Voting in Egypt

Egypt's first post-Mubarak election is under way. The system is complex and murky, with three rounds of voting for the Parliament and three others for a weak upper house, and I think it's safe to say nobody knows how this will work out. The complexity may be a mechanism to allow interference by the military or their friends in the judiciary, or it may be intended to keep any one party from winning an outright majority, forcing behind the scenes coalition building. So far observers report little obvious fraud or intimidation, and a high turnout.

Update on the Syrian Revolt

I have never thought that Syria's brave protesters really had a chance of overthrowing the Assad regime, which seems to have a firm hold on the army and other key levers of power. But French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe disagrees, and since his government was largely responsible for getting the west to support the revolt against Gaddhafi, perhaps we should pay attention:

"It's true that in New York (at the United Nations) we were blocked, and that is a stain on the Security Council, which said almost nothing about this barbaric repression," Juppe said on France Inter radio. "This will end with the fall of the regime, it is nearly unavoidable, but unfortunately it could take time because the situation is complex, because there is a risk of civil war between Syrian factions, because surrounding Arab countries do not want us to intervene."

Juppe pointed out that Turkey, which had been opposing any outside intervention, has been moving toward the western view, and indeed I just saw a news story saying that Turkey is harboring an armed rebel group dedicated to overthrowing Assad.

Great News from Tunisia

In Tunisia, the first election of the Arab Spring has come off peacefully and all sides are accepting the results. This is great news for Tunisians and good news for everyone in the Middle East. Tunisia is probably the most westernized Arabic-speaking country, so if they could not make democracy work, it is unlikely that anyone in the region could. Their success will encourage democrats elsewhere.

The party that won 40% of the vote, Ennahda, is described as "Islamist," but this is a little tendentious. So far as anyone can tell at this point, they are Islamic in about the same sense that Italy's Christian Democrats are Catholic. Their Islam does not pose any great threat to democracy or human rights. They will probably turn out to be more conservative about social issues and women's issues than I would like, but, hey, they won the election. Since every poll ever taken in the Arab world shows that most people want their governments to be explicitly Islamic, it is not possible to have states in the region that are democratic without being Islamic in some sense. Parties like Ennahda or the Turkish Justice and Development Party represent the liberal side of what is possible, and we should cheer that.

Obama and Libya

Michael Hastings has an interesting piece in Rolling Stone about the Obama Administration's decision to intervene in Libya. Nothing really new in it, but it does given what looks like a nice summary of the process. The first interesting thing about the intervention is that the three insiders most involved in pushing for it were women. The first proponents were Susan Rice and Samantha Powers, both "liberal interventionists" determined not to allow a genocide on their watch, and they were soon joined by Hillary Clinton.

Another interesting point is that Obama, determined to avoid what everyone has criticized about the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Iraq operation, set up a working group to debate options and outcomes in Libya as soon as the revolution began. Contributions to this discussion were sought widely, including from administration opponents like Elliott Abrams. The upshot seems to have been that the downside to intervention was not really all that scary: many people had vague fears about intervening in yet another Muslim country, but there were no realistic scenarios that posed a big threat to the US. Among the opponents was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and most of the Pentagon brass, but in the final meeting Obama overruled their opposition:

According to one participant's summary, Obama said: Look, the question of who rules Libya is probably not a vital interest to the United States. The atrocities threatened don't compare to atrocities in other parts of the world, I hear that. But there's a big "but" here. First of all, acting would be the right thing to do, because we have an opportunity to prevent a massacre, and we've been asked to do it by the people of Libya, their Arab neighbors and the United Nations. And second, the president said, failing to intervene would be a "psychological pendulum, in terms of the Arab Spring, in favor of repression." He concluded: "Just signing on to a no-fly zone so that we have political cover isn't going to cut it. That's not how America leads." Nor, he added, is it the "image of America I believe in."

As I read this, the decisive factor seems to have been a desire to somehow support the Arab Spring. The movement for freedom in the Arab world has stalled in Egypt, and we could not figure out how to support it in Bahrain because we are essentially on the side of the Arab sheiks in their ongoing power struggle with Iran. In Libya we could support freedom at little cost ($1 billion so far, and no American lives lost), with the support of our key allies, and without much risk of a terrible outcome. So Obama decided to do it. As Bill Clinton put it when defending his intervention in Kosovo, "We can't do everything, but we should do what we can."

One Day, Bahrain Will Come Back to Bite Us

In Bahrain, we keep selling weapons to the Sunni government as they continue their disgusting crackdown on Shiite protesters:

A court in Bahrain sentenced a protester to death on Thursday for killing a police officer in March, and it issued harsh prison terms to medical workers who treated protesters wounded during the months of unrest there this spring, according to the official Bahrain News Agency. The punishments drew strong criticism from rights groups.

The agency reported that eight people it identified as doctors who worked at a central hospital in the capital, Manama, received 15-year sentences. Other medical personnel at the hospital, the Salmaniya Medical Complex, Bahrain’s largest public hospital, were given terms of between 5 and 15 years.

The sentences were the latest sign that the country’s Sunni monarchy would continue to deal severely with those involved in widespread protests this year, mostly held by members of its repressed Shiite majority. Much of that effort has been focused on the doctors and nurses who treated demonstrators.

At the height of the protests, security forces commandeered the Salmaniya hospital and arrested dozens of doctors and nurses. Rights activists have since accused the government of having made systematic efforts to deny medical services to wounded protesters. The international relief organization Doctors Without Borders stopped working in Bahrain last month after its offices were raided.

I know we are short of allies in a region increasingly dominated by Iran, but eventually the government in Bahrain is going to fall. When it does, we are going to regret having supported these thugs. To jail doctors for treating wounded people goes beyond your basic authoritarianism into seriously evil territory.

Zahi Fired Again

From the AP:

Egypt's antiquities minister, whose trademark Indiana Jones hat made him one the country's best known figures around the world, was fired Sunday after months of pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of having been too close to the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Zahi Hawass, long chided as publicity loving and short on scientific knowledge, lost his job along with about a dozen other ministers in a Cabinet reshuffle meant to ease pressure from protesters seeking to purge remnants of Mubarak's regime.

"He was the Mubarak of antiquities," said Nora Shalaby, an activist and archaeologist. "He acted as if he owned Egypt's antiquities, and not that they belonged to the people of Egypt." . . .

"He was a personality created by the media," said Abdel-Halim Abdel-Nour, the president of the Association of Egyptian Archeologists.

Of course, Hawass has already lost his job once in Egypt's political turmoil and gotten it back, so it remains to be seen if this is permanent. He is quite an operator. But how sad it must be for him to see his own trademark hat equated with the totally different hat of Indiana Jones -- who, Hawass liked to say, was obviously a copy of him anyway. I beg to differ with Abdel-Halim Abdel-Nour, though; Hawass was his own creation, one of the great self-promoters of our self-promotional age, and if he was often on television that was because he used television (and Egypt's antiquities) as instruments of his self-glorification.

Incidentally, last week Kate Taylor laid out in the Times how some of Hawass' financial and political deal-making worked. He gets $200,000 a year from National Geographic as an "Explorer in Residence", even though he is not an explorer and lives at his own house, and everybody assumes this is so National Geographic writers and photographers will continue to get good access to Egyptian archaeological sites. The gift shop at the Egyptian museum was closed after it was reported that Hawass awarded the contract for operating it to an associate in a sweet deal. And:

He has relationships — albeit ones he says he does not profit from — with two American companies that do business in Egypt. One, Arts and Exhibitions International, secured Mr. Hawass’s permission several years ago to take some of the country’s most precious treasures, the artifacts of King Tut, on a world tour; its top executives recently started a separate venture to market a Zahi Hawass line of clothing.

A second company, Exhibit Merchandising, has been selling replicas of Mr. Hawass’s hat for several years. Last year that company was hired to operate a new store in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Mr. Hawass says his share of the profits from those products goes directly to Egyptian charities.

Which seems to have been largely true, with the twist that the charities Hawass favored were controlled by the wife of ex-President Mubarak. Hawass could say in his defense that this was how things were done in Egypt and the if he had not played by the rules he could not have done all the good work he did promoting Egyptian archaeology. But to Egyptians the point of their revolution was to end that whole way of doing business. So Hawass, an archetype of that system, has to go.

Libya's Civilian Revolution

To understand why so many Europeans and Americans want to aid the Libyan rebels, have a look at William Booth's story in the Post:

As armed rebellions go, the enthusiastic revolutionaries here in Libya’s western mountains are amateurs, many schooled in battle from playing video games. They confess they sometimes fire their rifles over the heads of their enemies because they don’t like the sight of blood.

The fundamental problem with armed revolutions is that they breed leaders who are good at fighting nasty civil wars. To overthrow an established and powerful government has generally required years or decades of tough guerrilla fighting and the willingness to sacrifice almost everything else to achieve the goal, including the lives of whoever gets in the way. Successful rebels tend, therefore, to be very hard men: Lenin, Mao, Franco, Fidel Castro, and so on. When they get into power they continue to act in the way that made them successful before, that is, mobilizing supporters through propaganda campaigns, crushing opposition, and shooting opponents.

In Libya Booth found a very different sort of rebel, men who are so soft-hearted that they don't like to carry their weapons in public for fear of scaring children. So far they have proved to be almost completely incompetent at fighting, which is why NATO had to save them with a bombing campaign. But Booth believes, as a lot of European and American politicians seem to believe, that if we can somehow help them to win they will prove to be as un-militant in power as they have been on the battlefield.

Despite the fears of some friends of Israel, nobody has found much sign of Muslim radicalism among the rebels:

“We are good Muslims, not crazy Muslims,” said Muhammad Ali, who spent his college years in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Instead of Koranic history or revolutionary cant they speak the language that has made the Arab Spring such an appealing movement all across the Middle East, the language of people who want the freedom to lead normal lives:

Asked what kind of government they would like to see if Gaddafi surrenders power, a member of the Jadu transitional government, the animated Salem Badrini, said, “First, we want a country of love, where all are equal, all the same. We all say these things: We want justice, democracy and freedom, no arguments, no problems, okay?”

The schoolteachers, engineers, accountants, and other ordinary men who have volunteered to fight for Libyan freedom represent something rather remarkable in history, a revolution of civilians. I hope the Gaddafi regime collapses quickly and gives them their victory, for their sake, for the sake of Libya, and for the sake of a world that could use more soft-hearted heroes.

Is Gaddafi Teetering?

The CIA thinks so:

New U.S. intelligence assessments conclude that government forces, already beset with morale problems and a steady stream of defections, are now hard-pressed to find fuel for military vehicles after rebel troops shut down a key pipeline. If current trends continue, loyalists troops will run out of fuel by summer’s end, and the Gaddafi government will face a worsening cash and credit shortage because of international sanctions, the reports say.

While the momentum has generally favored the rebels for weeks, Western analysts are seeing troubles escalate on the loyalist side, possibly explaining the surge of interest in finding a negotiated end to the fighting, according to two senior U.S. officials who have seen the assessments.

Suppose his government collapses and he flees the country. Then what?

Complicated Politics in Syria

Joshua Landis has a long letter on his blog from “an American in Syria” with many interesting things to say about the brutal government crackdown there. The majority of the people in Syria are Sunni Muslims. However, the government is dominated by members of the Allawite sect, which is related to Shi’ite Islam, and there are substantial minorities of Shi’ites and Christians. The government has tried to portray the protests as a movement of radical Sunnis -- “Salafists” -- who are out to end religious toleration and impose a Taliban-style regime. This propaganda has had some success. The letter writer witnessed the government-imposed siege of Dera’a, where a whole city is being placed under house arrest because of protests, and was shocked to find that some of his friends in Damascus supported the crackdown:

I witnessed unreserved approval for the government crack down on a Thursday a week after the siege on Dera’a began. I visited some close Christian friends in Damascus who we can call Samer and Najwah. It was impossible not to broach the subject of the situation in Dera’a, knowing that the next day, Friday, would likely produce significant casualties. This household however, grimly viewed the army’s cordoning off and occupation of the city as necessity. I couldn’t help but begin to argue with them that even if there was a poisonous “Salafi” threat in the town, the siege and suppression would mean the suffering, trauma, and even killing of many innocent people as well. If some people from that area had indeed called for the establishment of an Islamic emirate (and it’s no surprise that some there would be oriented this way), I was just not convinced that the entire city, the many thousands protesting there, were all seeking such a goal.

For Najwah, however, the city of Dera’a has become a single entity containing one kind of people: bad. For her, the terrorist persuasion of the people in that community now justifies virtually any action against them. From her attitude, I felt that if the city was to be wiped off the map, she wouldn’t mind. I began to mention reports of the more grisly examples of violent killings there. “Good!” was her angry response.

In Syria, at least, “Salafists” are terrorist bogeymen invoked by the regime to justify its oppression, not a party with any real political support. Any support radical Muslims do have comes from 1) hatred of the existing, basically secular regime, and 2) hatred of Israel, which leads Syrians to support Hizbullah and Hamas.

Art in Egypt

Interesting article by Philip Kennicott in the Post about the arts scene in Egypt. Having spent the past thirty years trying to criticize the regime in ways that would slip past the censors, or at least not get them arrested, Egyptian artists are now unsure what they want to do or how to go about it.

Artists here are particularly engaged with influencing the future of the freedom of expression. The revolution is still up for grabs, they say, with powerful, entrenched interests dragging Egypt in different directions. They are grappling with huge historical uncertainties: What happened? Has anything changed? And they are turning to the literature of South America, films made in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, even French comic books from the 1960s, for answers.

This is just one version of the problem faced by most modern artists: once they have disconnected themselves from the traditional interests of the aristocratic class, what should they say and do? Some become cynical and spend their time mocking the middle class, some struggle to hold onto a sense of opposition and revolution, while others focus on cashing in.

In the aftermath of Egypt's revolution, some artists will try to hold onto that miraculous moment. One of the artist's features in this peace, Lara Baladi,

speaks in almost mystical terms about the days she spent in Tahrir Square and what it all meant. . . . Beyond political revolution, she argues, Tahrir gave Egyptians a vision of religious and social unity that could refashion the nation’s most fundamental values. Baladi, a Christian with roots in Egypt and Lebanon, imagines the revolution transforming not just Egypt but the world.

But how to make art that will express such hopes without becoming mawkish?

At least, though, the artists have a sense of new possibilities, and a new vision of their country and themselves.

In Saudi Arabia, a Simple Kind of Protest

In the world capital of legalized sexism, a place where women

are not allowed to drive and must have written approval from a designated guardian -- a father, husband, brother or son -- to leave the country, work or travel abroad.

A small group of women have started protesting by simply doing the things that the law forbids:

Saudi authorities arrested a female activist on Sunday who launched a campaign to challenge a ban on women driving in the conservative kingdom and posted a video on the Internet of her driving, activists said. The YouTube video, posted on Thursday, has attracted more than 500,000 views and shows Manal Alsharif, who learned to drive in the United States, driving her car in Khobar in the oil-producing Eastern Province.

One day the oil-fueled alliance between the United States and the Saudi royal family is going to collapse.

Disconnections in the Arab Spring

In the New Left Review, Perry Anderson observes the disconnection between the stated goals of the rebellious Arab crowds and the social forces that seem to be behind the revolt. The goal of the protesters has been, in every case, democracy:

In place of the local despotism, what the huge crowds in squares and streets across the region are seeking is essentially political freedom. Democracy, no novelty as a term—virtually every regime made ample use of it—but unknown as a reality, has become a common denominator of the consciousness of the various national movements. Seldom articulated as a definite set of institutional forms, its attractive force has come more from its power as a negation of the status quo—as everything dictatorship is not—than from positive delineations of it. Punishment of corruption in the top ranks of the old regime figures more prominently than particulars of the constitution to come after it. The dynamic of the uprisings has been no less clear-cut for that. Their objective is, in the most classical of senses, purely political: liberty.

And yet, Anderson observes, Arabs have had the same political problem for decades. Why is the revolt happening now?-

The single spark that started the prairie fire suggests the answer. Everything began with the death in despair of a pauperized vegetable vendor, in a small provincial town in the hinterland of Tunisia. Beneath the commotion now shaking the Arab world have been volcanic social pressures: polarization of incomes, rising food prices, lack of dwellings, massive unemployment of educated—and uneducated—youth, amid a demographic pyramid without parallel in the world. In few other regions is the underlying crisis of society so acute, nor the lack of any credible model of development, capable of integrating new generations, so plain.

Yet to date, between the deeper social springs and the political aims of the Arab revolt there has been an all but complete disjuncture.

I see the same disconnection, and it worries me. It worries me because democracy will not lead in any simple or quick way to better jobs. Even if, as many of the protesters believe, their nations are being held back economically by entrenched corruption, the short-term impact of dismantling state enterprises and breaking up monopolies will be disruption and lost jobs. Will ordinary Egyptians lose faith in democracy if it takes (as is likely) a decade or more for the new regime to deliver better lives? Will political freedom compensate for economic turmoil?

Obama on the Middle East

The President, today:

Our opposition to Iran's intolerance - as well as its illicit nuclear program, and its sponsorship of terror - is well known. But if America is to be credible, we must acknowledge that our friends in the region have not all reacted to the demands for change consistent with the principles that I have outlined today. That is true in Yemen, where President Saleh needs to follow through on his commitment to transfer power. And that is true, today, in Bahrain.

Bahrain is a long-standing partner, and we are committed to its security. We recognise that Iran has tried to take advantage of the turmoil there, and that the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law. Nevertheless, we have insisted publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain's citizens, and will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can't have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail. The government must create the conditions for dialogue, and the opposition must participate to forge a just future for all Bahrainis.

Indeed, one of the broader lessons to be drawn from this period is that sectarian divides need not lead to conflict. In Iraq, we see the promise of a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process, even as they have taken full responsibility for their own security. Like all new democracies, they will face setbacks. But Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region if it continues its peaceful progress. As they do, we will be proud to stand with them as a steadfast partner.

Nice to see the President whacking the oppressors in Bahrain. But I wonder if it is really a great idea to hold up Iraq, where political violence takes a hundred lives a month, as a model of multi-sect democracy.

Syria

I am simply amazed at what is happening in Syria. The government has used tanks and live ammunition to suppress the protests, but despite the death of more than 500 protesters and the arrest of more than 5,000, the protests continue.

Friday marked the seventh week since protesters first took to the streets, initially in small numbers and to call only for reforms. But as the government has responded to the unrest with escalating force, so has the protest movement persisted and spread, and it now seems clear that much of the country is in open revolt against the regime.

Responding to calls by activists to stage a “day of defiance” to protest the security crackdown, people swarmed out of mosques after noontime prayers in dozens of locations around the country, many of them calling for the overthrow of the regime.

I don't see how this movement can succeed, but given the great bravery of the protesters, anything seems possible.

Standing By Passively

The Washington Post is upset about what the editors call "Shameful US Inaction on Syria":

Massacres on this scale usually prompt a strong response from Western democracies, as they should. Ambassadors are withdrawn; resolutions are introduced at the U.N. Security Council; international investigations are mounted and sanctions applied. In Syria’s case, none of this has happened. The Obama administration has denounced the violence — a presidential statement called Friday’s acts of repression “outrageous” — but otherwise remained passive. Even the ambassador it dispatched to Damascus during a congressional recess last year remains on post.

To this I say: 1) nothing short of an invasion is going to dislodge Assad or change his policies; 2) invasion would be a disaster, even assuming we could find troops and planes to start another war in a fourth Muslim country; so 3) nothing we do at this point matters. Sure, we could denounce Assad and call for his ouster, and I wish we would. But I doubt he is going to be ousted, and the denunciations would only make it harder for us to deal with the regime later. Syria is not Egypt, where we have strong ties with the military, or Bahrain, allegedly a close ally. Syria is our enemy, and we already have sanctions in place against them. We have no leverage in Syria.

Anger should be directed at the oppressors, not outsiders who refuse to intervene in what is, really, the Syrians' business.

Injustice in Bahrain

Our Sunni friends in Bahrain are continuing and extending their crackdown on the Shi'ite opposition:

The repression extends beyond political leaders and activists associated with the largely Shiite-led demonstrations that began Feb. 14. Family members and associates of people detained say that the government is targeting Shiites indiscriminately, regardless of their political activity, and with a particular focus on doctors and educators.

“It is retribution,” said one prominent opposition figure, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of arrest. “But it is also an ethnic cleansing of top professions.”

One political leader estimated that as many as 1,200 people have been fired in recent weeks.

Why is it that we are sending supplies and drones to the Libyan opposition but turning our backs on the people of Bahrain? This is a government we are supposed to be on friendly terms with, but I see no evidence that we are putting any pressure on them at all.

Revolutionary Graffiti in Libya

A collection.

Ignatius on Libya

David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who has very good connections in the CIA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus, had an interesting column over the weekend. He wrote,

Col. Moammar Gaddafi has always depended on one strategic resource to hold his loopy government together, and that’s cash. But as the U.N.-backed coalition tightens its squeeze, Gaddafi is slowly running out of money — and his inner circle is showing early signs of collapse.

White House officials described a pressure campaign that is seizing Gaddafi’s assets, pounding his military and establishing covert links with both the rebels and members of his government. As this chokehold tightens, U.S. officials believe that Gaddafi’s regime is likely to implode around him or he’ll be forced to flee. . . .

The clearest sign that the squeeze is working was the defection Wednesday of Musa Kusa, Libya’s foreign minister and longtime intelligence chief for Gaddafi. He fled to Britain after what an intelligence source said was a ruse in which Kusa claimed to be heading to Tunisia to make a secret sale of refined oil products. The cover story illustrates Gaddafi’s desperate need for funds.

Ignatius also heard reports that we are bribing Libyan tribal leaders to abandon Qaddafi.

I would like to think that Obama has some secret plan in place and that bombing tanks along the Benghazi Road is a cover for something deeper and more intelligent, but I don't have that much faith in my government. I suppose time will tell.

Libyan Ambiguity

David Brooks:

I oppose the policy the Obama administration has described in various public statements. I support the policy the administration is actually executing.

I, too, think that the President is not being honest about his policy, which seems to be to force Qaddafi's ouster by any means short of invasion.

Egyptian Democracy

Nick Kristof says things are going about as expected in Egypt:

Nearly two months after street protests inspired a democratic revolution, the transitional military-backed government has proposed — you guessed it — a law banning protests. That’s partly because everybody is protesting, even the police. The cops want more money, perhaps because their diminished authority means that they can now extract less in bribes.

With the police out of commission, the army uses thugs to intimidate its critics. And, when it really gets irritated, it arrests and tortures democracy activists. As I wrote in my previous column, it has even tried to humiliate female activists by subjecting them to forced “virginity exams.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, once banned, has been brought into the power structure. . . .

It seems increasingly likely that Egypt won’t change as much as many had expected. Moreover, the biggest losers of the revolution are likely to be violent Islamic extremist groups that lose steam when the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood joins the system.

“There is a determined effort to stop the revolution in its tracks,” notes Prof. Khaled Fahmy of the American University in Cairo. That’s disappointing for democracy activists like him, but reassuring to those who fear upheaval. . . .

All in all, Egypt today reminds me of other countries in transitions to democracy — Spain after Franco, South Korea in 1987, Romania or Ukraine in the 1990s, and, most of all, of Indonesia after the ouster of its dictator in 1998. Indonesia was dodgy for a while — I once encountered Javanese mobs beheading people — but it settled down, the extremist threat diminished, and Indonesia is now a stable (if unfinished) democracy.

So, yes, Egypt is messy. A young democracy almost always is. Let’s get used to it.