Posts Tagged ‘Gamal Abdel Nasser’
Maintaining an autonomous foreign policy comes with the steepest of prices: Case of Syria in last 4 decades
Posted on: April 23, 2015
Maintaining an autonomous foreign policy comes with the steepest of prices: Case of Syria in last 4 decades
Syria during the reign of late Hafiz Assad undertook a consistent strategy to master the autonomy in its foreign policies, against all odds.
Before Hafez Assad military coup in 1972, Syria witnessed a succession of coups.
The people in Damascus knew that a coup is being prepared when the Saudis left the country: The monarchy in Saudi Arabia was the financial deep pocket for every military coup.
It is documented that the first monarch Ibn Saud wrote in his testament to his descendants:
1. Egypt is the head of the Arab World. Decapitate Egypt.
2. Syria is the heart of the Arab World: Plunge a dagger in this heart
3. Syria must never link with Iraq.
Obey these orders and the monarchy will survive and strive. (Yemen was still under British dominion)
Hafez was able to sustain this strategy after the death of the Arab Leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, whom no Arabic leader could circumvent without terrible repercussions to his regime.
In order for an autonomous Syria to bear fruit, it was necessary and indispensable to focus on the moot flank which was Lebanon: Lebanon was the main hub for all kinds of undercover foreign machinations to destabilize the Middle-East.
After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Lebanon was wide open to the preparation of all kinds of foreign plans to wreck havoc in the Orient.
By 1972, the Palestinian Organization Fateh of Yasser Arafat was the powerbroker in Lebanese politics and matched the Lebanese army military might. Fateh was ousted from Jordan and they settled in the Arkoub region in south Lebanon before they moved their headquarters to Beirut.
Arafat feared Hafez most and he did his best to find a balance between satisfying Hafez dictate and keep the flow of financial and political supports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq of Saddam and Egypt.
All the political manoeuvring of Hafez to firmly bring Arafat under his wing failed. Hafez then created a parallel military Palestinian wing (The thunderstorm) under the umbrella of Fateh (Al Sa3ikat) and used this branch to squeeze Arafat for political concessions.
It is related that most of the Palestinian heavy weapons were stashed in Sa3ikat warehouses, and that is why Arafat could not kill the emerging civil war in Lebanon swiftly and in its bud.
Direct interference in Lebanon was becoming an urgent matter and the USA provided the Green Light to Hafez to control Lebanon for over 3 decades.
The funny part is that Hafez never asked any financial aid or support from the successive US governments in order to maintain his autonomy.
In order to safeguard Syria from foreign interventions, particularly military wars that he is not prepared for, Hafez obliged the Turkish government to hand over the Kurdish/Turkish resistance leader Abdullah Ocalan. He managed not to let the US get involve in Syria internal affairs and negotiate better term for the distribution of the Euphrates River.
The successor of Hafiz, his son Bashar opted to try an alternative policy of openness to the western nations since 2001. The globalization process was very tempting to allow many close relatives to the family of Assad to monopolize many State institutions and trafficking.
Soon the Syrian regime was under heavy pressures from the USA and France to support their foreign policies.
During Hafiz, Syria played skilfully the political navigation of regional game of influences between the rising Khomeini Iranian Islamic State and the neighboring Arabic States.
Thus, Hafiz allowed that Hezbollah remains the main resistance force in Lebanon against the Israeli occupier while sustaining the standing political power of Nabih Berry (current Parliament chief), leader of the Shi3a AMAL militia.
When the western powers, backed by Turkey, decided to destabilize Syria, Iran was already firmly implanted in Syria and Lebanon and had managed to organize and finance a powerful resistance movement in south Lebanon and in the Bekaa valley.
It is thanks to Iran and Hezbollah, backed by Russia and China, that the regime in Syria was able to withstand the onslaught of the civil war for the 5th year.
The irony is Israel failed to take advantage politically in this period.
Instead of opening political negotiations, Israel kept opting for pre-emptive wars in Lebanon and Gaza and failed miserably, while the resistance forces increased its firepower and political standing.
23 Vintage Photos of Egypt’s Golden Years
Egypt cinema in the 1900s was the third largest in the world, Cairo was a city that foreigners dreamt of spending their holidays exploring.
Egyptian music flourished and shook the world, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived together as neighbors, and women had freedoms that were unheard of in many other countries.
Egypt was a place of liberal spirits, unhampered by sectarian and ethnic prejudices.
The rights of men, women and children were championed.
All that has changed.
Often Egyptians may forget the Egypt that used to be. Here are 23 photographs of vintage advertisements and other images that will teleport you to Egypt’s ‘golden years’ and show you an Egypt you may have forgotten ever existed.
(These photographs are available thanks to ’Vintage Egypt. Click here for more)
1. “The Japanese do not respect women.”
This magazine cover of Egyptian actress Shadia in 1961 after a trip to Tokyo has her boldly declaring that Japan does not respect women. A lot has changed: in 2013, Egypt was ranked among the ‘worst places to be a woman.’
2. “Let’s just kiss and play”
Kissing of any kind in Egypt is nowadays frowned upon. Once upon a time, ‘love’ was freely expressed on the silver screen. This is almost unheard of today.
3. Cairo or Rome?
Women driving cars in Cairo face numerous problems today: not only is the traffic suffocating, but the cat-calls and the harassment that many endure while in the comfort of their cars has become a daily occurrence for many. Imagine a woman driving a Vespa (motor cycle) in the middle of Cairo.
4. Skirts, school and the open air
Recently, a young woman was harassed at Cairo University for wearing a pink sweater and black pants and not covering her long blonde hair. Yet, decades ago, skirts attracted little to no such harassment.
5. A Jewish department store…in Egypt?
Benzion department store was founded in Cairo by Moise Levy de Benzion, a Sephardic Jew who had lived in Egypt. Benzion’s legacy, however, ended while he was in Europe during World War II.
Benzion was captured and killed in a camp by the Nazis. Shortly after his death, the government ran the department store until it shut down several years later.
The idea of a Jewish department store in Egypt will likely surprise many: a few years ago Sainsbury’s was forced to shut down over rumours that the owner was Jewish spread like wildfire in Egypt.
6. “Let’s head to the beach…in speedos!”
Swimwear fashion has changed worldwide. Men and women in swimsuits enjoying the sand and the water at a public beach in 1964. You do not want to see what a public beach looks like these days.
7. BEER!
Alcohol advertisements are no longer in existence in Egypt today. Last year, alcohol was almost completely banned from the country by the now-removed Islamist government.
8. The man who united the Arabs
Gamal Abdel Nasser was hailed during his reign as the man who stood up against imperialism and the man behind the idea of ‘Pan-Arabism.’ He attempted to adopt a ‘socialist (Nasserist)’ economic policy in Egypt and attempted to unite the Arabs in a scheme similar to the European Union.
9. Are you sure this is Assiut?
These are groups of Egyptian women at a political rally in Assiut. Not a single woman was wearing the veil or a baggy dress, yet they were considered to have been dressed appropriately and were not attacked for their fashion.
10. The Egyptian Female Revolutionary
Egyptian women volunteered in 1956 to bear arms in resistance to a joint Israeli-French-British attack, after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in what became known as the 1956 Suez Crisis. Today, Egyptian women do not participate in the military (unless its in an administrative role).
11. Military propaganda existed in 1957 and it still exists today
If you drive around Cairo today, you’ll find plenty of similar propaganda: soldiers holding children, a child with a flower, and many more.
12. Turning over the page to a bright future
This piece of propaganda shows a man with the Egyptian Eagle on his arm turning over the page to a bright future that hails “justice,” “democracy,” “elections,” and the “military”.
The previous page included feudalism, imperialism, and traditionalism. Did Egypt achieve democracy and elections? Well…
13. The Star of the East (of the Orient)
When Om Kalthoum (Um Kulthum) died in 1975, heartbreak erupted across Egypt, the Arab World and the globe. Decades after her death, she is still regarded as the greatest female Arabic singer in history.
14. The Cairo Swimsuit Competition
For a woman in Egypt to wear a swimsuit these days, she has to be at a private beach, a private pool, or at a private residence. Imagine what would happen if we re-introduced the Cairo Swimsuit Competition.
15. Who needs Coca-Cola when we have ‘Egypt Cola!’
At some point in history, Egypt was not only producing cars and appliances, but also its own version of Coca-Cola.
16. Clearly, Coca-Cola won
‘Egypt Cola’ no longer exists: we now have Coca-Cola and Pepsi!
17. The First Arab Car
Like the Coca-Cola, Egypt also decided to produce automobiles (Ramsis). While the industry did not end up surviving, it does show the potential future economic capabilities of Egypt.
18. Who is our beauty queen?
This is an interesting article. It proclaims “Seven Queens in the Republic!” We rarely hear of Miss Egypt these days. In 1954, Miss Egypt Antigone Costanda won the coveted Miss World title.
19. Soap, please?
Have you been to Tanta recently? If someone were to replicate this advertisement today, it would likely be torched.
20. This isn’t a desert: it’s Cairo
Cairo was not always a concrete jungle.
21. Vogue (Casino Palestine)
The early 1990′s were perhaps Egypt’s last few ‘good’ years before rapid economic and social deterioration. While this does not show much, it is an enjoyable photograph of a world-wide famous model, Tatjana Patitz, enjoying herself with some locals at a cafe.
22. The beacon of light
Education in Egypt in the mid 1900′s was considered to be among the best in the world, and especially in the Arab world. Queens, Kings, Princes and Princesses would all travel to Egypt for education.
23. Some things never change
If there is one thing that has not changed, it’s Egypt’s smoking culture. The biggest shift has been the move away from cigarettes and towards shisha (Houka). However, Egyptians are still known for their smoking habits decades after this advertisement.
BONUS: Is that a…camera?
(Many of these photographs are available thanks to ’Vintage Egypt.’ Click here to see more)
A Neglectful government in Lebanon? Responsible for a migrants’ boat sinking off Indonesia?
Posted on: October 10, 2013
A Neglectful government in Lebanon? Responsible for a migrants’ boat sinking off Indonesia?
We have no government for the last 6 months. The new appointed Prime Minister Salam has not been able to form any government, and is yet not ready to throw the towel and nobody can force him to step down from a responsibility he is not up to it.
The Parliament has extended its tenure for another 2 years, on the lame excuse that civil wars are raging on the borders…
A Neglectful government in Lebanon? With or without government, Lebanon political system is neglectful of its citizens, and women have no full citizenship…
This is the story of how the Syrian war reached out 5,000 miles across the globe and destroyed at least 29 Lebanese lives in the Indian Ocean.
It is a story of tragic irony; the destitute Lebanese families who wanted to live in Australia and left their arid villages in the hills of the northern Akkar plateau had been warned by their relatives not to leave their homes, and they died just off the coast of Indonesia.
And it is a story of a country whose authorities take no responsibility for the deaths of their own people
Robert Fisk published in The Independent this October 7, 2013 “A tragedy off the coast of Indonesia that should shame Lebanon’s neglectful government”
The migrants’ boat carrying a dozen Lebanese heading to Australia sank. And the blame must start in Beirut.
The sinking of the overcrowded refugee boat that set off from the Java district of Cianjur 10 days ago cannot match the hundreds of fatalities of the north African boat that sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa last week, where up to 350 people are thought to have died and divers were still recovering bodies from the Mediterranean yesterday.
These disasters do not match in terms of scale or loss, but some features are the same: the desperation of the passengers to find a new life, the involvement of ruthless people-smugglers, the wooden hulks in which they sought illusory safety.
What is different is the nationality of the refugees. For Lebanon – of all Middle East countries – is a place of comparative security and wealth, despite the Syrian conflict and the violence it has brought to Beirut and Tripoli.
In some south-west Asian countries, television advertisements warn would-be asylum seekers of the fate that awaits them.
Scarcely an hour passes on an Afghan TV channel without an ominous man’s voice – against a black screen – telling viewers in Dari (Farsi) and Pashtun: “Australia is not a country to reach by boat. If you attempt to go by boat, you will not be allowed onto Australian territory. You will be sent to the island of Papua New Guinea and will never be allowed to live in Australia…”
No such warning has ever been broadcast on Lebanese television. There seemed to be no need.
Unlike the anonymous victims off Lampedusa, where there were too few coffins for the dead, the Lebanese who lost their lives and drifted ashore from the Indian Ocean have known identities.
Careful investigations by the local Lebanese press have discovered their Sunni Muslim home villages: Qabaait, Khreibet and Nabaa Fnaydaq, close to the Syrian border, and the Tripoli suburb of Bab el-Tabbaneh, whose militias have been at war with pro-Syrian Alawite gunmen east of the city for two years.
The remote hamlets astride the Bared river – which dribbles into the Mediterranean from the Palestinian Nahr Bared refugee camp – have been neglected for years by the Beirut government, no more so than now, when the political feuds between pro- and anti-Syrian Lebanese parties means that no new Lebanese cabinet can be created.
There are no schools in much of the Akkar countryside, few hospitals, almost no jobs.
The young men have no money to get married. Many of them are forced to join the Lebanese army in order to survive. The “outgoing” Lebanese government – elected in a poll now hopelessly out of date – didn’t care.
Almost an entire family were lost from Qabaait. The Khodr family’s only survivor was the father, Hussain, whose wife and 9 children all perished. The remains of his wife and one daughter were brought ashore.
In Tripoli, the Gamrawy and Hraz families lost their loved ones, while Talal Rai died with his 3 children and his sister.
Ahmed Abdo, the father of Mustafa who was 24 – who is still missing – borrowed $10,000 from his friends to pay for the journey to Australia; the total cost for each family was $60,000 to be paid to an Iraqi smuggler known as “Abu Saleh”.
Many relatives had begged the families not to leave. Abdo told one local paper that “my son is one of the good young boys who sought to live in peace. The economic and security problems we have suffered through forced him to emigrate and look for peace of mind”.
To the Lebanese government, Abdo declared: “You should look after your people, and your country, and enough of your disputes.”
A photograph survives of the passengers aboard their boat, sitting on rough, wooden benches in the choppy seas off Java. The picture is spotted with raindrops, but you can clearly see the doomed Lebanese aboard. One smiles broadly, another waves at the camera, most stare at the camera.
Behind them is a bleak, grey sky and a sinister, frothing sea. They are only minutes from death. We know that in the last moments, one Lebanese used his mobile phone to call a relative in Melbourne to seek help. The relative called the Australian naval authorities, who later launched helicopters and jets in a hopeless search for a boat that had already sunk.
But when the scale of the Lebanese losses reached Beirut – only 18 Lebanese survived – their pseudo-government sprang into action. It promised that survivors would be brought home, and that all those whose bodies were found would be brought back to be buried in the barren soil of their own land.
In fact, they spent more time making pledges about the dead than they did about the living. And what does that tell you about Lebanon?
Another story: Gamal Abdel Nasser’s wife memoirs
Tahia Nasser (wife of late Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser) appears to have been a typical Egyptian housewife. She worried about her kids’ health, thought her husband worked far too hard, delighted in her daughters’ marriages. Her dictator husband, Gamal Abdel Nasser, appears in her memoirs (now published for the first time in English) as a loving, faithful, reliable, doting spouse and father.
Not a hint that he hanged his enemies when they tried to kill him – no Muslim Brother would forget that – and the word “torture” does not appear on these pages.
Reading them, I kept remembering my old Egyptian colleague at Associated Press, the late Ali Mahmoud, who was hung upside down by Nasser’s goons and dipped head-first into a vat of warm faeces to make him talk. And I asked the usual question: could this be the same Nasser?
Tahia’s book – she died in 1992 after both Sadat and Mubarak had prevented its publication – is not exactly a rip-roaring read. But there are a few moments that bring you up short. Returning home on leave from the 1948 Arab-Israel war after sending his wife a series of letters assuring her of his good health, Nasser revealed that he had been wounded.
“I saw a fresh wound and stitching on the left side of his chest and asked him about it,” Tahia wrote. “He told me it was nothing, just a small wound. When I was unpacking his bag, I found a handkerchief, vest and shirt heavily soiled with blood.”
Nasser had been hit by an Israeli bullet which ricocheted off his vehicle’s windscreen. Before the 1952 revolution which overthrew King Farouk, Tahia found herself hiding rifles and ammunition in the family home – and for many weeks, it seems, thought nothing was amiss. Only when she was congratulated on her husband’s successful coup did she understand his role in history.
She blithely accepts the line that General Mohamed Neguib – a friend of Nasser and the first post-revolutionary president of Egypt – tried to stage his own coup against her husband. But Neguib’s own memoirs and subsequent research suggests that Colonel Nasser falsely accused his former senior officer in order to get rid of a rival.
Loyal to the end, Mrs Nasser was no tell-all widow.
Note: My niece Joanna in London commented:
“This is heartbreakingly tragic. My grandmother used to tell me stories of Lebanese who migrated to Africa after having been deceived with stories that the boat was heading to the USA, the land of freedom. Still they settled for Africa and became merchants. This was in the 1920s. So sad to hear that now in 2013, this is still happening and it’s costing people their lives.
What are your questions about Egypt? No need to feel embarrassed to ask…
Today’s violence in Egypt is claiming hundreds of lives, worsening the country’s already dire political crisis and putting the United States in a quandary.
It’s also another chapter in a years-long story that can be difficult to follow even for those of us glued to it. You might have found yourself wondering what Egypt’s crisis is all about, why there’s a crisis at all, or even where Egypt is located on the map.
Admit it, and fire up your questions: not everyone has the time or energy to keep up with big, complicated foreign stories.
This story is important and critical. Here are samples of the most basic answers to your most basic questions.
First, a disclaimer: Egypt and its history are really complicated; this is not an exhaustive account of that entire story, just some background, written so that anyone can understand it.
Max Fisher published this August 14, 2013 in The Washington Post World Views (with slight editing):
9 questions about Egypt you were too embarrassed to ask
(Laris Karklis/The Washington Post)
1. What is Egypt?
Egypt is a country in the northeastern corner of Africa, but it’s considered part of the Middle East. It’s about the size of Texas and New Mexico combined and has a population of 85 million. Egyptians are mostly Arab and mostly Muslim, although about 10% are Christian Copts. Egyptians are very proud of their history and culture; they are among the world’s first great civilizations.
You might have heard of Egypt from its ancient pyramids and Sphinx, but Egyptians are still changing the world today. In the 20th century, they were in the forefront of the founding of two ideological movements that reshaped – are still reshaping, at this moment – the entire Middle East: Arab nationalism and Islamism.
2. Why are people in Egypt killing each other?
There’s been a lot of political instability since early 2011, when you probably saw the footage of a million-plus protesters gathered in Cairo Tahrir Square (Liberation) to demand that the president of 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, step down.
Mubarak did and that opened up a big power struggle that hasn’t been anywhere near resolved. It’s not just people at the top of the government fighting among one another, it’s lots of regular people who have very different visions for where they want their country to go.
Today is the latest round in a two-and-a-half-year fight over what kind of country Egypt will be. Regular people tend to express their political will by protesting (keep in mind that democracy is really new and untested in Egypt), and because Egyptian security forces have a long track record of violence against civilians, the “fight for Egypt’s future” isn’t just a metaphor. Often, it’s an actual physical confrontation that happens on the street.
3. Why are they fighting today specifically?
Egyptian security forces assaulted two sprawling sit-in camps (of the ousted Moslem Brotherhood from reigning) in downtown Cairo this morning and tried to disperse the protesters. The protesters fought back.
So far, the casualties are rising every day. The assault “to clear” the squares left over 560 killed (officially) and 4,000 injured. A lot of them apparently civilians shot by live ammunition rounds used by security forces.
The protesters were there in support of former president Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in a military coup in early July (the military is still in charge). Morsi hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group to which a number of the protesters in today’s clashes belong. He was also the country’s first democratically elected leader.
4. If the military staged a coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, then all those Egyptians who protested in 2011 for democracy must be furious, right?
Actually, no. A whole lot of Egyptians, especially the liberal groups that led the 2011 revolution, were happy about the coup. A number of them were even calling on the military-led government to break up the largely peaceful pro-Morsi protest camp, even though there were children present and no one thought it would disperse without bloodshed.
There are two things to understand here.
First is that Morsi did not do a good job as president. He had a difficult task, sure, but he really bungled the economy, which was already in free fall.
(Morsi didn’t receive any financial aid from either the rich Arab States or the IMF or the US and European countries. After the military coup, the new government received $12 bn within a week from the rich monarchic Arab States)
Morsi did precious little to include non-Islamists, and took some very serious steps away from democracy, including arresting journalists and pushing through an alarming constitutional change that granted him sweeping powers. (No political parties accepted to join the Morsi government)
The second thing to understand is that Egypt is starkly divided, and has been for decades, between those two very different ideologies I mentioned. Many Egyptians don’t just dislike Morsi’s abuses of power, they dislike the entire Islamist movement he represents.
What you’re seeing today is a particularly bloody manifestation of that divide, which goes far deeper than liberals distrusting Morsi because he was a bad president. (The army is a class by itself and enjoys vast privileges, facilities and independent enterprises…)
5. This stuff about ideologies sounds complicated. Can you just tell me why Egypt is such a mess right now?
The thing about today’s crisis is that it has to do with basic stuff like the breakdown of public order and some really ham-fisted governance by the military. But it also has to do with a 60-year-old ideological conflict that’s never really been resolved.
ack in the years just after World War II, Egypt was ruled by a king who was widely seen as a British pawn. Egyptians didn’t like that. They also didn’t like losing the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and they wanted a way out of their long period of national humiliation.
A lot of them were turning to a movement called the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in the 20’s), which argued, and still argues, that Islamic devotion and unity are the ultimate answer. Their ideas, and their campaign for an Islamic government, are called Islamism.
Both of those movements swept through the Middle East, transforming it.
Arab Nationalists took power in several countries; the Syrian regime today is one of them, and so was the regime headed by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
Islamism also expanded in many countries, and sprouted some violent offshoots. But the two movements prescribe very different paths to the Middle East’s salvation, see themselves as mutually exclusive and have competed, at times violently, ever since. That is particularly true of Egypt, and has been since Nasser took power in 1952.
And that’s why you’re seeing many Egyptian liberals so happy about a military coup that displaced the democracy they fought to establish: Those liberals are closely linked to secular Arab nationalism, which means that they both revere the military and hate the Muslim Brotherhood, maybe even more than they crave democracy. Old habits die hard.
6. Getting really complicated? Do you need to take a music break?
Egyptian pop culture dominates the Arab world, in part because Egypt is so populous and in part because it’s really good. Their most celebrated singer is Omm Kalthoum (known as Planet of the Orient), whom Egyptians revere in the way that Italian-Americans do Frank Sinatra. Her recordings can sound a bit dated. Here is a cover by the contemporary singer Amal Maher:
7. Lots of people are upset with the U.S. for not doing more to support democracy in Egypt. What’s the deal?
The United States is a close political and military ally of Egypt and has been since 1979, when President Jimmy Carter engineered an historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel (Sadat and Begin) that involved, among other things, enormous U.S. payouts to both countries as long as they promised not to fight any more wars. That also required the U.S. to look the other way on Egypt’s military authoritarianism and its bad human rights record. It was the Cold War, and supporting friendly dictatorships was in style. And we’ve basically been stuck there ever since.
The Obama administration most recently drew withering criticism for refusing to call the military’s July 3 ouster of the president a “coup.” Doing so would likely require the U.S. to cut its billion-plus dollars in annual military aid to Egypt. That is also why you’re seeing the White House appearing very hesitant about responding to today’s violence with actual consequences.
Sure, the U.S. wants democracy in Egypt? And it wants leverage with the Egyptian government even more? That has been true of every administration since Carter.
It was not actually until the Obama administration that the U.S. came to accept the idea that Islamists, who have been a big political force in Egypt for almost a century now, should play a role in governing. But they’re sticking with the status quo; no one wants to be the administration that “lost” Egypt.
8. Are you getting depressed. Surely someone wants Egypt to be a peaceful and inclusive democracy?
Not really. Most Egyptians are way too preoccupied with their ideological divide to imagine a government that might bridge it. Self-described liberals seem to prefer a secular nationalist government, even if it’s the military regime in power today, as long as it keeps Islamists out.
The Islamists, for their part, were more than happy to push out anyone who disagreed with them once they took power in 2012 through a democratic process that their leader appeared very willing to corrupt.
Both movements are so big and popular that neither one of them can rule without at least attempting to include the other. But neither appears willing to do that.
When I asked Steven Cook, an Egypt expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, what he made of the liberals’ embrace of the military coup and why he had started referring to them as “alleged liberal groups,” he wrote as part of his response, “I think Amr Hamzawy and Hossam Bahgat are the only true liberals in Egypt.”
9. And What happens next?
No one has any idea, but it looks bad. There are 3 things that most analysts seem to agree on. Any or all of these could prove wrong, but they’re the most common, short-term predictions:
1• The military-led government will keep cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood and stirring up preexisting public animosity toward the group, both of which they’ve been doing since the 1950s.
2• The U.S. will call for a peaceful and inclusive democratic transition, as Secretary of State John Kerry did this afternoon, but will refrain from punishing the Egyptian military for fear of losing leverage.
3• The real, underlying problems — ideological division and a free-falling economy — are only going to get worse.
In the aggregate, these point to more violence and more instability but probably not a significant escalation of either. Medium-term, with some U.S. pressure, there will probably be a military-dominated political process that might stagger in the direction of a troubled democracy. Longer-term, who knows?
As the highly respected Egypt expert and Century Foundation scholar Michael Hanna told me recently, “Egypt might just be ungovernable.”
Note: Before the latest bloody crackdown, a feasible alternative would have been to bring back Morsi for another year, after a parliamentary election. Unless a drastic deal is reached with the Moslem Brotherhood movement, Egypt might be sinking into a civil war within a very populous State.
Genesis of Hezbollah in Lebanon: The background and Accounts of Robert Fisk
My knowledge of my country and the reports and field accounts of Robert Fisk in his book “Affliction of a Nation” permitted me to join the dot of how the Moslem Shias resistance movement of Hezbollah in Lebanon emerged, and developed to becoming the main resistance force to the Israel occupation of the land.
Robert Fisk was a correspondent to the British “The Times” in Beirut for nine years during Lebanon civil war,
This part of the post will lay the background of the political and social conditions in Lebanon so that the follow-up article could be dedicated to strictly the chronological reports and accounts of the development of the Lebanese resistance movement to Israel occupation, after the preemptive war of 1982.
Background: Imam Moussa Sadr was born in the town of Qom (Iran) and was dispatched by the Iranian clergy (Ayatollah Khomeini, residing in Iraq) to Lebanon in the early 70’s to head the clergy of the Moslem Shias. Sadr settled in Tyr and his sister Rabab married to a prominent family in the south.
The Shias in Lebanon were majority in the south and in the Bekaa Valley, but were under represented in the public services. South Lebanon was almost forgotten in the allocation of budget for development, infrastructure, and public services such as schooling and health facilities.
Tacitly, the successive Lebanese governments, since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, estimated that Israel is intent on occupying south Lebanon, and that Israel had the tacit support of the US and the western European States for implicitly reaping the water resources and rich fertile land of South Lebanon.
South Lebanon was firmly ruled by the feudal landlords such as the Sharaf el Dine, the Baydun, the Solh...and particularly the Al Asaad clan, called the Beiks… Many of these feudal landlords sold their properties in Palestine to Israeli Jews, and settled in Beirut to run for political offices…
Sadr was in fact the link between the opposition forces in Iran and Khomeini, and the city of Tyr became the hotbed of Shia religious teaching , beside al Najaf in Iraq.
In fact, most leaders of the Iranian Islamic revolution, before the success of the Khomeini revolution in 1979, studied and taught in the city of Tyr in Lebanon and its neighborhoods. For example, Mahdi Bazerkan (a later prime minister to Khomeini) followed religious courses and taught at the religious clerical school of Jabal Aamel (3amel) , which was established by Moussa Sadr.
Also, studied in Tyr Sadek Tabtabai (a later vice PM to Bazerkan and one of the closest right hands of Khomeini); Ayatollah Mohammad Baheshti (later minister of Justice and the head of the Islamic Republic Party); Sadek Kotb Zadah (later minister of foreign affairs and who was the first counselor to Khomeini while the latter was residing in Paris); Mustafa Shomran (later minister of defense, and one of the members who instituted the Jabal Amel clerical school). All these leaders visited Tyr, at least once a year, after the success of the Iranian revolution.
As Imam Moussa Sadr landed in Lebanon, the inhabitants in South Lebanon were flocking to the southern suburbs of Beirut called Dahiya, quickly becoming a shantytown suburbs of “belt of poverty“. These neighborhoods were adjacent to many Palestinian camps of Borj al Barajneh, Sabra, Chatila…
The Shia of the south were fleeing the constant shelling of Israel on their towns and villages, under the smokescreen of retaliating to Palestinian missile Katyusha or infiltrations across the borders…
Before 1968, the Lebanese army was in control of the south, and then the Palestinian Resistance Organization (PLO) in Jordan was defeated militarily by King Hussein in 1970, and a political agreement was struck by the Lebanese government with Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser and many Arab leaders to allocate the south-east region of Arkoub to the PLO.
Explicitly, preventing the Lebanese army from harassing the PLO training camps in that region. The PLO was not to launch attacks from the Arkoub or fire missiles, but implicitly, the Lebanese army had to have prior consent from the government for any intervention in the Arkoub, consents that were never given.
Slowly but surely, the PLO, headed by Yasser Arafat, became the main military power in Lebanon and effectively controlled and ruled in West Beirut and South Lebanon. Moussa Sadr created the Shias political party called AMAL for the “disinherited of south Lebanon” and in West Beirut, and encouraged the Shias to own arms as “symbol of manhood” and protect their properties and villages…
By the time the civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975, the Amal movement and militias were a substantial power to reckon to in Beirut and in the south.
Qadhafi assassinated Moussa Sadr in August 1978 while on visit to Libya, after Algeria President Boumedien pressured him to visit Qadhafi during his visit to Algeria. It is known that the Shah of Iran and Israel were keeping close watch on Sadr movement: The Shah knew the direct link of Sadr to Khomeini, and the Shah was the most powerful ally to Israel in the region…
The goal of the leaders of Iran revolution was to overthrow the absolute Shah who ended considering the treasury of the State as his own and for his megalomania aggrandizement. Besides the implicit purpose of Khomeini, although religion was a fundamental sources of inspiration, the political objective of the leaders of the revolution was not the imposition of a theocratic State.
In fact, the source and origin of the Khomeini revolution didn’t start in Qom or Iran, but in South Lebanon and Tyr, since the early 70’s.
In 1980, at the instigation of the US, France, and Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq found the opportunity of “recapturing” lands in Iran that he claimed was “Arabic” and belonged to the “Arab Nation”. Saudi Arabia and the US goal was to incite the Iranians to deposing Khomeini, and as a revenge for taking American hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran…
Within a year, Iraqi troops were withdrawing to Iraqi borders, but Khomeini had decided to resume the war of liberation by occupying portions of Iraq and get done with Saddam.
Khomeini decision was a strategic shift in the doctrine of the Iranian revolution: It was to become Islamic and no longer a Republic with Islamic sources of how to rule and to instituting justice (Sharia). Consequently, this extended state of war, which lasted 8 more years, was an excuse to eliminate all power leaders who begged to differ with Khomeini’s ideology.
All the aforementioned leaders who visited Tyr of Lebanon every years were assassinated and disappeared from the political scene (See note 3).
The factions of the new theocratic regime in Iran won the internal war and had to implement that success in Lebanon. The US, France, and Israel were the “axe of evil” and the “US the great Satan”. It is in that perspective that the wave of abduction of foreign journalists, correspondent, and personalities is to be understood.
The prisoners were for the keep until negotiations with Iran are undertaken. The kidnappers were known as “Islamic Jihad” and Fisk had no idea who they were until much later. It is reported that Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadl Allah was the spiritual leader of that Shia faction, and the CIA attempted to assassinate him in March 9, 1985, but the bomb killed 80 civilians instead.
The Shias “Islamic Jihad” faction was re-baptized Hezbollah and the Moslem extremist Sunnis, under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, and funded by Saudi Arabia, adopted the name of “Islamic Jihad”
Consequently, the new theocratic factions in Iran created a new movement among the Shias in Lebanon in order to replace Nabih Berri, leader of AMAL, after the disappearance of Moussa Sadr in Libya. The new movement, first called “Jihad Islamic”, focused on military resistance against the Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon.
The Amal movement (and militias) under Nabih Berri was stooges force to Syria and attacked Palestinian camps, under the excuse of preventing the return of the military wing of Yasser Arafat and their establishment in the camps. Berri militias also attacked the militias of the Druze leader Walid Jumblat in Beirut for dominance of West Beirut. However, Berri comprehended that, unless he joins forces in resisting Israel, he will lose the leadership of the Shias.
Note 1: A cease-fire in the Iran/Iraq war took hold in 1989, shortly before Khomeini died. It is reported that Khomeini, knowing he is to die shortly, he decided to put an end to the war while still alive. Otherwise, the war of attrition would go on indefinitely and ultimately defeat the theocratic regime.
Note 2: By 1984, after Imam Moussa Sadr disappeared on a visit to Qadhafi of Libya in 1982, Nabih Berry became the leader of AMAL, and a formidable militia leader, totally backed by Syria of Hafez Assad, and holding the ministry of Justice in the Lebanese government.
After the civil war in 1993, Berri will head the successive Lebanese Parliaments, till today. Actually, all militia leaders will be members in governments and the deputies in the Parliament, in recompense for devastating Lebanon and killing over 200,000 and three-fold that numbers in injured casualties.
Note 3: Kotb Zada was condemned and executed. Shomran was accounted dead on the Iraqi front. The headquarter of the political party of Mohammad Baheshti was blown up during a general convention: All the leaders of the party died.
Rafsanjani (one of the richest, and later President of Iran) was 15 minutes late for the start of the convention (Was he participating in the plot? Had he been forewarned of the bombing?). Baheshti was next in line to succeed Khomeini in the Wilayat Fakih, but he opposed Khomeini decisions to eradicate the communist Tudeh party, as well as the two left leaning political parties of Mujahedeen and Fidaiyee Khalq.
I had witnessed the activist Iranian students at the University of Oklahoma at Norman in 1978: They were mostly constituted of Mujahedeen and Fidaiyee Khalq parties, and kept the pressure with frequent demonstrations, marches and public meetings on campus… And the bloody leaders who didn’t plan and work for the revolution at its beginning came to power.
Note 4: You may read my article https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/uncontested-palestinian-leader/
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