. Senate, meanwhile approved a resolution calling for Mubarak to immediately begin a peaceful transition and transfer power to a caretaker government.
Image via WikipediaWhere are the moderates? - Israel Opinion, Ynetnews
.
