Popular revolts may be spinning through the Arab world with a fervor and determination not seen in decades, but efforts to sidetrack the reform momentum are also gaining strength.
Three issues have plagued the region for decades and threaten to derail progress at every turn. I call them the Mideast's "Stink Bombs" -- hyper-divisive issues that inflame passions and serve a politicized minority only: 1) Religious vs. Secular; 2) Sunni vs. Shia; 3) Arabs vs. Iranians.
While protesters have been cautious in avoiding confrontations on these issues (who said the Arab Street is not smart?), political figures inside and outside the Mideast, and extremists on all sides, have sought at regular intervals to undermine national and regional unity with these polarizing issues.
The Stink Bombs have subverted the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al Nahda in Tunisia, the Ikhwan in Jordan, and stirred sectarian strife between Shia and Sunni in Bahrain and Yemen -- two countries that also depend on the Iran card to justify all their unlawful actions against civilians. The Stink Bombs have worked to prevent common cause on the Palestinian issue, and to undermine regional resistance to U.S., Israeli and western hegemonic designs, by keeping populations divided and in conflict.
Confidence in government authorities is at such a low ebb among Arab populations, that in some cases, these threats are being ignored or challenged head on. But that will not always be the case, and protesters and reformists alike will need to be vigilant in guarding against attempts to hijack progress with these long-held dogmas.
Let's look at the Stink Bombs in more detail:
Stink Bomb #1: Religious versus Secular
This one has been played out skillfully through narratives that have long sought to associate Islam with extremism and terrorism. Washington's close friends in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco, Algeria and other places have exploited the "Islamist" narrative to put a lid on moderate Muslim groups within their countries and gain unfettered U.S. political and financial support for their elite.
For decades, grassroots Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have been either banned outright or subjected to intimidation, detentions and political machinations that have deprived them of fair participation in governing bodies. After September 11, Washington's narratives on Islamists held them all to be one and the same -- on virtual par with America's greatest enemy, al Qaeda -- and any effort to differentiate between groups was largely ignored in the political mainstream.
Any non-ideological U.S. area specialist could have pointed to half a dozen groups on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations that should not have been featured in that unfortunate blacklist, but they would have been fighting a tidal wave during the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations, the 2006 Lebanon war, and the orchestrated removal of Hamas after its election victory.
When the Bush administration failed to achieve even its most elementary war goals, then UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband took a halfhearted shot at pointing out the obvious:
Miliband wrote in the Guardian in January 2010 that efforts to "lump" extremists together had been counterproductive, playing "into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common."
But instead, the West stood aside during recent elections in Egypt and Jordan when the ruling secular establishments absolutely undermined the participation of their respective Islamist political candidates and parties.
During the wave of protests in Tahrir Square in January and February, the world witnessed the schism between populations and their rulers on this hot-button issue. After attacks on politically-secular Coptic Christians, who make up ten percent of the nation's populace, Egyptians demonstrated their skepticism about the source of this sectarian strife in a startling display of unity. That Friday, Copts linked arms to form a protective circle around praying Muslims. On Sunday, Muslims returned the favor for Christians.
To be sure, secularists and religious minorities don't face an easy time in the Middle East, particularly with the boom in Salafist extremism and growing conservatism experienced, in particular, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Of the three Stink Bombs, this is the one that has some legs in a troubled Middle East where foreign intervention and autocratic rule has ensured stagnation on the political and social fronts. But this does not negate the very real threat that religious and secular groups -- both ideologues in their own way -- can be exploited to divide and manage populations.
Stink Bomb #2: Sunni versus Shia
With roots in an age-old rivalry between those who believed the Prophet Muhammad's successors should be selected from among his faithful companions (Sunni) and those who believed that Muslims should be led by members of the Prophet's family (Shia), this issue is essentially a political one -- the Sunni and Shia share the most fundamental Islamic beliefs and articles of faith, after all.
The fight over succession ended centuries ago, but this issue has reared its head in the past few decades with the kind of political cynicism that shows the real divide -- with the exception of small groupings of hardcore fundamentalists -- is between political "worldviews" more than religious tradition.
I recall a trip to Jordan in 2009 when a leading senior member of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political party of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and a respected Sunni moderate, told me:
"In the first year after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, about eighty books were published on the Shia," intimating a concerted effort by the hyper-conservative Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and its anti-Iran allies in the West. He continued, "I promise you, in the many decades before this revolution, there were maybe three or four books on the Shia."
To be sure, this Stink Bomb finds at its core a desire to undermine a resurgent Iran, a Shia-majority nation in the mostly Sunni Middle East. But Saudi Arabia -- ground zero for anti-Shia propaganda and material support, and by far Iran's most belligerent regional neighbor in a post-Saddam world -- represents a political minority in the wider Mideast, where most Muslims, when asked their religion, will still reply "Muslim," instead of the name of their sect.
Years of anti-Shia propaganda have led to rising sectarian violence and tension, with Shia groups targeted in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and elsewhere. Thousands have been killed for no reason other than to limit the influence of Iran, but in the battle for political hegemony among leaders, ugly sectarian views have evolved in many normal households across the region.
The stereotypes are rampant and often come from the most unexpected quarters. A senior political reporter for an influential daily newspaper in Amman -- a secular man -- once asked whether it was true that a Shia cleric had passed a Fatwa (an Islamic religious decree issued by the clergy) that "the Shia can drink the blood of the Sunni?"
Washington directly and indirectly condones the Saudi view by arming, financing and defending groups and governments who target Iran and Shia populations, only some of whom may have a natural affinity with a Shia-majority state like Iran.
Case in point is the U.S.'s reaction to the Arab revolts in the Persian Gulf. The White House and State Department have only offered cursory criticism of government-sponsored violence against protesters in Bahrain, a Shia-majority country ruled by a Sunni royal family, and in Yemen, where ostensibly "Iranian-backed" Shia offshoots have waged campaigns against the autocratic government of Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In both cases, there is no evidence that Iran has financially or materially supported anti-government activities within the Shia communities. If anything, Iran and other Shia groups in the region have maintained a low profile so as not to provide an excuse for more violence against indigenous Shia.
Just last weekend, an explosive article in the Asia Times revealed that Washington still plays a frontline role in the Sunni-Shia divide, giving Saudi Arabia a wide berth to squash Shia populations in exchange for bulldozing through an Arab League vote on a Libya no-fly zone.
A former senior State Department official said to me recently that in regards to Washington's involvement with Libya "our actions are, in part, designed to get the spotlight shifted" from the uprisings in the Persian Gulf.
In Bahrain meanwhile, the Shia, who make up almost three-quarters of the population, are taking a quiet battering. In the absence of any real media focus, hundreds of activists are missing and people are beaten, detained or killed daily. Saudi troops patrol Shia neighborhoods unrestrictedly, free to intimidate -- and as in this video -- free to destroy even innocuous Shia religious banners.
Stink Bomb #3: Arabs versus Iranians
This is the Stink Bomb that will define the Middle East going forward if Washington has any say in spinning the narratives.
According to the New York Times' David Sanger, the uprisings in the Arab world potentially threaten the solid group of alliances that backed U.S. goals in Iran, and U.S. policymakers are having to consider the Islamic Republic in their every Mideast stance:
Libya is a sideshow. Containing Iran's power remains their [Obama administration's] central goal in the Middle East. Every decision -- from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria -- is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration's regional strategy: how to slow Iran's nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there.
Former Bush administration officials and Iran experts, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, concur, adding: "Obama has wanted to use the wave of popular agitation for political change in a growing number of Arab countries as the basis for an alternative "narrative" and America's role in it, which could be used against both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic."
A U.S. military source privately confirmed to me that they too are examining the viability of launching a new Arabs vs. Iranians narrative push.
When the "Arab Spring" burst onto our TV screens, Washington initially rejoiced over the notion that these popular movements would manifest in Iran as well, and predicted that the Islamic Republic would likely be unseated as the lead player in defining "resistance" narratives over the Palestinian issue and U.S.-Israeli hegemony.
In fact, it is altogether possible that these popular movements will unravel U.S. ambitions in the region, leaving Iran largely unaffected. Protests in Iran have to date not materialized in any significant way, and the non-U.S. bloc in the region still looks to Iran as an influential player. Furthermore, successful revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere are more likely to seek political leverage from the region's "independent" nations as they struggle to wrest government control away from the pro-U.S. Old Guard.
As an example, Egypt's foreign minister last Tuesday announced Cairo's interest in resuming diplomatic relations with Iran after a 30-year break.
The effort to push a strong Arab versus Iranian narrative was underlined by a special meeting of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Arab foreign ministers, where they condemned "Iranian interference" in the internal affairs of Bahrain and Kuwait in the strongest terms. Ironic, given the military intervention of these nations -- sans Qatar -- in the internal affairs of Libya, and also in Bahrain and Yemen.
This Saudi-led agitation against the Islamic Republic spells trouble in the Persian Gulf region, and Saudi Arabia may do well to focus on broader regional realities. A Brookings poll last year found that even in Arab states whose governments are considered pro-U.S., only 10% of populations believed Iran to be a problem, compared to a whopping 77% who saw the US as a primary threat.
Let us remember a very real threat in that part of the world. As a Dubai-based avid Tweeter posted on Monday: "Al Qaeda is a reaction to US interventionism. They feed off each other. Less of one, less of the other." There is no greater threat to both the western world and Middle East than the largely Saudi-funded Salafist radicalism that emerged after the first Iraq war, and proliferated after U.S. invasions in the past decade. And Washington's intervention in the Gulf continues to ensure cosmic divides -- the elites we back are ever-shrinking, and the populations, more agitated than ever.
An exaggeration? Think again. A poll conducted this year concludes that a whopping 96% of Yemenis "disapprove of President [Ali Abdullah] Saleh's cooperation with the United States." Ninety-nine percent of those surveyed viewed the U.S. war on terrorism and Washington's relations with the Islamic world unfavorably, while 98% reacted negatively about the U.S. government in general. In contrast, just over half of the respondents registered positive sentiments toward American-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
Which may be why Washington just supported booting Saleh from office.
The Gulf nations will undoubtedly be on guard as one of their own, Yemen, heads toward regime change, surely opening the door for more protests in Bahrain and elsewhere. This will not stop until it reaches the gates of Saudi Arabia, unless mass reform is offered to the disenfranchised. Iran need do nothing more than sit back and offer passive verbal encouragement to these populations -- much like we do when protesters hit the streets of Tehran.
An interesting time in the Middle East, for sure. Even if the Stink Bombs come into play, I believe they will be shortlived -- one only has to log into the various social media networks to see that users are "reading between the lines" en masse for the first time.
The Egyptian blogger, protester and prolific social-networker Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, recently summed up how these three issues are being played out in his native country:
The Salafists & MB [Muslim Brotherhood] are local players, but they have foreign ties and funding. Qatar fully funds and supports the MB, and Saudi fully funds and directs the Salafists. While Qatar is more interested in having a say in a democratic Egypt, Saudi is more interested in blackmailing Egypt into continuing the Sunni-Zionist alliance against Iran. Naturally, Egypt, right now, is totally not interested, so Saudi tries to pressure us by inciting lots of Salafi chaos and violence. Please note that it's all very targeted against so called Egyptian minorities, attacking Christians and women mostly, and burning churches. That's the kind of headache Saudi knows Egypt doesn't need, & will stop immediately the moment they are sure that the alliance is back on track, because they are shitting their Saudi pants over Iran. Please note that in this scenario, whatever we want as Egyptians, totally doesn't matter to them, or anyone for that matter.
Smart guy. Thank goodness for the Arab Street's ability to suss the Stink Bombs.
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I always thought they were the stinkiest to the Arab World...
But it appears The Arab World Itself is the Real Stinkbomb.
Thanks for enlightening us, finally, to the truth of this eternal mess.
The Palestinian issue is a "real" problem. The 3 Stink Bombs are not. They are manufactured to divide and manage populations, though all three have some authenticity otherwise they would not be useful tools.
Islamists, the Shia and Iran are manufactured "problems" that have spawned entire cottage industries among extremists, western ideologues and their Arab stooges. Instead of defusing easily controlled concerns, the 3 Stink Bombs were given a wide berth to "go global"...despite our posturing.
Dictators and those who hope to benefit from dictatorships will stress the danger of religious fundamentalist extremism as though two opposite choices existed – either dictatorship by a kleptocracy or al Qua’ida. In truth, it is precisely the existence of one type of extremism that provokes the other.
Saudi Arabia is starting already in these initial post-Bahrain intervention days, to provide one example: the political elite, having evidently learned nothing from the wave of global terror, is once again kissing up to religious ultra-conservatives to buttress their kleptocracy; that tactic will once again backfire. Algeria is providing a second example of the tight relationship between the religious extremism the West fears and the Arab dictatorships Western elites find so convenient, suppressing fundamentalists and democracy protesters, pushing moderates into the arms of extremists.
Abuse of power by a criminal state provokes the empowerment of radical dissent and its own concomitant abuse of power. Washington should support the emergence of independent, moderate, reformist political systems that focus on improving domestic socio-economic conditions. U.S. politicians may not be ready to turn any of their aircraft carriers into small-business loans for unemployed Arabs, but we might all be more secure if they did.
these guys are toast!! It's a matter of time.
These are the last desperate attempt to keep the current status quo. The US alliance against Iran is going to fall, ofcourse, they will us sectarian divides to prolong the current house of cards.
Let's be honest, are we to believe the Saudi's can manage anything right? They have small educated population, no industrial base, and their military is cheap version of the ever-dependent Shah's army, which fell apart. All they are doing is hasten the fall of the Saudi family. Let's not forget that the Shah fell only a few years after his intervention in Oman. Also, let's not forget that this is not the first time the Saudi's militarily intervene in the region, let's recall Saudi intervention in Yemen just over a year ago. And that has turned out to be a model for the world to admire.
At about the same stage of its development the U.S. went to war over Slavery. Well! Actually states rights but slavery was the excuse. This was however, from a nation that was left alone without political interference from external sources.
The Arab nations after their liberation from the ottoman were supposed to have been nurtured towards democracy and independence. Instead those western colonial powers that controlled their destiny acted to preserve their control rather than create those political institutions necessary to form viable democracies.
Part of that process of preserving control involved divide and conquer. Pitting Islamist against secular and Sunny against Shia. Even the current dichotomy between Arab and Iranian interests seems to me to be a western invention.
The west created the power structures that took over from them either by designed or as a consequence of their restrictive policies. Britain established it's first colony in America in 1607. In 1776 over 100 years later American started its flawed experiment with democracy. (I say flawed because no nation can be considered democratic while still having slavery.)
The point being that nations take time to develop and grow. Longer if that development is interfered with.
I have shocking news for you. About 1400 years ago, in a country that today is home to a western supported dictatorship, a system of democratic system was in place that was more advanced than current western democracy for two reasons.
1. People choose their leaders directly in a referendum like movement by shaking the hand of the leader they wanted to rule over them.
2. If for any reason at any time the population were not happy with that leader they could change their votes momentarily.
The Islamic system sacrifices the stability in favor of rule of people. Also when a leader was gone all the people he put in different position had to go. The system did not grant any immunity to the leader and he could be judge by the independent court system while he was in power.
It might be shocking to you to find out that democracy is much older than western civilization.
With regard to US civil war, the slavery was not the major issue. The major issue was interstate trades and the taxation. The whole system did not function as a powerful central government. Seeing today how central government mismanage the taxes and use it to instigate wars in foreign countries, maybe a weak central government was not a bad idea after all.
"Islamic system sacrifices the stability in favor of rue of the people." Are you taking everyone for a fool? Are you telling me the rule of the 14 Imams was the rule of the people?
The first of these is the Iranian business class who are expanding beyond the Iranian market into these countries. If you are living in a country where to do any business you have to not only pay taxes and bribes, but also get a royal partner (who basically does nothing more than keep you from having a royal show up and take your business as his own), seeing ordinary Iranians who have businesses at home (and often are setting up branch operations in your country) without these sorts of parasitic 'partners', you are going to see getting rid of your royalty as the best way to make your business grow.
The second of these is Iranian humanitarian aid (which never seems to get attention in the North American media). Iran took in so many refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq that it became the country that hosted the world's largest number of refugees for years, and they did NOT just stick them in isolated camps, instead they gave them housing (and food, education, medical treatment, even work permits for both genders) amongst the urban population of Iran. Oh, and while the US is bombing Libya (and the run of the mill Libyan is not going to distinguish between a NATO operation and a US one), Iran has sent field hospitals and food aid stations to where the wounded and refugees are. Guess which action does not have the downside of creating a fair-sized core of anger and resentment.
And the third secret weapon? Infrastructure. Iran is funding directly, or loaning (on Sharia-compliant terms) to the governments so they can fund, infrastructure renewal/rebuilding/creation programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and will likely soon be doing the same in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen .
The US may talk about switching to 'soft power' as its economic strength dwindles, and its military strength creaks ever louder under the load it is having to take, but Iran has been playing that game for quite a while, and those efforts are beginning to pay off (and the field it is playing on keeps expanding. Its aid to Haiti after the disaster there, and its ongoing aid to Japan, will not in and of themselves change votes at the UN, but they are not likely to be one-offs)
US Strength was in its hard power. When it comes to 'soft power', Iran with her 5000 years of culture and history, will swallow the Big Mac culture alive.
It is amazing how ignorance in West have enabled western Zionist media to on hand instigate the sectarian conflicts among Muslims and present Muslims as divided and at the same time to ignore that Al_Qaeda is from a Wahhabi sect which has less than 1% of Muslims' support and blame 9/11 on Muslims as a whole and to label any genuine Muslim grassroots movements even those that are against Wahhabism as Al-Qaeda terrorist organizations.
As usual great article from a great expert in ME affairs. Thank you, Sharmine Narwani for dismantling the huge Zionist propaganda, peace by peace, with such an accuracy and precession. Of course they have huge megaphones, but the truth will eventually prevail, because the universe is build by accurate and correct measures. Any system, which is build on transgression and imbalance (injustice) will eventually fail.
The former have been keeping Arab masses locked in ignorance & primitivism for decades now. To deflect people's frustrations outwards, they fed them a diet of hatred & finger-pointing, in which every misfortune was somebody else's fault. The article takes the same route, by pointing fingers at Israel, US & the West. In reality, very similar "secular" despots inhabit both sides of the pro-West/anti-West divide. Gadhafi is (was?) certainly anti-West, as is Syria's Assad dynasty.
Islamists are even worse than “secular” despots. Not only do they practice the harshest forms of obscurantism in their own countries (see Saudi Arabia and Iran), but their external ambitions can only lead to conflict and violence.
What Islamism brought upon Islam is shame & isolation. Culturally & politically, Islamists live in the Middle Ages; which makes participation & cooperation with modern, civilized mankind impossible. The latter can only further lose patience with that anachronistic ideology.
What Arabs need is enlightment & democracy. Get rid both of secular & religious dictators – mankind has already tried those experiments. They inevitably fail. In Churchill’s words: “democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the others that have been tried”.
I am confident that at least some of the Arabs will chose well. They should be welcomed with open arms into the brotherhood of free nations.
"Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. [...] It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror." [Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Article XXXI]
Democracy at its best!!
She needs to get it across to Muslims themselves, and their imams and radical street protestors who openly say they are against democracy and the democracy and Islam are incompatible. These are the people who need convincing. Not me.
I saw an Egyptian man on the news, telling some women that they should be at home where they belonged. Pity one of them didn’t ask him if he believed in slavery. For while he did, he would continue to be one.
“When the "Arab Spring" burst onto our TV screens, Washington initially rejoiced”
Until they recalled, that to all things there is a season. And an Arab Spring might almost inevitably be followed, by a Western Winter of Discontent.
“interested in having a say in a democratic Egypt”
In a truly democratic Egypt, wouldn’t all humans have equal say with regard to directly mandating policy? Thereby effectively diluting, any vitriolic pools of extremist concentrate.
They are NOT "stink bombs" any more then the mortars and rockets being shot into Israel from Gaza are "bottle rockets".
The only one reason why these issues have not ignited in recent decades is due to the iron-fisted control of the various Arab and Muslim dictators and tyrants. Remove that control and the proverbial "cork" comes out of the proverbial "genie-bottle". Its a choice between controlled tyranny versus free and open civil unrest, based on a variety of factors, which probably add up to a few more then just those three mentioned. What about women's rights? What about gay rights?
Islam is a religion but it can also be a form of repression. This is no "stink bomb". It not only threatens the viability of the M.E. region but that of the entire globe.
Traditionally, Shiites have been subjugated by Sunnis. In many countries (such as Iraq) the Sunni population equals no more then 25% but they have been eating the lunch of the Shiite for decades.
The animosity between Arab and Persian claimed 2-million lives in the Iraq/Iran war. These are no mere "stink bombs" at all.
I think the Egyptians are savvy enough politically to keep both the US and the Saudi's out and I pray they do for the sake of their emerging democracy . . . the US/israel/Saudi access is the true access of evil in the ME