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positions. They have included among their supporters a variety of
liberal and secular professionals. At the FJP's first public rally before
the elections in the working-class district of Bulac, a leading member
of the liberal Egyptian Bloc coalition was among the invited
speakers. It also has women and Copts among its members. Many of
the hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood women I have encountered at
its events work, and some hold full-time jobs. During the years
immediately ahead, there is little reason for the party leaders to
radically change their tone.
For Islamist factions, the coming parliamentary term offers an
opportunity to widen their support and allay fears of Islamic
domination. The FJP will doubtless take advantage of its plurality to
show that it does not menace the rights of others. But among the MPs
of the Salafi Al-Nour, it seems likely that there will be a divide; many
Salafist members of parliament envision an Egypt on the model of
Saudi Arabia.
During the next year the laws regarding codes of dress or matters of
faith and worship will probably remain unchanged. Transformations
are more likely to take place in subtle ways. As the social and cultural
landscape of the country is altered, the visibly orthodox Muslims will
become freer in their movements. Under the Mubarak regime, the
Salafis with their bushy beards and ankle-length galabiyas were very
closely watched; many of them were virtually under house arrest. In
the months since Mubarak was ousted, and certainly in the center of
Cairo, there has been a visible rise in the number of bearded men and
of women who are fully veiled. The men, in particular, say that they
were persecuted for their beards under Mubarak's regime, often
keeping them trim if they grew them at all. Or as many told me, they
simply stayed in their Islamist governorates or city suburbs, where
the state's informants kept them under watch. Now it is probable that
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the more liberal Muslims, and the country's Copts, will feel
increasingly out of place.
When I went out to vote on the morning of November 28, a topic of
discussion as we stood in line for six hours waiting to cast our ballots
was what our futures might hold if the Islamists took power. Many
women, my mother and her cousins and friends included, shared
stories of the past—how they used to take public transportation
wearing short skirts or open V-neck tops. "The good old days," they
called them. But many women like my mother, and the others who
stood in line in the well-to-do neighborhood of Zamalek, also
understand that they are a minority in a country where 40 percent of
the population is living on two dollars a day. For many, but certainly
not all, such poor people, a sense of security and basic guarantees of
survival are paramount. At polling stations in poorer districts of
Cairo, like Imbaba, Shubra, and Ain Shams, people told me that they
wanted "stability and a strong economy," and that "ultimately it is in
God's hands." During the campaign, liberals spoke of a secular state;
Islamists, trying to speak for the masses, concentrated on the cost of
food. It is on such promises of better conditions that the Islamists will
be expected to deliver.
Some of the election results were not unexpected. The Muslim
Brotherhood has long been known to be the country's largest and
most organized movement, with widespread networks and growing
popular support. As it offered increasing numbers of Egyptians social
services where the government had failed, it came to be considered
the greatest threat to the Mubarak regime. The deposed leader had
often warned that if he left power, the Muslim Brotherhood would
rise.
Indeed, in the 2005 parliamentary elections, Muslim Brotherhood
members—forced as an outlawed political group to run as
independent candidates—won the largest bloc of seats, eighty-eight,
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in opposition to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which
won 311 seats. The ballots, moreover, were significantly rigged in the
NDP's favor. What is surprising, then, is not that—with a voter
turnout of 52 percent—the Brotherhood won 47.6 percent of the
votes in November, and seems likely to win more in the remaining
elections. What was unexpected was that the ultra-orthodox Islamist
Salafis, newcomers to electoral politics, won 18.5 percent of the
votes. (The moderate Islamist Al-Wasat Party took 2.4 percent, and
the liberal parties and coalitions collectively just 20.5 percent, 7.1
percent of the vote going to the nationalist liberal Al-Wafd and 10.7
percent to the Egyptian Bloc.)
The success of the Salafis—mainly represented by the Al-Nour Party,
which was formed after the revolution—seems partly owing to recent
miscalculations of the Brotherhood, which has repeatedly been absent
from Friday protests and demonstrations that had the support of most
other political groups, even the Salafis. The Brotherhood boycotted
the May 27 "Day of Rage," or "Second Revolution," angering many
of the million people who took part. Over the months, the
Brotherhood leaders also changed and changed again their positions
on a variety of issues—including the status of Copts and the end goal
of an Islamic state—earning them the reputation, as I often heard
said, of "never speaking the entire truth." In conversations with
voters in poor neighborhoods during the November 28-29 vote, I
frequently heard: "The Brotherhood can't fully be trusted; they don't
stick to their words. The Salafis are pure."
Perhaps their biggest mistake came on November 18, when tens of
thousands of Egyptians—responding to a call by the Brotherhood—
returned to Tahrir Square to protest a government draft document that
seemed, among other things, to give the ruling SCAF control over the
writing of the new constitution. The demonstration went off
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peacefully, and when darkness eventually fell, the Brotherhood
packed up and left, satisfied with the show of force.
In the early hours of the following morning, riot police stormed the
square, forcefully clearing it of the remaining protesters, mainly
activists and revolutionary coalitions. In the days that followed,
clashes between the police and protesters escalated, with the state's
various security forces unleashing a kind of violence that had rarely
been seen since the revolution. Tear gas was fired in toxic amounts,
poisoning many and killing some; specially trained forces seemed to
be targeting protesters' eyes. In the course of a single day, five young
men lost sight in one eye, and one man—Ahmed Harara—was
blinded (he had lost his first eye on January 28).
Egyptians were outraged at the level of violence—forty-two people
were killed—and at the SCAF's refusal to take responsibility,
withdraw the state's security forces, and issue an apology. Many
liberal parties suspended their campaigns, and some called for the
elections to be postponed. The interim cabinet resigned in response to
the violent attacks, and the presidential candidate Mohamed
Elbaradei offered to forgo his presidential ambitions and instead
serve as temporary prime minister to deal with the crisis. The
country's highest Islamic authority, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar
University, succeeded in brokering a truce on the streets so that
elections could go forward.
Throughout it all, the Muslim Brotherhood was conspicuously
absent, cau- tious about taking sides. On TV programs and talk
shows, the liberal candidates went to great lengths to explain why it
was not moral to continue their election campaigns while people were
dying in Tahrir. The Brotherhood leaders, for their part, insisted that
elections take place soon; they knew they were far ahead of the other
parties and coalitions. They had been waiting for this moment for
eighty years; they weren't prepared to let it slip away.
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On the night of November 24, members of the Brotherhood
reappeared in the square with the intention of clearing it—along with
the embattled Mohamed Mahmoud Street—of the remaining
protesters. "They did everything they could to get people to go
home," a friend told me. "They would assess the type of person you
are, and speak to you in a way that they thought would persuade you.
They were willing to go to any lengths to make sure that people left
that night."
It is widely believed that the Brotherhood leaders had made a deal
with the SCAF. They would clear the main demonstration site and
calm the protesters, and the SCAF in return would hold the elections
on time. Many blamed the Brotherhood for how long the clashes
lasted and how many lives were lost. In Tahrir on November 25 the
Islamist researcher and political analyst Ibrahim El Houdaiby told a
group of us: "It would have taken a completely different direction had
the Brotherhood come out last weekend and put their weight behind
the people." Even Islamists and some preachers and veiled women
spoke of their disappointment with the Brotherhood; they hoped that
it wouldn't win the polls of the following week.
Still, the liberal parties were not able to find much support from the
underclass, whether in poor urban districts or rural Egypt. They could
not penetrate the decades-old informal networks that have long been
dominated by family and tribal alliances, religious affiliations, or
agents of the former regime. Even if they had succeeded, the most
prominent of the liberal coalitions, the Egyptian Bloc, was headed by
the Free Egyptians Party, founded by the telecom tycoon Naguib
Sawiris, whose popularity plummeted in June when he tweeted a
cartoon of Mickey and Minnie Mouse wearing Muslim gowns and
headdresses—Mickey with a bushy beard, and Minnie in a face veil.
"Mickey and Minnie after...," he wrote.
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In the weeks following, a full-scale campaign was launched against
him by Islamists, urging people to boycott his businesses. In a matter
of weeks, 304,000 subscribers left his telecom provider, Mobinil, for
local competitors; his company suffered losses of 96 percent for the
third quarter of 2011. Even among some liberal Egyptians, Sawiris's
tweet was seen as going too far: "We are a largely Muslim country,
Sawiris has to remember and respect that." In response to the cartoon,
a Coptic friend posted on Facebook a message that "the revolution
was about unity, not such attacks."
Amid all this, the Salafi Al-Nour Party has preached in favor of its
puritan form of Islam, and a state governed by its principles—one
with the same religious restrictions as Saudi Arabia—as the answer to
the country's social and economic woes. The Salafists swiftly
followed the lead of the Muslim Brotherhood, providing free and
subsidized goods and services to the poor, and focusing their
campaign messages on the price of food and cost of living. We don't
know how much the party's appeal was hurt or enhanced by the fact
that its campaign posters didn't feature pictures of its female
candidates, and instead had an image of a rose above their printed
names. At a political rally in a public square in Alexandria, it covered
a statue of a mermaid with a cloth. But it appealed to Egyptians who
spoke the language of the street and believed, among other things,
that ultimately, the future of Egypt is in "the hands of Allah."
In the days since the initial election results were released, the liberals
have been discussing how to regroup and prepare for the weeks and
voting rounds ahead. Many liberal Muslims and Copts are talking
about what the future might hold, including immigration. The
Islamist parties, for their part, are anxious not to be grouped together.
The FJP has firmly stated that it will not enter an alliance with the
Salafis, who themselves have said they will not walk in the shadow of
the Brotherhood. (Before the elections, the two groups had agreed on
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a code of proper behavior during them, but they have not entered into
a political alliance.)
In months to come, Egypt's first freely elected parliament will
probably be as fragmented as the political landscape that preceded it.
During what will be a period of immense pressure, the Muslim
Brotherhood will most likely emerge as a mediator and perhaps the
ally of the parliament's liberal coalition. The military, for its part,
will undoubtedly continue to have a hand in the country's affairs,
whether overtly through a provision of the constitution, or through
tactical pacts with factions in parliament. Having waited since 1928
for this moment, the Brotherhood can be expected to wait another
few years before attempting to make any drastic or fundamental
changes in the social and cultural life of the Egyptian state.
Yasmine El Rashidi, a former Middle East correspondentf or The
Wall Street Journal, has written for The Washington Post, Newsday,
Ms, Bidoun, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Monocle,
among other publications. A collection of her writings on the
Egyptian uprising, The Battlef or Egypt, was published in May. She
lives in Cairo.
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Article 6.
INEGMA
Syrian Uprising: Its Impact on Iran and
Possibility of Civil War
Riad Kahwaji
December 20, 2011 -- Over ten months have passed and the Syrian
uprising has maintained its strong momentum without a near end in
sight. The Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad has signed an
Arab-League plan aimed at quelling the violence in the country that
has claimed the lives of over 5,000 people and injured thousands
others. However, most observers and analysts in the Middle East
have cast doubt on the sincerity and seriousness of the Syrian Baath
Party regime to implement the Arab League plan. The suppression of
the Syrian public uprising has all but increased since the signing of
the Arab plan on December 19. Expectations by most regional
experts and officials are that sooner or later the Syrian file will be
referred to the United Nations Security Council, and a Turkish-led
international military intervention would be inevitable. However, the
resilience of the Syrian regime has surprised many, but so did the
determination of the Syrian people who seems to have reached th
point of no-return in its uprising to topple the Assad regime and end
the half century old Baath Party rule.
Iran appears to be the most anxious party over the course of events in
Syria. Syria has been the other strong side of the Iranian axis in the
region that has been engaged in a Cold War against a U.S.-led
alliance that includes several Western and Arab states. Iran has
worked on building this axis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, and in addition to Syria includes two strong non-state actors:
Hamas and Hizbullah. Syria has been the bridge for Iran in the Arab
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world and losing the Assad regime would break this bridge and
disconnect Iran from its strongest regional player: Hizbullah in
Lebanon. So the collapse of the Syrian regime will destroy Iran's
current strategic position in the region that is the fruit of two decades
of hard work and billions of dollars. Burhan Galyoun, the head of the
Syrian National Council that groups all main opposition forces has
already stated that the first order of business for the nex government
of a Syria after Assad will be to end the strategic relations that
Damascus has with both Iran and Hizbullah.
Tehran seems to continue to bet on the Syrian regime for one main
reason and that is it does not have any other options. "Iran will back
Assad regime to the very end," asserted an Iranian expert who also
advices the presidency in Tehran. He pointed out that Iran believes
Assad could still survive the current crisis, providing that the United
Nations or the West do not intervene militarily. "The Assad regime
has learned a valuable lesson from (the late deposed Libya leader)
Moammar Ghaddafi, and that is so long as it has a monopoly on the
absolute use of violence it will not fall no matter how many people
protest and march," the Iranian expert said. "Ghaddafi could have
won and remained in power if it wasn't for the NATO intervention,"
he added. So the Syrian regime's strategy to quell the uprising is to
use full military force against the opposition, and to use all its cards
and connections to prevent an international intervention. Even
though Assad is playing for time the time factor is playing against the
regime as a result of the strong determination shown by the people
despite the ferocity of the Syrian military and security forces in
dealing with protestors and opposition figures.
The Syrian opposition in turn is becoming more organized internally
and externally. Faced with hesitation by some international powers to
back an intervention in Syria, the Syrian opposition leaders have
decided to become more self-sufficient. Efforts to raise money to self-
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sustain their activities outside and inside Syria have proven
successful so far. Donations by a large base of wealthy Syrian
businessmen and supporters have brought in millions of dollars that
will enable the opposition to better organize itself and gain
international recognition and support. However, the danger of
delaying international intervention would compel the Syrian
opposition to become more self-dependent in their internal efforts to
fight back the Syrian military onslaught. Thousands of Syrian troops
appear to have defected and are now organizing in small groups
around the country, engaging the regime's forces in guerrilla warfare.
But the fighting is taking more on the form of sectaria clashes
between the predominantly Alawite forces of the regime and the
largely Sunni opposition forces. If unchecked by a swift international
intervention to end the conflict, Syria will most likely slide into a
sectarian war between the Alawite minority and Sunni majority.
Expectations now are that the Syrian regime will probably fail to
implement the Arab plan, and subsequently will miss its last chance
to prevent the internationalization of the conflict. As of January 2012,
the Arab seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will go
to Morocco after it was held by Lebanon for 2 years. Due to the
strong Syrian-Iranian influence in the current Lebanese government,
the Lebanese envoy to the UN opposed any resolutions against Syria.
But with Morocco, the situation will be much different and the Arab
League would be able to present a strong resolution against the
Syrian regime. Many diplomats and analysts believe a resolution
proposed by the Arabs at the UNSC will not face much resistance
from China and Russia and will most likely be passed. Whenever the
UNSC refers the UN Human Rights report on Syria to the War
Crimes Court and issues a resolution calling for the creation of safe-
corridors or implementation of a no-fly zone ove northern Syria, then
Turkey would have the needed international political cover to lead a
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military alliance that will establish a safe-zone for the defected Syrian
forces to organize and will also prompt many Syrian military and
government figures to turn against the Assad regime.
Fear of international players, including Israel, that an international
intervention could create another Libya scenario inside Syria is not
fully true. Hesitant Syrian officials who still support the regime will
likely reconsider their position whenever they see the regime's
strategy that is based on preventing intervention, fails. This could
bring a quick end to the crisis. Since most armed opposition groups
are defected Syrian soldiers working under a military leadership,
there will not be any chaos as was the case in the period that followed
the collapse of the Libyan regime. There will likely be an orderly
transition of both political and military powers in Syria. However,
delaying the intervention could lead to the rise of armed Sunni
militias to work separately from the organized Free Syrian Army, and
this would lead to the spread of chaos before and after the collapse of
the Assad regime. Reports out of Syria indicate that the current
sanctions by many countrie and the civil-disobedience action by the
opposition have started to take its toll on the regime. All what is
needed is a little push from the international community to bring an
end to a regime that was rightly described recently by a U.S. official
as a "dead man walking."
Mr. Kahwaji is CEO andf ounder of the Institute for Near East and
Gulf Military Analyses (INEGMA), a think tank in Dubai, United
Arab Emirates, that is active in media and conference activities
within the region. He is also the Middle East Bureau Chieff or
Defense News, an international defense weekly based in Springfield,
VA.
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Article 7.
Foreign Policy
Bashar al-Assad Is Every Bit His Father's
Son
Jerrold M. Post, Ruthie Pertsis
December 20, 2011 -- Incredibly, the Syrian uprising has now entered
its 10th month. More than 5,000 people have been killed, according
to the United Nations, with thousands more imprisoned and tortured
or driven from the country. Many Syrian activists fear the toll may be
far higher. A newly released Human Rights Watch report details that
army units have been given "shoot to kill" orders in dealing with
unarmed protesters. In the last two days alone, at least 150 people
have been killed, a worrying sign that the violence is accelerating.
Yet, in a remarkable interview this month with ABC's Barbara
Walters, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 1) denied the extent of
violence in his beleaguered country; 2) disputed the evidence in a
U.N. report charging him and his government with crimes against
humanity, asking, "Who said that the United Nations is a credible
institution?"; 3) claimed that the forces charged with cracking down
too hard on protesters did not belong to him, but instead to the
government; and 4) indicated that the Syrian people supported him --
otherwise he would not be in his position.
Does this suggest that Bashar is out of touch with political reality? Or --
as he has watched with dismay the fate of his fellow Arab dictators in
Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, who yielded too quickly to protests; and
the violent end of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, who fought until
the bitter end -- has he resolved to follow neither path? To understand
Assad's political behavior from a psychological perspective and try to
anticipate how he will behave, we must understand him in the context
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of the Assad family's dominance of the Syrian political scene.
Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria with an iron fist for three
decades, including enforcing draconian emergency laws in 1963 that
helped him eliminate political opponents and pave the way for the
family to secure long-term political control, despite being part of the
minority Alawite sect. Emblematic of his brutal rule was the crushing
of the uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, in which tens of
thousands of Syrians were killed.
Hafez had originally designated his eldest and favorite son, Bassel, as
his successor, and Bassel, the chief of presidential security, was
perfect for the job. He was forceful, macho, an aficionado of fast cars
who was popular with women. He stood in stark contrast to Bashar,
Hafez's second son, who grew up in Bassel's shadow, weak and in his
own world, calm with a soft voice. Bashar went on to become a
doctor, specializing in ophthalmology. In fact, it was Hafez's
childhood dream to become a doctor, but his family did not have the
financial resources to support him, so he entered the military and then
politics instead. Thus, it can be argued that Bashar, in becoming a
doctor, was fulfilling his father's thwarted dreams.
So it was not surprising that when duty called, six years after Bassel
was killed in a car accident in 1994, the dutiful son would abandon
his medical career to be at his father's side. He was summoned back
from London, where he was in postdoctoral training in
ophthalmology. It was not taken for granted that Bashar, who seemed
to lack the forceful character necessary to succeed his father, would
replace him. Indeed, some family members looked to Bashar's
younger brother, Maher, who more closely resembled his father and
eldest brother in his aggressive personality. In the end, though, Hafez
chose Bashar as his successor, giving him the role of the dignified
leader, and named Maher as the head of the Republican Guard, the
enforcer. (This would not have been a new arrangement for the Assad
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family, for Hafez himself had an aggressive younger brother, Rifaat,
who was the head of the security forces and personally oversaw the
Hama massacre.)
Initially, Syrians and Syria-watchers hoped that Bashar would be an
open-minded, liberal, and reforming leader. But these hopes rested on
a fragile foundation. The thrust of the argument was based on
Bashar's supposed "Westernization" during his time living and
studying ophthalmology in London. Contributing to the Westernized
image was his elegant British-born wife, Asma, whose parents had
emigrated from Syria to Britain, and who worked as an investment
banker with J.P. Morgan.
The Westernized facade proved to be all too thin, however. Bashar
was 27 when he lived in London, a fully formed adult, and had spent
his life absorbing his father's political ideas and observing his
leadership style, in particular how to deal with conflict. What's more,
Bashar only spent about 18 months in London and was almost
certainly significantly insulated by personal security forces during
that time, so his actual exposure to "Western" ways of life was likely
quite limited. And, of course, mere exposure to Western culture, even
if it is direct, is by no means a guarantee that an individual will adopt
and internalize its values and ideals.
In any event, the stormy waves of political reality were to overcome
whatever hopes he might initially have had to bring Syria into the
modern world. As the pressure for political reform grew, Bashar
found his minority Alawite leadership increasingly threatened, and
his inner circle pressed him to put a lid on the restive Sunni-majority
population, as his father would have done. As the second-choice son,
and not the obvious choice at that, Bashar had to prove himself a
worthy occupant of his father's throne. Unlike his father, the lion of
Damascus, whose powerful authority was unquestioned, Bashar was
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acutely aware of the concerns of the inner circle about whether he
could successfully lead Syria.
In a revealing moment during the Barbara Walters interview, when
asked whether he thought that his forces cracked down too hard on
protesters, Bashar replied: "They are not my forces; they are military
forces belong[ing] to the government.... I don't own them. I am
president. I don't own the country." In fact, he may have been
speaking the truth, reflecting that he does not have the full authority
his father had and was not the author of the extent of the violent
crackdown. Rather, it seems to be the handiwork of his aggressive
younger brother, Maher, who was initially the lightning rod for
criticism of the regime's brutality and who, according to a former
Syrian diplomat, because of his control of Syria's security forces, is
"first in command, not second."
Bashar's comment that he doesn't own the country is reminiscent of
Qaddafi's denial that he had any position of authority in Libya at the
beginning of the unrest there. Likewise reminiscent of Qaddafi, who
repeatedly claimed, "My people, they all love me," when asked
whether he thought that he had the support of the Syrian people,
Bashar responded that he wouldn't be in the position of president if
he didn't. But, in an apparent reference to the late Libyan leader,
Bashar disavowed killing his own people: "We don't kill our people;
nobody kill[s]. No government in the world kill[s] its people, unless
it's led by crazy [a] person." Never mind that the claim is
demonstrably false -- his calm demeanor during the interview
underscored this distinction between him and the emotionally
unstable Qaddafi.
Perhaps a better comparison for Bashar is to Qaddafi's own
designated successor, his son Saif al-Islam, who was also seen as a
potential force of modernization for his country. Saif was famously
exposed to the Western world during his graduate training in political
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philosophy at the London School of Economics, and it is believed
that he took the lead in ending Libya's economic isolation. But
fatefully for Saif, raised by his father's side, as the protests mounted,
he fully supported his father and helped carry out the violent
suppression of the protest movement to the degree that the
International Criminal Court indicted him along with the elder
Qaddafi. As his father had vowed to "fight to the last drop of my
blood," Saif, giving up any pretense of reformer, vowed that he
would "fight to the last bullet."
Like Saif, and for all his veneer of Westernization, Bashar never
learned from a powerful father how to respond to protest without
resorting to violence, and totalistic violence at that. After all, the
Hama massacre kept Hafez al-Assad in power for nearly two more
decades. It seems likely that Bashar, like Saif, will persist with the
present destructive course charted by his father until the end, for in
the end "blood will out."
Jerrold M. Post is professor ofp sychiatry, political psychology, and
international affairs and director of the Political Psychology rogram
at George Washington University's Elliott School of International
Affairs. A graduate of the Political Psychology Program, Ruthie
Pertsis serves as Post's research director.
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