Middle East and North Africa:Another year of Upheaval

RSIS presents the following commentary Middle East and North Africa: Another year of Upheaval by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at  RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

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No. 011/2013 dated 23 January 2013

Middle East and North Africa:
Another year of Upheaval

 By James M. Dorsey
       

Synopsis

Political turmoil and violence promise to shape events in the Middle East and North Africa this year. Monarchies are replacing republics in facing the tidal wave of reform demands in the region. Syria continues to be wracked by civil war while post-revolt nations like Egypt struggle to build a more open society.

Commentary

THE PRE-and post-revolt Arab leaders in the Middle East and North Africa face challenges ranging from political uprisings to violent confrontations, with Gulf monarchies replacing republics facing the brunt of the tidal wave of reform demands that have been sweeping across the region the past two years.

In Jordan opposition groups boycotted parliamentary elections in protest against alleged gerrymandering. The boycott follows weeks of intermittent demonstrations that suggested that King Abdullah’s room to manoeuver is closing. The king enjoys a degree of legitimacy that ousted Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi could not claim. That legitimacy was called into question with protesters for the first time shouting ‘The people want to topple the regime’ and is likely to be further challenged by the election of a parliament that will look little different from the last one.

International community’s policy dilemmas

Egypt, in the throes of a convoluted post-revolt transition, is bracing itself for renewed street violence when a Cairo court announces its verdict on January 26 in the case against 73 people, including nine mid-level security officials, accused of responsibility for the death a year ago of 74 soccer fans in a politically charged brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said. At issue is the difficulty in reforming institutions, in this case the overpowering and deeply resented police and security forces.

Two years into the uprising-turned-civil war in Syria, there seems no end in sight to the brutal conflict that according to United Nations estimates, has already cost the lives of 60,000 people. There seems little doubt that President Bashar al-Assad will not retain the upper hand eventually. But there is little reason to believe that his downfall will mean an end to violent confrontation and the territorial integrity of post-Assad Syria has been thrown into doubt. Fears of what post-Assad Syria will look like are enhanced by the rise of militant Islamist forces in the armed resistance against the Assad regime as well as the rise of Kurdish nationalism and concern that Assad’s Alawite sect may see secession as its survival strategy.

Besides mounting concern about post-Assad Syria, there is a new development in the form of a fatal terrorist attack on a remote gas production facility in the Algerian desert in response to French intervention in neighbouring Mali. A counter-attack by Algerian forces to the take-over of the gas plant left scores of foreign hostages dead. The fact that the rebel advance in north Mali had to be repulsed by French military forces highlight the policy dilemmas confronting the international community posed by the irresistible thrust for greater freedom by ethnic and minority groups across the Sahel region.

Decade of political turmoil and violence

All these bode ill for potential conflict in the oil-rich Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, where efforts to fend off popular revolts with huge social spending are wearing thin. Gulf monarchies like Jordan (apart from Bahrain’s royal family), still maintain a degree of legitimacy but their ability to leverage is being reduced by their failure to address key popular demands that would allow greater political freedom but dilute their absolute power. The outlook for not just another year but a decade is one of volatility, political turmoil and violence in a region that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf.

What all these situations have in common is the fact that suppressed populations and ethnic groups increasingly no longer are willing to simply turn the other cheek. They also raise concerns about regional and international policies that in the case of countries like Algeria, Jordan and the Gulf states are tantamount to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. Leaders seem to be hoping that mounting unrest and discontent can be contained without the introduction of political change and that they can crack down on violent jihadist groups without addressing the underlying issues that provide them a feeding ground.

The West, China and Russia, still stuck in a mould that favours stability over inevitable albeit messy political change, were caught off guard by the popular revolts that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and dragged Syria into civil war. They have yet to apply the lessons from these popular revolts to the rest of North Africa and the Middle East.

Addressing popular grievances

Similarly, the lesson of the defeat of Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was that it was as much a result of the Arab populations ignoring the group’s call for jihad in favour of people power as the war on terror. Extremist militants in Mali and Algeria, even when they employ the Al Qaeda label, are motivated by local grievances rather than global jihad and capitalise on the failure of governments to address those grievances. Failure to recognise that the solution is addressing popular grievances constitutes as much a threat to long-term stability as allowing those grievances to fester in a key corner of the world. Short-term volatility and instability is inevitable as the regional push for change continues. The international community would be well advised to seriously help post-revolt nations manage transition, steer pre-revolt countries towards managed reform and in the confrontation with jihadists to ensure that military and law enforcement measures are grounded in policies that address underlying grievances.

   
James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and co director of the Institute for Fan Culture of the University of Wuerzburg in Germany.. He is the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

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Tahrir and Change Squares: Two Models of Subverted Revolts

RSIS presents the following commentary Tahrir and Change Squares: Two Models of Subverted Revolts by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg  No. 187/2011 dated 22 December 2011 Tahrir and Change Squares:  Two Models of Subverted Revolts By James M. Dorsey    Synopsis Continuing demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Sanaa’s Change Square  represent the protracted struggle for power in the Middle East-North Africa region:  one against the dominant military, the other against the reincarnated regime of an  ousted president. Both also show how Saudi-led efforts to support Egypt’s  military-led regime and Yemen’s newly appointed government have deprived  protesters of the fruits of their revolt.                                                                        Commentary THE POPULAR revolts in Egypt and Yemen have been put on the defensive by  a combination of Islamist electoral success and Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council  (GCC) support for Egypt’s military and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Despite  being under siege, Saleh has been showing an uncanny ability to neutralise a  GCC-negotiated agreement that would ease him out of office by February. Islamists have successfully exploited Egypt’s first post-revolt election to marginalise  the protesters on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, who battled with security forces last month,  resulting in 42 dead. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi Al Nur movement  together won an absolute majority in the first two of three rounds in the first  parliamentary elections since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last February.  The final outcome will be determined in a third round of voting in January. From square to ballot box The intial election result has positioned the Salafis as the main competitor of the  protesters on Tahrir Square in challenging establishment political parties and forces,  whether remnants of the ancien regime, the country’s military rulers or the Muslim  Brotherhood (MB), with the MB being viewed by many as the opposition wing of the  old established order. The new parliament is expected to appoint most of the  members of the committee that will be tasked with drafting a new constitution in  advance of a presidential election in June 2012. The electoral success of the MB and their rivals, the Salafis – a heterogeneous  movement of fundamentalist Muslims who want to return to the practices of Islam’s  7th century Caliphs -- has shifted the battle against the old regime, the military rulers  and established political parties, from the square to the ballot box. The military, despite contradictory statements on whether it would recognise the  election result by allowing parliament to exercise power, sought to reinforce that  shift in bitter battles with protesters camped out in front of the newly appointed prime  minister’s office. At least 10 people were killed and more than 300 wounded in ongoing  clashes. The military is trying to move the protesters away from the prime minister’s  office and out of the square in the belief that a majority of Egyptians, by casting  their vote, have opted for electoral politics. The Egyptian military and the Salafis may be on opposite side of the fence, but they  both in their respective ways serve Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) efforts  to blunt the edge of popular revolts sweeping the Middle East that have also toppled the  leaders of Tunisia and Libya, forced the exit of Yemen’s President Saleh and pushed  Syria to the brink of civil war. Both the military council and Salafis are supported by the  Saudis through US $4 billion in assistance to the military regime and reported funding  for the Salafis through public and private donations. The Salafis electoral success however constitutes a mixed blessing for the Saudis.  The participation of a strand of Islam closely associated with that of the kingdom  implicitly challenges Saudi assertions that democracy contradicts Islam. Backfiring in Yemen            While the Saudi strategy is effectively rendering the Egyptian protesters marginal,  it is backfiring in Yemen where a GCC-negotiated agreement for Saleh’s departure  from power has enabled him to maintain his grip even though he has officially handed  over to his vice-president. Since his return from medical treatment in Riyadh Saleh’s  agreement to leave office following an election scheduled for February 2012 leaves him  enough time and space to consolidate his power instead. He has also authorised his  vice-president to appoint a new cabinet -- in violation of the constitution. Under the GCC agreement Saleh gets to remain in Yemen with immunity from  prosecution, while his family members retain control of key military units and his  vice-president becomes president for the next two years as a new constitution is drafted. All this has stiffened the opposition of the protesters on Sanaa’s Change Square who reject  the deal. Unlike the protesters on Tahrir Square who have faded from public view, the  protests on Change Square have been reinforced by the recent awarding of a Nobel peace  prize to a Change Square leader Tawakkol Karman. Their resolve is further strengthened by the failure of the energy-rich Gulf states to  alleviate the economic suffering in the Arab world’s poorest state. Though Yemen, far  more than Egypt, is dependent on foreign aid for relief, the Gulf states have refused  Yemen’s repeated appeals for improved access of Yemeni workers to GCC labour markets.  These have been restricted since the expulsion in the early 1990s of one million Yemenis   from Saudi Arabia in retaliation for Yemeni support of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.  Opening up labour markets would allow labourers to send remittances back to a country in  economic collapse. One striking exception, and a model for what Saudi Arabia and other GCC states could do  to prevent further destabilisation of Yemen and a potential threat to Gulf security, is an  initiative by a foundation headed by the wife of the emir of Qatar, Sheikha Moza. Her foundation  acts to create jobs in Yemen, whose labour force is largely under-skilled and where youth  unemployment is estimated at 50 per cent, to increase vocational training in Yemen and  incubate start-ups. Islamist tide         Nonetheless, on both Tahrir Square and Change Square, protesters have found themselves marginalised. The main factors behind this marginalisation are the established political forces with the political machinery and experience to exploit the transition for their own ends, and the Saudi-supported Salafis who are riding the Islamist tide sweeping the region. The fate of the Tahrir Square protesters will depend on whether the elections, due to end in mid-January, are perceived as having advanced the revolt’s cause. By contrast, Sanaa’s Change Square still has wind in its sails. There is a growing perception that the GCC agreement has failed to oust Saleh while Yemen’s wealthy neighbours stand by as the country sinks into a deeper morass. As a result Change Square seems to have a longer lease of life than its more famous counterpart in Cairo. James Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He has been a journalist covering the Middle East for over 30 years. Click here for past commentaries. Find us on Facebook. Due to the high number of publications by our RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS), RSIS maintains a separate subscription facility for the Centre. Please click here to subscribe to the Centre's publications.

Awlaki’s death highlights Yemeni president’s increasing irrelevance

Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh recuperating from wounds in Saudi Arabia

By James M. Dorsey

If the killing of US-Yemeni jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki highlights the increasing marginalization of Al Qaeda, it also weakens embattled Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s effort to cling to power despite six months of anti-government protests that have brought his country to the brink of civil war.

Mr. Saleh, who returned to Yemen last week from three months of treatment of severe wounds he suffered during an attack in June on his presidential compound, has sought to portray himself as the only obstacle to Al Qaeda grapping power in the Red Sea geo-strategic country straddling Red Sea. In recent interviews, he has asserted that his departure would bring the Muslim Brotherhood and with it Al Qaeda to power in Yemen.

Mr. Awlaki’s death compounds the major body blows Al Qaeda has suffered in the past ten months with the killing in May by US Navy Seals of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and the Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

It also significantly reduces Mr. Saleh’s controversial role in the fight against an increasingly weakened Al Qaeda.

US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks detail the president’s willingness to allow the US to conduct a military campaign against Al Qaeda on its territory as long as he could maintain plausible deniability because of overwhelming public opposition to foreign operations on Yemeni territory.

At the same time, the cables discussed Mr. Saleh’s failure to provide agreed anti-terror training to Yemeni airport officials, permitting of cargo to pass through x-ray machines unchecked and refusal to act on US suspicions that several Yemeni Islamic institutions were Al Qaeda recruiting grounds.

Few doubt that Mr. Saleh has repeatedly manipulated the terrorist threat in Yemen and played both ends against the middle to curry US and European favor. Powerful dissident military commander Brigadier-General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the head of the first armored brigade who defected to the protesters in March, has gone as far as charging that Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affilitate to which Mr. Awlaki belongs was a creature of Mr. Saleh’s making to secure Western military and economic support.

From a US perspective, Al Qaeda has been weakened to a degree that it can risk Mr. Saleh being succeeded by a government that at worst would be as unreliable and duplicit an ally as he was.

The peaceful mass anti-government protests that toppled Egyptian and Tunisian presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine el Abedine Ben Ali, brought the autocratic regimes of Syrian president Bashar al Assad and Mr. Saleh to the brink of demise, and only morphed into a civil war in Libya after ousted Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi employed his armed forces highlight the rejection of Al Qaeda’s militant Islam and indiscriminate violence by a majority of Middle Easterners and North Africans.

Mr. Awlaki’s death may well strengthen a growing belief that Al Qaeda has been reduced to a local threat in the three areas where it still retains a presence of any significance: Yemen with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that suffered a serious blow with the departure of the Yemeni-American cleric, Somalia where Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabab has been forced to surrender territory in recent months and Algeria where Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has largely limited itself to harassing Algerian forces.

Increasingly, western counterterrorism officials and analysts are coming to the conclusion that the body blows dealt to Al Qaeda render it incapable of launching large scale, dramatic attacks of the kind it perpetrated in the last decade such as the 9/11 targeting of the World Trade Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the 2005 and 2007 attacks on public transport in London and Madrid and the bombings of multiple targets in Casablanca, Amman and Saudi Arabia. The attacks in Arab cities moreover played a key role in diminishing Al Qaeda’s public appeal in much of the Muslim world.

Western counterterrorism officials stop short of declaring victory in their more than a decade-old fight against Al Qaeda. Yet, the organization they are fighting today is but a shadow of what it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Saleh’s inability to leverage his cooperation in the hunting down of Mr. Awlaki to reduce US, Western and Saudi pressure for his resignation after 33 years in office was evident with the Obama administration’s reiteration of its insistence that he step down in the same breath as acknowledging his part in the death of the Yemeni-American.

US and European diplomats are nudging Mr. Saleh behind closed doors to agree to a transition plan under which he would step down within a maximum of 30 days in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself and members of his family.

Mr. Saleh’s contribution to the killing of Mr. Awlaki may amount to little more than standing aside and letting the US do the dirty work. In doing so, he may have highlighted his increasing irrelevance rather than his importance. Mr. Saleh’s successors will not need the perception of a terrorist threat to secure international assistance in rebuilding their crisis-ridden country.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Embattled Yemeni leader turns to soccer to polish his tattered image

Yemeni president Saleh poses with national soccer team (Source: Reuters)

By James M. Dorsey

Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s meeting Sunday with his country’s national youth soccer team highlights the importance of soccer as a battlefield in the struggle between Arab autocrats and pro-democracy activists.

Mr. Saleh congratulated team for their qualification for the 2011 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup finals barely two days after returning to Yemen from three months of treatment in Saudi Arabia of severe wounds he suffered in an attack in June on his presidential compound by opposition forces.

The Yemeni leader took time out to bask in the success of the squad in a bid to shore up his tattered image in a soccer-crazy country that is teetering on the brink of civil war as a result of sixth months of mass anti-government protests demanding his resignation from 33 years in office. He did so as troops commanded by his son attacked protesters and clashed with rebel army units in battles that raised the death toll of eight days of violence to more than 100 despite Mr. Saleh’s declaration of a ceasefire.

Associating himself with one of the country’s greatest passions is part of Mr. Saleh’s survival strategy that involves as he announced in a televised speech on Sunday early presidential elections. Mr. Saleh’s proposal is unlikely to curry favor with his opponents who demand his immediate resignation, constitutional reform and only then elections. Mr. Saleh repeatedly agreed earlier this year to a Gulf-Cooperation Council (GCC) deal in which he would resign in exchange for immunity from prosecution only to back out at the last minute.

In associating himself with soccer, Mr. Saleh is following in the footsteps of other Middle Eastern and North African autocrats, including the ousted leaders of Egypt and Libya and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who saw soccer as a way to boost their tarnished images.

US embassy cables disclosed by Wikileaks detail the fuelling of nationalist emotions by Mr. Mubarak’s sons Gamal, who the president was believed to be grooming as his successor, and Alaa, to shore up the regime’s image after riots erupted in the wake of a crucial 2009 World Cup qualifier in which Algeria dashed Egypt’s hopes of playing in the tournament’s finals in South Africa. A November 25, 2009 cable said the only time Gamal displayed emotion during a presentation on healthcare was when he discussed the violence that took place in the Sudanese capital Khartoum where the match was played.

A 2009 US cable describes how Mr. Ahmadinejad sought with limited success to associate himself with Iran’s national team and soccer’s popularity. The Iranian president went as far as in 2006 lifting the ban on women watching soccer matches in Iranian stadia, but in a rare public disagreement was overruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The Iranian leader has also been hands-on in the management of the Iranian team. The cable reports that he pressured the Iranian football federation to lift its 2008 suspension of star Ali Karimi so that he could play in 2010 World Cup qualifiers, engineered the 2009 firing of Ali Daei as coach, ensured that Mr. Daei’s successor Mohamed Mayeli-Kohan lasted all of two weeks in the job and ultimately was succeeded by the president’s candidate, Afshin Ghotbi.

Mr. Ahmadinejad justified his interference by saying that “unfortunately, this sport has been afflicted with some very bad issues. I must intervene personally to push aside these destructive issues.”

Mr. Saleh heaped praise on the Yemeni youth team. “Your performance has been excellent. You have proved that the Yemeni sports are continuously developed and able to compete in the Arab, regional and international sports events" the president told them. He said that he had followed the team closely during his recovery in Saudi Arabia and that his government would fully support it.

Mr. Saleh’s meeting with the soccer players echoes rifts in society and the game that emerged during the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya where managers and players often stayed on the side lines of the battle for greater freedom or even expressed support for the embattled leader. In Egypt, militant fans unfurled a banner during one of the first matches after Mr. Mubarak’s demise that read: "We followed you everywhere but in the hard times we didn't find you."

Player and soccer manager attitudes towards the revolts in the Middle East and North Africa reflect a complex relationship of the ruled with the dictator that is evident across the region. It is an attitude that cannot be reduced to vested economic interest or privilege but constitutes an expression of the dictator’s success in getting those he rules to internalize his positioning as the nation’s father. It is that rupture of the internalization articulated in statements of protesters that they had broken the barrier of fear that constitutes the core of the region’s newly found people power.

The internalization of the dictator as a father figure means that players and managers often support protesters’ demands for an end to corruption, greater transparency and more freedom, but object to the perceived indignity to which they see their leader or father as being subjected to. It is an attitude that resembles that of a child who defends his father irrespective of whether his father is right or wrong.

Mr. Saleh’s focus on soccer highlights the struggle between autocrats and activists for control of the soccer pitch and the credibility that emanates from the one institution and venue that commands the kind of deep-seated passion evoked by religion in a conservative swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf.

For militant soccer fans, who emerged as soccer increasingly became a political football, wresting control of the pitch from autocratic regimes is a battle against the yoke of autocratic rule, economic mismanagement and corruption. It also signifies the quest for dignity; for national, ethnic and sectarian identity and women’s rights.

Fans from Algeria to Iran have resisted the efforts by the region’s autocrats to politically control stadiums by repeatedly turning them into venues to express pent-up anger and frustration, assert national, ethnic and sectarian identity and demand women’s rights. “The battle is on the soccer pitch because there is no freedom and no political competition. Talking doesn’t change things. We fought for our rights in the stadium for four years. That prepared us for the day that the revolt against Mubarak erupted,” said Ahmad Fondu, a leader of militant, highly politicized, violence-prone soccer fans in Egypt.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.