On the evening of 29 March, a line in my twitter feed read, “You don’t want to mess with Iran’s lady ninjas.” Cara Park’s snarky comment had been retweeted by someone I follow in Cairo. I clicked her link to find she’s a deputy managing editor of Foreign Policy, blogging on the suspensions of Reuters’ accreditation in Iran over their reporting on women training in ninjutsu:

In case it wasn’t obvious, you don’t want to offend a highly-trained cadre of Iranian ninjas. Anger these black-belted beauties and they’ll … take their legitimate complaint to the appropriate authorities who will suspend your press credentials. Hiiiii-yah! 

It may be time for Foreign Policy to have an editorial meeting about its ab/use of humor.ⁱ Ironically, Parks herself warns of “glibly labeling a group in a way that plays into stereotypes about violence is no laughing matter.” But then, can’t help but end with another chuckle. Posting a picture of one of the Iranian ninjutsu practitioners Parks says, “Don’t believe us? Why don’t you tell her that.” Academics are often rightly accused of being too insular. The same could be said of some journalists, especially those who work for social media sites. One wonders if there isn’t too much pressure to get more “likes,” retweets, mentions, and followers. Brevity and witticism have become valued tools of the trade. Behind Parks' superficial and sarcastic blog is a complex and troubling picture.

Journalists and Iran’s “Ninjas”

The story began on 2 February, when Press TV uploaded a report on women practicing ninjutsu in Iran. Part of Iran’s state-controlled media, Press TV regularly presents feature stories meant to show life in Iran through the lens of the Islamic Republic. Here was a story of a modest dojo in Karaj, a town on the outskirts of Iran’s capital, where a handful of women were shown demonstrating rather impressive martial arts skills. Sensei Akbar Faraji tells us ninjutsu was introduced to Iran in 1989 and now has some 24,000 members of an official club. “Being a ninja,” Faraji said,” is about patience, tolerance, fortitude.” Fatemeh Moamer, a ninjutsu instructor explained, “The most important lesson of ninjutsu is respect and humility. They learn self-respect.”  The Press TV report used slow motion and music for dramatic effect. To be fair, ninjutsu is incredibly dramatic. But that’s the point of a lot of martial arts, according to practitioner and scholar Deborah Kelns-Bigman who has forwarded a theory of martial arts as performance art.ⁱⁱ

My husband, who has been practicing karate and kung fu for the past fourteen years, tells me that in some martial arts looking fierce is an important part of overcoming your opponent. The images of Iranian women looking fierce as they practiced martial arts went viral. Reuters soon did their own story on the same dojo, but their headline read, “Thousands of Female Ninjas train as Iran’s Assassins.” Several other media outlets picked up the Reuters report. “Iran trains female ninjas as potential assassins,” announced The Telegraph on 18 February. Below this headline, we see a brief video of women demonstrating their ninjutsu skills. The only commentary is a quote from Sensei Faraji: "What is important to me as an Iranian and as a coach is that I have to do this job. We must have strong women, able women. And for the defense of our country, we will do anything.

In the accompanying article, we read:

Scores of black-clad female ‘ninja’ fighters … are being trained as lethal warriors at a school in Tehran…. One of the fighters who has been training for over thirteen years said, “Our aim is for Iranian women to be strengthened and if a problem arises, we will definitely declare our readiness to defend our Islamic homeland.”

 

The rest of The Telegraph article is about suspicions that Iran is “planning to make nuclear weapons” and “pursuing weapons of mass destruction.” 

Rupert Murdoch’s iPad publication, The Daily, ran the video under the headline, “Iranian Ninjas,” noting “the nation’s women have embraced the ancient Japanese warrior training.” 

… A female Iranian assassin who disappeared from Bangkok in the wake of the failed anti-Israeli bomb plot is reportedly back in Tehran today. The new wrinkle comes as blame is cast upon Iran for a recent spate of botched terror attacks — and as Iran brags about its battalion of female “ninjas” who they say are trained to kill…the continuing revelations about a rash of assassination attempts against Israeli diplomats are shedding light on a global shadow war fit for a Hollywood thriller.

Fiction melded with facts, and the martial artists in Karaj were presented as trained assassins working for the Iranian government. Shortly after the article appeared on The Daily, its apparent author, Luke Jerod Kummer sent out a twitter disavowing the report. 

According to Jim Romenesko who blogs on the media, Kummer had “tweeted his objection to the handling of his reporting a half-hour after resigning from The Daily.” Kummer then received a letter from Murdoch’s company, noting his tweet and threatening to sue him on the basis of a Non-Disclosure/Non-Compete Agreement. Kummer hasn’t tweeted since.

“The episode,” wrote Eric Wemple of The Washington Post, “helps answer a perpetual question about Murdoch properties: How far will they stretch to sexify their journalism.” Indeed, how much innuendo, exaggeration, or outright lying are we to tolerate from the press?

And this is the root of the objections of the Iranian women martial artists. Press TV’s reporters returned to the dojo, filing an update on March 28. One athlete complained that being dubbed assassins harms their chances to compete internationally: “We want the whole world to know that Reuters has lied about us.” The athletes claim that the Reuters journalist asked them what they would do if their country was attacked and then reported their responses out of context. 

Martial Arts and Feminist Rage

On February 19, The Guardian produced a slideshow of the Retuers photographs with a caption, “Iran’s female ninjas: fighting for sexual equality.” In the accompanying article, Lucy Managan quipped:

For those times when Betty Friedan just isn’t enough…ninjutsu is here to help. …It turns out that when you’re denied basic human rights, restricted in your ability to dress how you want and mix with the people you choose, and when your legal testimony is officially recognized as being worth exactly half that of a man’s, you develop—if these images are anything to go by—a lot of rage. 

Unfortunately, Managan herself took a decidedly non-feminist stance in her reporting by completely ignoring the women athletes’ own comments. And it may be news to Managan, but feminism is hardly the exclusive purview of middle class white women like Friedan. Iranian women searching for feminist inspiration are more likely to read Simin Daneshvar’s novels, recite Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry, watch Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s films, or contemplate Shirin Neshat’s art.ⁱⁱⁱ This is a common double-bind of Iranian women. Even as they are denied important rights in Iran, too often they become reduced to voiceless, mindless symbols with no agency of their own by Western writers, journalists, and academics.

Almost all the reporting on the dojo in Karaj paid little heed to the practice of martial arts. While ninjutsu, like many other forms of martial arts, is rooted in a warrior tradition, its contemporary practice is an athletic not militaristic enterprise. As one scholar explained, “There are no ninja today, only practitioners of some of the techniques and students of the tradition. Achievement of some rank within a school teaching ninjutsu cannot make one a ninja, any more than learning techniques with the sword can qualify one as a samurai.”^iv

No doubt, the practice of martial arts in general is gendered. The growing popularity of martial arts by women in the U.S. has ties to the feminist self-defense movement. A martial arts workshop organized by the Nutcracker’s Suite Karate and Self-Dense School in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1977 featured political workshops that sought to connect the physical training to an “understanding of violence against women, the roots and magnitude of acts of harassment, child molestation, wife abuse, rape, and murder…”^v Indeed, Iranian women’s participation in martial arts is part of a larger global trend. Women benefit from the physicality of martial arts, but also from the enhancement of a mind-body connection. But it’s a truism that much of the reporting on Iran happens in isolation—underscoring a sense that Iranians are essentially different from and separated out of broader social and political phenomena.

There is, of course, a particular history of Iranian’s participation in martial arts that the coverage by and large ignored. “Iran’s revolutionary ax,” reported UPI on July 3, 1979, “which has already banned liquor, drugs, and mixed swimming, fell Tuesday on Bruce Lee and kung fu films.” Though Bruce Lee’s film, “The Fist of Fury,” was still showing in a Tehran cinema, “the fate of more than a dozen karate and kung fu schools in the capital was not known.”^vi As it turns out, the Islamic Republic’s prohibition on many popular forms of entertainment—viewing the latest Hollywood blockbusters at the local theater, gambling at casinos, drinking at bars, dancing at nightclubs—led to the rise of other forms of public sociability that abided by strict moral codes established by the state. More and more Iranians participate in sports and attend sporting events as a regular pastime. And since the revolution, martial arts have become widely practiced in Iran. There are competitions at the collegial, regional, and national levels supported by various official leagues and a national martial arts federation.

Sports have become a site of contested power in the Islamic Republic.^vii On the one hand, they provide a venue for public sociability; in turn, the government imposes restrictions on sports in order to extend its control over public space and citizens’ bodies. When the government put in place systematic gender segregation, Iranian women were prohibited from participating in international sporting events, barred from attending soccer matches in stadiums, and forced to ski on separate slopes and swim on separate beaches. Overtime, as women have struggled for more rights and Iranians have demanded more social freedoms, the gender boundaries of sports have shifted. And the impulse to control Iranians’ bodies rubs against the government’s desire to win prestigious awards in international arenas, like the World Cup and the Olympics.

Within this complex web of power and control, Iranian women athletes have gravitated towards sports that can be reasonably practiced in the mandated “modest” Islamic attire and whose international governing bodies have flexible dress codes. Gradually, Iranian women began to participate in international competitions in shooting, shotput, skiing, and martial arts. In 1996, Lida Fariman joined the Iranian national team at the Atlanta Olympics as a shooter. In the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Iran had three women athletes in rowing, archery, and taekwondo.  In 2010, alpine skier Marjan Kalhour became the first Iranian woman to participate in the winter Olympics.

In 2007, the Iranian Olympic Committee had issued new guidelines for “proper behavior” of male and female athletes participating in international sporting competitions to counter their “subjugation to western customs and practices.” Women athletes cannot train or travel with male coaches; male referees should not touch Iranian women athletes, even to raise their hand in victory. 

Meanwhile, tailors got busy, experimenting with materials like Velcro and lycra to create new forms of hijab that would allow Iranian women to participate in soccer tournaments. Soccer—or football as it is commonly called outside the U.S.—is the most popular and prestigious sport of all in Iran. A women’s league was a great step forward for Iranian women athletes. But in June 2011, as the national team prepared for a qualifying match for the 2012 London Olympics, FIFA decreed their head covering was in violation of the official dress code. They were disqualified and were forced to forfeit their match to Jordan. 

The larger struggle over gender politics in Iran is refracted through sports. In the 1990s, Faezeh Hashemi, a former MP and the daughter of the former Iranian President, “championed the right of women to have access to sports facilities and competition as the head of the Islamic Women’s Sports Federation. In that role, she increased access for women to swimming pools and tennis courts and golf driving ranges.”^viii But Iran’s women athletes remain caught in a web of government control within Iran while their modest Islamic attire makes them subject to prohibition by international sporting bodies.

And now some careless or unethical journalists made the women athletes in the Karaj dojo the butt of jokes or props in their jingoistic drum beating for war on Iran. More power to them for speaking out for themselves. Unfortunately, the whole sordid affair provided the Islamic Republic a handy excuse to withdraw Reuters’ credentials, making it even harder for us to get accurate reporting from Iran at a critical time. Above all else, the story of Iranian women martial artists turns out to be a cautionary tale.

 _______

 [The following press release was issued by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel on 25 March 2012.]

(Beer el-Sabe, Israel)--On 19 March 2012, six residents of unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the northern Naqab (Negev) filed an official objection (Hebrew) with the Southern District Planning and Building Committee in Beer el-Sabe (Beer Sheva) to government plans to build "Intelligence City". The Israeli army plans to consolidate several military bases located in the central region of Israel, east of Beer el-Sabe in the south, where the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages lie. The objectors argued that residents of villages included inside the area slated for "Intelligence City" filed land ownership claims in the 1970s, but the State has ignored their applications. The objection was filed by Adalah, Bimkom Planners for Planning Rights, and the Regional Council of the Unrecognized Villages (RCUV) on behalf of the residents; it was drafted by Planner Cesar Yehudkin of Bimkom and Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara.

Intelligence City is planned to comprise five thousand dunams of land and to lie between the Arab Bedouin towns Laqiyya and Umm Batin. Its buildings will reach six stories and cover an area of more than six hundred thousand square meters. The area designated for the development is surrounded by several unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages, populated by more than nine thousand people. Around two thousand Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel live inside the area where the military complex is to be built. Some of their villages have been in existence since before Israel's establishment, while others were created by order of the military government in the 1950s for Arab Bedouin moved from their ancestral land to the Siyag region of the Naqab. Much of the rest of the area inside Intelligence City is used by the Arab Bedouin for farming and grazing, water collection for drinking and irrigation, and even a cemetery.

Despite the land ownership claims submitted Arab Bedouin residents, the objection emphasizes that the plan for Intelligence City refers to the area as "state land.” Further, past governmental plans, including the Beer Sheva Metropolitan Plan and the Goldberg Committee recommendations, referred to these villages, and sometimes even suggested granting them recognition. Some land ownership claims are still pending. Village residents also have pending objections and suggestions filed to various planning committees. Approval of the plan for Intelligence City renders the procedure of objections meaningless, contrary to principle of the rule of law and to planning and building laws in Israel.

The objectors added that the stated goal of the plan is to transfer military intelligence bases from a crowded area in the center of the country to a populated region in the south that will become just as crowded in a short time. This plan disregards vacant, uninhabited land that the Israeli army controls and could build on without displacing Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel. The objectors concluded that approving the plan will gravely damage the constitutional land ownership rights of the Arab Bedouin residents of the region, and that demolishing and evacuating the village contradicts Israel's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.

Also see: Jerusalem Post, Negev Bedouin file objection to IDF complex, 3/22/12.

Regrettably, states’ power to protect themselves and to ensure impunity has continued to grow in recent years. This paper discusses two recent examples of this political trend: the far-reaching reaction to Judge Baltasar Garzon’s legal decision not to apply the 1977 Spanish Amnesty Law to crimes against humanity committed during the Franco regime, and the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on state immunity according to which a state is immune from jurisdiction before foreign national courts, even in cases involving civil responsibility for international crimes. It also briefly notes relevant legal developments in the European Court of Human Rights and the US Supreme Court. 

I. National Amnesty laws and the indictment of Judge Baltasar Garzón in Spain
Spain has held a reputation for combating impunity from international crimes since it issued the famous arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet, the former army general and President of Chile, in 1998. Until very recently, Spain’s national legislation on universal jurisdiction granted victims of international crimes direct access to Spanish courts, circumventing state prosecution authorities, and without requiring any connection between Spain and the case. The law was modified one year ago to introduce the following restrictions, which demonstrates states’ tendency to limit accountability: 

Notwithstanding whatever may be provided in other treaties and international conventions ratified by Spain, the Spanish courts shall only have jurisdiction over the above crimes when it has been duly shown that the alleged responsible are present in Spain, or that the victims are of Spanish nationality, or that there is some demonstrated relevant link with Spain and that, in any event, there is no other competent country or international tribunal where proceedings have been initiated that constitute an effective investigation and prosecution, in the event, of the punishable facts.

According to Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, universal jurisdiction does not require any such connection; it is justified solely by the gravity of the crimes, as Israel spelled out in the 1961 Eichmann case. 

In universal jurisdiction cases, Spanish courts, including its Supreme Court, have consistently declared amnesties granted by foreign states invalid. This occurred both in the cases of Pinochet and of Miguel Angel Cavallo, an Argentine officer charged in Spain with genocide and torture committed during military rule in Argentina from 1976-1983, during which thirty thousand people disappeared (See paragraph twenty-four of the application of Judge Garzon to the European Court of Human Rights. However, unlike foreign citizens, former officials of the Spanish Franco regime have been shielded from investigation and prosecution by the 1977 Spanish Amnesty Law.

In an unprecedented ruling (see case Audiencia Nacional, Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5, Diligencias Previas Proc. Abreviado 399/2006 V (Judgment of 16 October 2008)), Judge Garzón, who issued the original arrest warrant against Pinochet, decided on 16 October 2008 that the Spanish Amnesty Law does not apply to crimes against humanity committed by the Franco regime, since under international law such crimes cannot be shielded by amnesty laws. Jurisdiction was assumed, inter alia, over crimes committed by Franco and his high command during the war and in the post-war period in respect of ‘crimes against the state,’ which under Articles 23.2, 23.4 and 65.1 of the Ley Organica Judicial corresponds to the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Nacional, carried out in the context of and connected to crimes against humanity.

Following a 2006 petition by family members and associations representing victims of the Franco regime, Judge Garzón opened a criminal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during the Spanish civil war and the Franco dictatorship between 1936 and 1951. In his ruling, he cited international jurisprudence, the Spanish Constitution, and judgments of the Spanish Supreme Court, which has ruled that international law shall provide the interpretation for the enforcement of crimes against humanity. 

Judge Garzón’s ruling attracted considerable controversy. The court’s jurisdiction was denied on appeal. Then, following a criminal complaint filed by the right-wing political organization Manos Limpias in April 2010, Judge Garzón was indicted on charges of prevaricación, defined in Article 446 of the Spanish Criminal Code as “The judge or magistrate who, knowingly, dictates an unjust sentence or resolution,” which allows Spanish judges to be prosecuted for unjust judgments. Judge Garzón was suspended from his judicial functions and has faced allegations that he abused his judicial authority. The criminal trial began in Spain on 24 January 2012. Judge Garzón has since brought a case before the European Court of Human Rights challenging the lawfulness of his criminal prosecution.

Gabriela Knaul, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, declared that:

 It is regrettable that Judge Garzón could be punished for opening an investigation which is in line with Spain’s obligations to investigate human rights violations in accordance with international law principles… Supposed errors in judicial decisions should not be a reason for the removal of a judge and, even less, for a criminal proceeding to be launched… Autonomy in the interpretation of the law is a fundamental element in the role of a judge and for progress in human rights…No judge may fear to be independent in his or her functions.

On 27 February 2012, Judge Garzon was acquitted. However, the Amnesty Law remains in effect for Spanish crimes committed by the Franco regime. While Spain has provided legal jurisdiction for international crimes committed elsewhere, crimes that occurred in Spain remain immune from prosecution. Ironically, Franco’s crimes can now only be prosecuted outside of Spain, under universal jurisdiction. 

Victims of international crimes are entitled to a remedy; accountability is both a moral and legal necessity. All the valid reasons which convinced the international community to establish individual criminal responsibility for international crimes should apply even more strongly when governments commit crimes against humanity against their own citizens. Since Judge Garzón’s 2008 ruling was a step forward in combating impunity, we must join together in condemning both the attacks against Garzón and the Spanish Amnesty Law which continues to protect alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

II.   State Immunity v.  Accountability

• The International Court of Justice decision in Germany v. Italy 

In the innovative 2004 Ferrini decision, the Italian Court of Cassation allowed Italian victims of Nazi crimes to claim reparations directly from Germany via Italian national courts, thereby abrogating Germany’s state immunity. Italy’s highest court held that Italian courts had jurisdiction to hear these claims since they constituted a violation of jus cogens, fundamental principles in international law. This overstepping of Germany’s State immunity created a new exception to the rule of state immunity from civil lawsuits. According to the Italian Court of Cassation, the international community had made it clear that state officials can no longer invoke immunity to evade criminal prosecution for international crimes. To maintain legal coherence, the Court argued, immunity should not apply to states that abrogate their civil responsibility, as there would be no reason to uphold the immunity of the state while denying the immunity of its officials.

Following this landmark ruling and subsequent lawsuits, Germany initiated proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to revoke the Italian court’s decision as a violation of customary international law. Neither country denied international crimes were committed; the issue was whether Germany was sheltered from Italian courts’ jurisdiction by customary international law, or whether jus cogens violations create an exception to the general immunity.

By allowing reparations to be pursued in Ferrini, the Italian Court implicitly granted individuals a right of reparation. Indeed, Italy was explicit before the ICJ that it had abrogated Germany’s immunity because of the specific issue at stake: ensuring reparations and access to justice for Italian World War II victims. Without rejecting the immunity, the victims would be denied justice.

Regrettably, although predictably—not a single state practice leant support to the Italian position—the ICJ sided with Germany. On 3 February 2012, it ruled that states have the right to immunity from foreign courts, even if the case concerns allegations of international crimes (see ICJ, Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening) - Judgment of 3 February 2012).

Thus, international law maintains a strict division between individual and state immunity and between civil and criminal responsibility. Former officials can be charged by foreign national courts in criminal cases and will not enjoy immunity in cases of international crimes, as ruled in the UK Pinochet case (ICJ, Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy: Greece intervening) - Judgment of 3 February 2012), yet the state cannot be held responsible in civil cases before the courts of third-party states. Naturally, from the victims’ perspective these are fictional divisions that serve only the interests of the responsible state. 

• European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)

A claim similar to Ferrini was submitted in the United Kingdom. The victim sought reparations from Saudi Arabia, having allegedly been subjected to torture there. In 2006, the House of Lords rejected the case on the grounds of state immunity, directly rejecting Ferrini (Jones v. Saudia Arabia, UK House of Lords (2006), para. 22). The House stated, regarding Ferrini, that ‘one swallow does not make a rule of international law’). The case is now pending before the European Court of Human Rights, although the ICJ ruling has diminished the likelihood of success (see European Court of Human Rights, Jones v UK and Mitchell & Ors v UK, Application Numbers: 34356/06 and 40528/06 [pending]).

• The United States – The Samantar case

In the United States, the Alien Tort Statute provides national legislation allowing victims to seek remedy for international crimes through universal jurisdiction. The victims in the Samantar case referenced that statute in seeking redress for torture and extrajudicial killings from the former Somali Prime Minister, whom they argued possessed command responsibility and control over the military forces committing the abuses in the 1980s. The US Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act extended to an individual acting in his official capacity on behalf of a foreign state or solely to the state itself (Samantar v. Yousuf, 130 S.Ct. 2278 [2010]). Interestingly, the Zionist Organization of America and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia both submitted briefs to the Supreme Court supporting the Somali dictator, despite the groups having no link to Somalia or to the case, aside from their narrow self-interest in upholding state immunity. 

Saudi Arabia argued in its brief that: 

Saudi Arabia has been and is a pivotal ally of the United States...In light of the possibility that litigation in US courts will be used as a means to harass or embarrass Saudi Arabia and its officials in other matters (even as the political branches of the United States work toward even stronger diplomatic and economic ties with Saudi Arabia), Saudi Arabia retains a strong interest in the issues of sovereign immunity raised here.

The brief of the Zionist Organization of America stated that: 

The decision of the Fourth Circuit that permits civil lawsuits to be brought against current and former government officials notwithstanding the immunity that their governments have under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act will, if not reversed by this Court, encourage the institution of many unfounded lawsuits in United States courts against present and former government officials of the State of Israel.

The Obama Administration argued that, despite “having a strong interest in promoting human rights,” it believed that issues of immunity were within the purview of the executive, and not the judicial branch; the Supreme Court agreed in its decision of 2010. While the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was ruled inapplicable to current or former officials of foreign nations, common law immunity, the scope of which is defined by the state, could be asserted.

States must represent the interests of the people. As an active civil society, it is our responsibility to continuously demand accountability, until the people’s voice prevails over the regime’s self-interest, so that states change their rigid positions on immunity and that international law reflects this change.

[This article was originally posted in Adalah’s March 2012 Newsletter.]

[The following press release was issued by Adalah--The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel on 27 March 2012.]

30 March 2012 is the thirty-sixth Land Day. The first Land Day began as a general strike in 1976 to protest Israel's policy of confiscating Arab land, and ended with the killing of six Palestinians from Sakhnin and Arrabeh by Israeli security forces. Israel continues to displace and dispossess Palestinian citizens of their land, with the government-initiated Prawer Plan Law (Law for the Regulation of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev 2012) being the most recent iteration of government policy.

On Land Day 2012, Adalah calls on Israel to cancel the pending Prawer Plan Law that, if passed, will forcibly displace up to seventy thousand Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel from their homes and ancestral lands. The Prawer Plan anticipates the largest confiscation of Arab-owned land since the 1950s, and will deny the Arab Bedouin of their rights to land, equality, and dignity. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recently called on Israel to "withdraw the 2012 discriminatory proposed Law for the Regulation of the Bedouin Settlement in the Negev, which would legalize the ongoing policy of home demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities." In the run-up to Land Day, to inform the public about the devastating Prawer Plan and the government's ongoing policy of demolition and displacement in the Naqab, Adalah initiated a lecture series entitled "Bringing the Naqab North".

This month, Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, Director of Adalah's Naqab Office, presented lectures in four Arab villages in the Galilee (Nazareth, Majd Al-Karoum, Koukab Abu Al-Hija and Taybeh). He was joined by Khalil Al-Amour of Alsira village and a member of the Board of Directors of Adalah, as well as members of the Arab Steering Committee in the Naqab. The lectures included a screening of the film "Sumoud," which is directed by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours and documents the story, struggle, and resilience of the people of Al-Araqib. There will be a special evening event in Jaffa in April.

My dissertation studies intersections and impasses between law and citizenship in Lebanon. I do so through examining two phenomena, activism for a secular personal status and/or civil marriage law, and conversion between sects and/or religions in order to make use of different personal status laws—a practice I call “strategic conversion.” Because of this emphasis on law and citizenship, my project is in conversation with literature on secularism and religion, the relationship between law, the state, and nationalism, and practices of citizenship and subjectivity. In addition, I have drawn extensively on archival texts, court documents, and legal texts that detail the Lebanese legal system as well as tose of other states that have plural legal systems. I contrast “paper law” or the law that can be found in books, with “practice law” or the law that I have observed in action at personal status, civil, and criminal courts of both first instance and appeal.

In addition to this personal archive that has enabled me to craft and produce my research and dissertation, there are a number of texts that I keep returning to in order to think about Lebanon more critically. The list is long and multi-lingual, but I in this post I have tried to whittle it down to a list of ten. I failed, and in order to accommodate this failure I have separated the texts by language, which will form the body of another list. Even then, the list below does not approach what we could call “exhaustive” despite the fact that I have cheated and there are more than ten texts on it. The glaring omission are texts on the Ottoman Empire (the work of Selim Deringil has been particularly influential on me) and on the region more broadly, without which the study of Lebanon is at best myopic. In addition, experience has taught me that text itself is an insufficient source of knowledge when thinking about how people practice their lives, how institutions function, and how epistemology is formed.

Despite these shortcomings, I have decided to present this list on Jadaliyya for many reasons. The selfish reason is that it is a useful exercise for me to think about what texts have strongly influenced me and why. The less selfish reason is that I am curious as to how how these lists might differ between graduate students such as myself, scholars, and journalists. The third reason is pedagogical, as writing this list has enabled me to think about how one might teach an introduction to Lebanon.

Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi`i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

In An Enchanted Modern, Lara Deeb examines the “pious modernity” that is practiced in the southern suburbs of Beirut. For Deeb, a pious, or enchanted modern is one in which there is an emphasis on both spiritual and material progress away from what is perceived as tradition. The Enchanted Modern is an ethnographic example of a community in Lebanon that is a popular subject in public discourse about lebanon, yet has not been given much careful and sensitive treatment in academia. Also a text that explores the workinds of non-heterodox and yet mainstream practice of Islam and resistance politics in an Arab country, An Enchanted Modern is a book that is insightfully involved in several conversations simultaneously.

Irene Gendzier, Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon, 1945-1958. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

In Notes on the Minefield Irene Gendzier utilizes previously underused archives to write a critical and innovative account of US involvement in Lebanon post WWII. Gendzier demonstrates that the politics and infrastructures of oil and extraction informed US policies in the region during the independence period, even in countries that are not oil producing, such as Lebanon.

Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation. London: I.B. Taurus, 1993.

Hanf's 1993 book is nothing less than an encyclopedia of reference material and analysis for anyone thinking deeply about the Lebanese civil war, its buildup and its aftermath.

Jens Hanssen, Fin De Siecle Beirut:The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital. Oxford University Press, 2005.

In Fin De Siecle Beirut, Hannssen explains the Ottoman history of Beirut before “Lebanon.” This history is cirucual to understanding the background picture out of which Beirut came to be a “capital city” of a nation state.

Micheal Hudson, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon. Random House, 1968.

The Precarious Republic is one of the books that many, if not most scholars of Lebanon will agree should have a place on this list. Reading it today, it is as interesting, engaging and thought provoking (although perhaps it provokes different thoughts) as it was in 1968, the year it was published.

Michael Johnson, Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State, 1840-1985. London: Ithaca Press, 1986.

Johnson's 1986 text provides a nuanced account of Lebanese politics, economics, and social structures through a study of family history in Beirut, focusing on the Sunni community. In doing so, he conveys a deep sense of a historical period (post WWII and pre-civil war) that deserves more academic attention. By doing so, Johnson develops innovative ways of thinking about the 1958 Lebanese civil war.

Akram F. Khater, Inventing Home; Emigration, Gender and the Middle Class in Lebanon 1870-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Inventing Home is a beautifully written account of turn of the century migration out of the geographic area that became “Lebanon.” Khater traces the complex ways that migration patterns and circulations produced and impacted society, economy, family structure, and politics in not only the “Lebanon,” but also places that were the recipients of large numbers of migrants, such as New York City.

Ilham Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914. University of California Press, 2010.

In this text Ilham Makdisi brings Lebanon into world history, and the world history into lebanon. She demonstrates how the Eastern Mediterranean was a context in which radicalism grew and was formed. By demonstrating Lebanon's place in this circulation of intellectual history, Makdisi challenges us to think more critically about what we assume “the region” is.

Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

Both of Ussama Makdisi's two books on Lebanon (the second one being The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon) are essential to the modern history of that country and its peoples. I have included Artillery of Heaven because it explores the history of religion in the Middle East-a very popular topic- from an innovative angle, the American missionary.

Julie Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

The refugee population has been and continues to be integral to the development and practices of politics, economics, society and state institutions in Lebanon. Because of this, any study of Lebanon is incomplete without incorporating the history of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. After all, 1948 happened only five years after “Lebanon” as we know it today came to exist. Peteet's work, while focusing on the history of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, reminds us that this history is also a history of Lebanon and vice versa.

Kamal S. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

This book has long been considered one of the definitive histories of Lebanon in the English language. In it, Salibi details Lebanon as a mosaic of interconnected communities, rather than the result of one particular group’s dominance. Significantly, A House of Many Mansions also begins to dismantle the foundational myths of the various Lebanese communities as well as those of the state as a whole.

Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Colonial Citizens demonstrates the production of gendered citizenship in Lebanon and Syria under French mandate in important and instructive ways. Colonial Citizens also includes a searing and unforgettable account of the WWI era famine that afflicted bilad al-sham, and the effects that the famine had on the Lebanese nation state project. Thompson shows us that both subjects need to be studied further.

Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press, 2007.

In A History of Modern Lebanon Traboulsi writes what has eluded us for a long time, a history of modern lebanon that includes the civil war and post civil war periods. In addition, Traboulsi's focus on economic history and political economy provides important insights to many of the historical events that are read, perhaps too quickly, as “sectarian.”

Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi`ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

In the Shadow of Sectarianism traces the history of the Lebanese shiite community through struggles around, about, and within the Lebanese legal system. By doing so, Weiss shows us how studies of law can inflect old topics such as sectarianism with new insights.

In addition to these books, there are two articles that I find myself consistently return to when I need to reboot my thinking on Lebanon.

Suad Joseph, “The Public/Private: The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/State/Community: The Lebanese Case.” Feminist Review 57 (1997): 73-9.

Rania Maktabi, “The Lebanese Census of 1932 Revisited. Who Are the Lebanese?” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26.2 (1999): 219-241.

يقول أحد عمال سيراميكا كليوباترا المضربين بحماس شديد في فيديو مدته ١٠ دقائق من قلب الإضراب بثت حركة مصرين على يوتيوب:"احنا لما قمنا بالثورة قمنا عشان نلغي حكومة رجال الأعمال. احنا عايزين الحكومة اللي بتمثل الشعب تشوف الشعب عايز ايه". يصف العمال، الذين حققوا انتصارا شاملا في كل مطالبهم فيما بعد، صاحب المصنع محمد أبوالعينين، رجل الأعمال والقيادي السابق في حزب النظام المخلوع وبرلمانه، بأنه كان يدير البلد، في وعي كامل بما يسميه الاقتصاديون والخبراء والسياسيون برأسمالية المحاسيب. غير أن الاستنتاج البسيط، في سهولته ووضوحه وليس في عمقه، الذي خرج به العامل الثائر، لا يحوز على تأييد قوى سياسية عديدة تقول إنها تمثل المصريين، وإلا كيف نفهم أن تقوم جماعة الإخوان المسلمين عبر حزبها بترشيح رجل أعمال لرئاسة مصر قائلة إن قرارها ينبع من "الحرص على استكمال الثورة والدفاع عنها"؟  

من يدير البلاد؟ سؤال الثورة

رأسمالية المحاسيب هو مصطلح يصف اقتصاداً يكون فيه النجاح في الاستثمار وإدارة الأعمال معتمداً على العلاقات الوثيقة بين رجال الأعمال ومسؤولي الحكم. وفيه يطفو فساد عالم السياسة إلى عالم البزنس فتؤثر الصداقات والقرابات العائلية بين المستثمرين والحكومة على الاقتصاد والمجتمع لدرجة أنها تحدد مسارهما. وفي مصر، كانت سنوات حكومة نظيف تتويجا لخيار مشترك بين رأسماليين مصريين وبين الأسرة الحاكمة عكس نفسه في تحويل هائل لثروة المجتمع، بشكل مباشر من أراضي وأصول الدولة أو غير مباشر بالمواقع الاحتكارية في الاستيراد والانتاج، لأيدي شريحة مقربة منتقاة من رجال الأعمال، سيطرت أجندتهم ومصالحهم على جدول أعمال الاقتصاد والمجتمع كله. ووجدت هذه المصالح تجسدها وحلفها السياسيين في مشروع التوريث.

جاءت ثورة يناير من رحم هذا التداخل المركب الذي أفسد السياسة والاقتصاد معاً، لتطلب ديمقراطية تحققحرية وكرامة يعكسان تجليهما في توزيع عادل للثروة: عدالة اجتماعية. لكن الثورة نجحت فقط، حتى الآن، في إزاحة المشروع السياسي لهذه المصالح المسيطرة التي اطعمها ورعاها نظام المخلوع حتى صارت أخطبوطية، وبقيت هي تبحث عن مشروع جديد تعيد تقديم نفسها من داخله.

وبرغم الضربة الهائلة التي وجهها الثائرون للتزاوج بين الثروة والسلطة، نجحت عصابات المصالح القديمة في الحفاظ على مكتسباتها القديمة في نظام ضرائب منحاز لها على حساب أغلبية المصريين ودعم مباشر لأرباح محتكريها في الطاقة والصادرات ... الخ. ليس هذا فقط، بل نجحت في إيقاف قوانين كانت أساسية لتعطيل جزء من الآلية الأساسية في رأسمالية محاسيب مبارك وجمال: على رأسها قانون تعارض المصالح. ويضع هذا القانون، الذي دخل مشروعه أروقة حكومة شرف الأولى قبل أن تنحيه جانباً، قواعد لتنظيم عمل رجال الأعمال بالسياسة وبمناصب الدولة لكي يحاول تأمين عدم تأثر السياسة العامة بمصالحهم الخاصة.

بالتزامن مع هذا ظهرت أحزاب جديدة يتحكم فيها بشكل شبه كامل رجال أعمال، كان لهم صلات لا تنكر بنظام مبارك، لتضخ أموالا هائلة في الدعاية وتدافع عن برنامج اقتصادي واجتماعي كان ليفخر به نظيف ورجاله. كما مولت المصالح القديمة عددا لا بأس به من القنوات الفضائية والصحف الجديدة للتأثير في الرأي العام ... الخ. وها هو المال يطل برأسه وبجسده وبكل جبروته في الانتخابات الرئاسية (مرة أخرى بعد الانتخابات البرلمانية) عبر الدعاية الهائلة غير المنضبطة وفي غياب القيود على تمويل المرشحين وغياب الشفافية في مصادر التمويل. فهل هذه هي الديمقراطية التي نسعى إليها؟  

درس أمريكي

في الولايات المتحدة هناك قوانين تنظم تعارض المصالح، غير أن هذا لم يعف نظامها السياسي من مشكلات تأثير مصالح الأغنياء والشركات الكبري في مواجهة مصالح الأغلبية. يكتب روبرت رايش، الاقتصادي الأمريكي الكبير وأستاذ الإدارة العامة بجامعة كاليفورنيا، في عدد التاسع من أبريل ٢٠١٢ من مجلة "ذي نيشن" The Nation أن "الحكومة الكبيرة ليست هي المشكلة – كما يقول الجمهوريون الساعون لتقليص عجز الموازنة ودور الحكومة في الاقتصاد. المشكلة هي المال الكبير الذي يستحوذ على الحكومة. الحكومة تفعل القليل مما يريدها أغلبيتنا أن تفعل- في توفير مدارس عامة جيدة وكليات بتكلفة معقولة وتحسين البنية الأساسية وصيانة شبكات الأمان الاجتماعي وحماية العامة من المخاطر. وفي المقابل تفعل أكثر الأشياء التي يريدها الأغنياء وول ستريت والشركات الكبرى أن تفعل".

ويقدر الخبراء أن الانتخابات الرئاسية الأمريكية المقبلة ستشهد صعوداً هائلا في تمويل المرشحين لتصبح الانتخابات الأعلى تكلفة في التاريخ بضخ حوالي ٦ مليارات دولار. “ولا يمنح الأغنياء والشركات هذه الأموال بدافع العمل الخيري لكنها استثمارات يتوقعون عليها عائداً معتبراً"، يضيف رايش.
هذا الوضع المتفاقم في واحدة من أكثر ديمقراطيات الرأسمالية قدماً يفسر الصعود في حركات المقاومة "احتلوا"، كما يفسر عزوف الناخبين الفقراء عن المشاركة في العملية السياسية وعضوية الأحزاب، وهو وضع موجود بدرجات متفاوتة في بريطانيا وفرنسا ودول أخرى.

في استطلاع للرأي قامت به مؤسسة أبحاث "بالس" للرأي العام لحساب مؤسسة "تقارير راسموسن" الأمريكية في يناير الماضي، قال ٦٤٪ إنهم يعتقدون أن الرأسمالية هي النظام الأصلح لبلادهم بينما اختار ١٥٪ الاشتراكية و٢١٪ قالوا إنهم غير مستقرين على رأي. لكن الأهم هو أن ٣٩٪ أكدوا أن النظام الذي يحكم بلادهم هو رأسمالية محاسيب منحاز للقلة التي تملك المال والسيطرة الاقتصادية.

يجيء هذا في وقت تتصاعد فيه المواجهة بعد أن قررت هذه القلة أن تتطلع بنفسها لمهمة الحكم عبر شخص رجل الأعمال ميت رومني، المرشح لتسمية الجمهوريين في انتخابات الرئاسة المقبلة. وفي تعليق له على ترشح رومني يقول بول كروجمان الاقتصادي الأمريكي الحائز على نوبل إن أمريكا ليست شركة وإن رجل الأعمال الناجح لا يخلق رئيساً ناجحاً مركزاً على الفوارق بين إدارة الدولة واقتصادها وإدارة شركة مهما كانت كبيرة، لكن كثيرين يعارضون الترشح ليس بالأساس من كفاءة الإدارة ولا منطلق تعارض المصالح المباشر (هناك قانون ينظمه) وإنما من منطلقات انحيازات الديمقراطية عموماً وملاءمتها لاحتياجات تطورها وتعميق تمثيلها للناس.  

مصر ليست شركة

في يوم ترشيحه عن الاخوان لرئاسة مصر، أعلن خيرت الشاطر عن استقالته من الجماعة في رسالة بأنه سيكون مرشحاً لكل المصريين. لكن المؤتمر الصحفي لم يشر لنشاطات الشاطر الاقتصادية المتعددة. فمن خلال إدارته على مدى سنوات لنشاطات الجماعة الاقتصادية، التي اعتمدت عليها في التمويل، تحول الشاطر إلى رجل أعمال بامتياز. فهو مؤسس ومساهم في مجموعة مالك (يملكها زميله القيادي في الاخوان حسن مالك) وسرار لملابس الرجال، ومؤسس ومساهم في شركة الشهاب لتصنيع الأتوبيسات ومؤسس ومساهم في شركة النقاء ورواج التي تملك استقبال للأثاث (تكلف الكنبة في محالها ٦ آلاف جنيه) وسلسبيل للتجارة والاستثمار، وكان عضواً بمجلس إدارة بنك المهندس بين عامي ١٩٨٩ و١٩٩٢ ومستشاراً لمجموعة الشريف لتوظيف الأموال على مدى سبع سنوات، وعضواً بمجلس إدارة البنك الدولي للتنمية والاستثمار، وكان أيضا المدير التنفيذي للشركة الدولية للاستثمار البحرينية لـ ٣ سنوات في نهاية الثمانينيات.

لم يعلن الشاطر موقفه من استثماراته وشركاته بعد، خاصة في ظل غياب قانون يلزمه بذلك أو ينظم تعارض المصالح. لكن قواعد منظمة الشفافية الدولية، التي لا يتم العمل بها أيضا في مصر، والتي تنظم ما يسمى ”الباب الدوار“ Revolving Doors ، وهو ما يحدث حينما ينتقل الناس من مناصب حكومية لقيادة شركات أو العكس مؤسسين لصلات تفتح الباب لعلاقات تفضيلية وفساد، تفرض أيضا ما يسمى بفترة التبريد (كانت أول قرارات أوباما بعد وصوله للبيت الأبيض). وفترة التبريد هي فترة فاصلة بين آخر المناصب في الشركة وأولها في الدولة والعكس وتبدأ مدتها من سنة وتزيد إلى اثنتين وثلاث سنوات في حالات أخرى. وهو ماكان يكفي لاستبعاد الشاطر من السباق. لكن ترشيح الشاطر لا يحمل فقط مشكلات تعارض المصالح من هذا النوع بل إنه أيضا يجافي اعتبارات التحول عن رأسمالية المحاسيب التي انحازت سنوات لرجال أعمال مبارك وابنه. فهل يليق أن يحكم مصر بعد ثورة تطيح بهذا النظام من يجيء من نفس منطقة الشبهة فيه؟

ليس هذا فقط. فهناك ما يجعل من الشاطر مرشحاً توافقيا بين حكم الإخوان السياسي ومصالح الأعمال القديمة. فلقد نظمت شركة المجموعة المالية هيرميس (بنك الاستثمار الذي كان جمال مبارك شريكا مباشراً في إحدى الشركات التابعة له، والذي لعب دوراً هائلاً في عمليات "التحرير" لاقتصاد مصر وفي الخصخصة) على مدى الشهور الماضية لقاءات بين الشاطر وبين ١٤ مديراً للاستثمار من أوروبا والولايات المتحدة. وقال وائل زيادة مدير البحوث بهيرميس لموقع صالون الإخباري الأمريكي في يناير الماضي إنه يعتقد أن "الاجتماعات استبعدت دواعي القلق لدى المستثمرين من السياسة الاقتصادية للحكومة المقبلة".

لم يتوقف الأمر عند اللقاء المباشر مع مستثمرين بترتيب من هيرميس وإنما أطلقت الجماعة أيضا جمعية بداية لتنمية الأعمال لعقد الوصل مع المصالح القديمة ليحضر الاجتماع التأسيسي نخبة من رجال أعمال مبارك، وبعضهم أعضاء سابقون في الحزب الوطني المنحل، وقيادات مؤسساته الاقتصادية. ونقل موقع الإخوان على الانترنت تصريحات لرئيس اتحاد الصناعات المقرب من جمال مبارك وعراب الكويز مع إسرائيل، جلال الزوربا، يمدح في الخطوة ويؤكد على أهميتها.

ويتأكد التوجه والتحالف الجديد من تصريحات حسن مالك، رجل الأعمال الإخواني وشريك الشاطر، لوكالة رويترز في نوفمبر الماضي، بأن سياسات مبارك الاقتصادية لم تكن كلها خاطئة، غير ناسٍ أن يشيد برشيد محمد رشيد وما جلبه من استثمارات أجنبية للبلاد.

يرصد رايش في مقاله عن المال الكبير في الولايات المتحدة ما يقول إنه مطالب أساسية للأمريكيين الآن: “استعادة ضريبة الدخل على أغنى ١٪ إلى ماكانت عليه قبل ١٩٨١ أي ٧٠٪ على الأقل، ضريبة معاملات على صفقات البورصة، إعادة تنظيم الديون العقارية للفقراء بما يمكنهم من الاحتفاظ ببيوتهم، اتاحة التأمين الصحي (ميديكير) للكل، تخفيض الميزانية العسكرية بـ ٢٥٪ على الأقل خلال العقود القادمة، والافصاح 
عن كل تبرعات الشركات للسياسيين وتعديل دستوري لتحجيمه".

هل يمكن لرئيس رجل أعمال أن يحقق مثل هذه المطالب، الواجبة في أمريكا، للمصريين؟ هل يمكن لرجل أعمال أن يدخل مواجهة لفرض الرقابة الشعبية والسياسية الديمقراطية على مشروعات القوات المسلحة؟ هل يمكن لرجل أعمال، في هذه الظروف وبخيوط تحالف مثل الذي يحوزها الشاطر مع المصالح القديمة، أن يكمل مهام الثورة حقا في اتجاه العدالة الاجتماعية؟ مصر ليست شركة وبالتأكيد ليست في حاجة لرئيس مجلس إدارة يحافظ عليها في خدمة المصالح القديمة. "احنا لما قمنا بالثورة قمنا عشان نلغي حكومة رجالالأعمال. احنا عايزين الحكومة اللي بتمثل الشعب تشوف الشعب عايز ايه"، يذكرنا عامل سيراميكا كليوباترا.  

[عن جريدة "الشروق" المصرية] 

Nelly Hanna, Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600-1800). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book, and what particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address?

Nelly Hanna (NH): The book is part of a large body of literature that deals with the artisans and guilds of the Ottoman Empire. Scholars have written about artisans in Istanbul, Bursa, Aleppo, and Jerusalem (including Suraiya Faroqhi, Abdul Karim Rafeq, Haim Gerber, and others). More specifically, my work on with the artisans in Cairo follows the same tradition as the work of two other scholars, namely Andre Raymond, whose work was fundamental in showing the socio-economic status of artisans and their changing relations to the Mamluk class, and Pascale Ghazaleh.

One of the issues the book tackles is how to study artisans and guilds, not only in the context of a traditional society and economy, but rather in the context of a period which was undergoing significant changes (1600-1800), due to both local and to regional conditions.

The approach it uses is that of “history from below,” since one of the questions that it addresses is how to define a role for these artisans and guilds in the context of the prevailing commercial conditions of the period, but also as a source of developments in the nineteenth century. The book also addresses the core-periphery model of the world systems approach and attempts to include artisans in this model. In other words, rather than discuss the core-periphery model solely in relation to merchants and commercial activity, it incorporates artisans and their products into the model.

Thus on the one hand it deals, at a micro level, with the individual lives of artisans, following the lives of a few artisan families over several generations, focusing on their work and on their relations to guilds and the economy, as well as to their families and colleagues. At the macro level, these artisans are placed in the context of the broad global and regional changes of the period 1600-1800, namely the greater world trade and more intensive commercial exchanges taking place worldwide. By combining these two different levels, links could be made between the local and the global, between the artisans who worked their product and the expanding horizons of international trade. 

The question around which the book revolves is how these artisans fared in the light of these conditions. The book comes up with the idea of “trade without periphery,” a term to describe the period as one during which the region as a whole underwent a certain level of commercialization, but did not undergo the peripheralization of its economy, as happened in the nineteenth century. The same concept could be applied to other regions, such as other parts of the Ottoman Empire or India, which experienced similar conditions, and where commercialization brought about a certain social mobility, both upwards and downwards.

J: How does this work connect to and/or depart from your previous research and writing?

NH: I have an interest in the economy, and my earlier book (Making Big Money in 1600) focused on merchants and international trade in the seventeenth century. Like this book and my other book, In Praise of Books, individual lives are placed at the fore, and they are part and parcel of the important changes that take place in society. Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo does the same, except that this time the focus is on artisans rather than merchants. This latest work tries to develop a methodology that aims at placing artisans and guilds within the economy, as producers of goods that were in demand, at times locally, at other times regionally. In other words, we need to rethink the term “traditional economy” so that there is space for some agency for artisans.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

NH: I believe the book will be of interest to historians of the Ottoman Empire; world historians who are interested in the early modern period and especially those who are interested in integrating lower level groups (artisans and craftsmen) in their models of global change; and economic historians who are interested in exploring the sources of modern economies. I also think that the book would be of interest to historians of India and Asia, as I make numerous comparisons with Indian and Asian history, particularly in relation to the growing commercialization of the period, which affected large parts of the globe.

It can serve as a book for graduate seminars, and parts could also be assigned to undergraduates.

Excerpts from Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early-Modern Capitalism (1600-1800)

From the Introduction:

Objectives: This study aims at filling in some of the blanks on this subject and exploring artisans at a number of levels. One of these levels is to formulate an approach to study artisans in the context of “history from below.”[1] The study aims to explore those that have not had enough visibility in historical studies, and to give them agency; in other words to incorporate them in history. Rather than only study artisans as part of a traditional society or traditional economy, the study explores alternative channels. It asks, for instance, if one can perceive them as actors within local, regional, and world history and in the context of historical processes; if and how artisans may have had a role, influenced trends or had an impact on these processes, if and how they were affected, or they were part of, the changes between 1600 and 1800, if in other words they were part of the historical process. The relationship between local economy and world economy has been studied by historians writing on various regions of the Ottoman Empire. James Reilly and Faruk Tabaq, for example, focused on nineteenth century merchants and explored the interaction between local economies in Ottoman lands and developments in the world economy.[2] The present study uses the same frame, but applies it, firstly, to an earlier period and, secondly, it focuses on artisans rather than merchants.

Go to any protest outside Tahrir Square today and you will inevitably hear onlookers grumbling about “April 6 youths destroying the country” — even when the group has no presence at the demonstration.

The April 6 Youth Movement’s reputation doesn’t so much precede it as outstrip it. Loyalists of former President Hosni Mubarak vilify the group’s leaders as foreign-funded traitors intent on (and more to the point, capable of) using their cadres to destroy Egypt as part of a vaguely-worded plot usually involving a foreign Western power.

The group inspires the particular ire of the “I Am Sorry, Mr President” Facebook group made up of Mubarak sympathizers. It dedicates large swathes of its Facebook wall to mobilizing its members against its nemesis through a torrent of accusations and insinuations, and together the groups form a sort of Yin and Yang of Facebook activism relying on the same medium to achieve very different ends.

The group can be positioned in the landscape of emerging youth groups since the mid-2000s, which operated outside the scope of formal political parties and were at the forefront of street politics, all while without clearly articulated political propositions.

Before the revolts

The legend of the April 6 Youth Movement’s creation is well known: the Facebook invitation by activists Ahmed Maher and Esraa Abdel-Fatah for a national general strike in solidarity with a strike planned by textile workers in the Delta town of Mahalla on 6 April 2008; the thousands of Facebook users who responded to it; the clashes in Mahalla and the video of protesters tearing down a poster of Mubarak before beating it with their shoes.

And then, nothing significant in the three years between the group’s founding and the 25 January revolution.

April 6 member Mohamed Adel says that the group has gone through three incarnations since its establishment, going from a group lobbying for political reforms to a “youth resistance movement with a street presence” and finally “direct confrontation” with the regime.

It is difficult to identify clear demarcations between these three phases, however. In addition to its online presence, April 6’s main activity has always been protests, the majority of which are in reaction to events. The group picked up where opposition group Kefaya left off by taking to the streets, but was never able to attract anything near the numbers that Kefaya mobilized in 2005, according to observers.

In the lonely days of late 2008 and 2009, when street politics waned significantly due to intensified repression by the Mubarak regime, many April 6 protests were attended by only a handful of demonstrators (group members themselves). Many of these demonstrations were called to demand the release of an April 6 member detained during a previous protest. Nevertheless, they raised their voices in a largely silent period.

"[6 April] were useful in street protests in the same way bloggers were useful in 2005 [during the democracy movement spearheaded by the Kefaya opposition group] because they were a group that started something, and other people joined them. They were a unified bloc on the streets, they were a presence," says activist Amr Gharbeia.

Beyond the street activism and the opposition of the ancien regime, many questions loom around the politics of the April 6 Youth Movement.

Both Maher and Adel were members of the Youth for Change movement, Kefaya’s youth wing. Adel was a tender 16 (he is now 23) when he began his activism.

Young people were attracted to April 6, Adel says, because, “at that time political parties were useless and played no role at all. Young people preferred to join a group that planned some kind of activity every day and which, like the young person himself, was non-ideological.”

In fact, the group experienced the first of two splits in its history in 2009 over differences about whether the group should remain non-ideological, although the splinter group that came out of this separation has since disintegrated.

Activist and Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo Rabab al-Mahdi contests the extent to which April 6 can be categorized as non-ideological.

“You can call yourself post-ideological as much as you want but at the end of the day the policies you’re for and the policies you’re against actually categorize you,” Mahdi says.

“So they might not recognize it or advertise it, [but] their positions on issues make them ideological in a certain way. You cannot over-emphasize the anti-ideology and then say I’m against Mubarak. This is an ideological position.”

A good example however of April 6’s non-ideological approach is perhaps provided by their support of Mohamed ElBaradei’s short-lived bid for presidency.

April 6’s support for ElBaradei was as an “alternative,” Adel says, rather than a statement of political affiliation, explaining that ElBaradei represented a “new kind of pressure on Mubarak” and that the group “didn’t regard him as a savior” but as a “tool” they could make use of.

“We started encouraging people to be active in working-class areas, rather than only staging protests outside the Journalists Syndicate. We also collected signatures on the National Front for Change’s petition of six demands. People responded,” Adel says.

ElBaradei’s return to Egypt and the movement for change he initiated in 2010 coincided with a host of significant events in that year.

The New Year’s Eve Two Saints Church bombing in January 2011 in Alexandria followed the fatal beating of Khaled Said by two policemen in July 2010, which stirred a series of anti-torture protests. In October 2010, parliamentary elections witnessed the usual low voter turnout and violations by the National Democratic Party.

The overthrow of Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 translated these mounting frustrations into action, Adel suggests, adding that April 6 had been preparing for their annual “celebration” of National Police Day on 25 January since late 2010.

They began coordinating with Wael Ghonim and Abdel-Rahman Mansour, the administrators of the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page, which amassed a viral following, and mobilizing for 25 January — exactly as they are doing now.

The revolutionary aftermath

A year after the revolution, what role is there for April 6?

Maher says that April 6 will monitor Parliament’s performance and “confront any mistakes.” The general coordinator adds that the group will “continue to mobilize in Tahrir Square” when necessary.

Adel lists April 6’s current priorities as “building a new state, societal reform and putting pressure on anyone in power.”

The group is currently pursuing two initiatives. Ekteb dustorak (“Write Your Constitution”) began life as “No to a Constitution under Military Rule,” but the name was changed, April 6 member Amal Sharaf says, when the group realized the inevitability of the constitution being written under military rule with the extension of the generals’ transitory ruling mandate.

Sharaf says that the campaign, which aims at producing a draft constitution written by the public, has reached “most governorates” despite initial obstacles.

People were suspicious of a campaign by April 6, “whose name the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is constantly tarnishing” Sharaf says. In July of last year, the SCAF issued a statement accusing April 6 youth of creating strife between people and the armed forces.

In addition to being subjected to verbal insults and physical attack, the group also faced the arguably bigger hurdle of there being little public interest in the initiative.

This changed subsequently, Sharaf says, when people “despaired” about the SCAF and the People’s Assembly, “which hasn’t done anything and is full of Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood members who want to control everything, even the constitution.”

A second campaign, “Ana Abreely” (“I am April 6”) is a response to the defamation campaign Sharaf says the SCAF launched against the group. April 6 members have taken to the streets to correct public misperceptions about the group and its founders.

“Our tools and resources are extremely limited compared with the SCAF’s but we’re trying and the reaction has been positive. Lots of people have welcomed the initiative and thank us for our efforts,” Sharaf says.

What lies ahead is harder than what has already been achieved, Adel says.

“April 6’s objective was always to remove Mubarak and build a state. We knew that Mubarak was only the beginning, and that the fight would continue after that. Realizing an alliance, or consensus, between the Muslim Brotherhood and liberals is a million times harder than removing Mubarak,” Adel said.

“The battle with the People’s Assembly will be a new type of fight — before we were doing battle with oppressors, then the military, now we’re dealing with civilians in an elected body. It will be harder, especially since this is the first time and we have to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, a large bloc.”

But in order to engage in this new battle, the group needs to articulate a different political offering, pundits say.

Mahdi suggests that to increase its membership April 6 needs to “look beyond the youth model and start providing clear political alternatives.”

“Until now, April 6 has identified itself against the others — they know what they don’t want but they don’t know what they want, so it’s been reactive. What they need to do now is be proactive by providing a political alternative or working for a political alternative,” Mahdi says.

“Just saying I’m for the revolution doesn’t provide people with a way forward ... Okay, I’m for the revolution, what do you want me to do? Where is the revolution taking us? This is something that April 6 so far has not been able to provide.”

[This article was originally published in Egypt Independent.]

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.]

“Activists irate over Suleiman's last-minute bid for highest office”
Activists criticize former intelligence chief’s decision to run in the presidential elections. 

“Sinai: The paradox of security”
Lina Attalah looks into the complex problems in Sinai which provoke Bedouin dissent. 

“HRW condemns acquittal of military doctor in Egypt 'virginity tests' trial: Full Report”
Human Rights Watch says hopes for accountability for abuses against women have been blown.

“The Five Individuals Who Will Decide Egypt’s Presidential Election”
An overview of the wide-ranging powers of the Higher Presidential Elections Commission.

“Qatar and Saudi Arabia at odds over Shater’s nomination”
Sultan al-Qassemi  comments on how Qatar and Saudi Arabia might face off over the Egyptian presidential elections.

“El Shater and the Salafists : The tango the MB does not want the West to See”
Zenobia looks into presidential hopeful Khairat Al-Shater’s relations with the Salafis. 

"We are not women, we are Egyptians": spaces of protest and representation”
Nadia Taher reflects on the gains and the losses of the Egyptian women’s movement. 

“At 11th hour, Egypt presidential hopefuls register candidacies”
Omar Suleiman officially hands in papers; the Muslim Brotherhood submits documents on behalf of FJP leader Mohamed Morsi as a back-up candidate to Khairat Al-Shater.

“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Reassures Washington”
Bisan Kassab sees the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts for rapprochement with the West since 2005 bearing fruit today.

“Brotherhood launches diplomatic push in Washington”
The Muslim Brotherhood sends a delegation to the US to present a positive image of its political role in Egypt.

“Egypt's Spring Break”
Marwan Bishara analyzes Khairat Al-Shater’s entry into the presidential race.

“The Egyptian Presidency and rediscovering the couch”
Sandmonkey’s take on the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to put forward Khairat Al-Shatir’s candidacy.

“Constitution will likely be crafted behind closed doors”
The Constituent Assembly’s sessions will be closed to the press and the public, according to a set of bylaws to be voted on.

“Abu Ismail exclusion could bolster Shater, prompt Salafi rage”
Noha El-Hennawy discusses the consequences of Abu Ismail’s withdrawal from the presidential race.

“We mold the collective memory of sexual assault”
Sawasan Gad comments on the recent history of sexual harassment in Egypt and MP Azza El-Garf’s recent statements against the sexual harassment law.

“Party condemns imprisonment of 8 activists over church bombing protest”
Eight activists are condemned of attacking the police during a demonstration in reaction to the Jan 1 2011 church bombing in Alexandria.

“Three Brotherhood leaders resign in protest of Shater’s nomination”
The announcement of Shater’s bid for presidency causes new splits in the Muslim Brotherhood.
 

In Arabic:

“خاص الشروق: قوى سياسية تستعد لإعلان حزب الثورة.. والبرادعي وكيلاً للمؤسسين”
Mohamed ElBaradei, together with prominent Egyptian public figures, will form a new party

“يا عزيزي كلنا ديمقراطيون!"
Tamer Wagih challenges the idea of the fairness of free elections

“سيادة اللواء سيقاتل الشعب”
Zeinab Abul-Magd comments on the involvement of the army in the Egyptian economy, comparing it to the Chinese case

“بيان السيدة بثينة كامل بشأن الانتخابات الرئاسية”
Buthaina Kamel’s statement on her withdrawal from the presidential race

“د. محمد محسوب يكتب: الإسلامية والليبرالية .. المواجهة المزعومة”
Mohamed Mahsoub criticizes the artificial liberal-Islamic divide in the Parliament and the majority’s approach to forming the Constituent Assembly

«أخبار اليوم»: أنباء عن تنازل «شفيق» لـ«عمر سليمان» في الانتخابات الرئاسية
Rumors start that Ahmed Shafiq will step down in favor of Omar Suleiman in the presidential race

“حملة الشاطر تكذب خبر الفضائية المصرية بانسحابه لصالح سليمان”
Khairat Al-Shatir’s campaign denies the claims that he is stepping down in favor of Omar Suleiman

 “دستور للمصريين.. لا معركة مع الإسلاميين”
Rabab al-Mahdy criticizes the direction the Constituent Assembly debate has taken in Egypt

“موعدنا اليوم”
Ayman Nour seeks to prove the legality of the pardon he was granted, which allows him to run for president

“مصادر إخوانية: الشاطر ناقش ترشحه مع جون ماكين”
Al-Shorouk newspaper alleges that Khairat Al-Shatir discussed his presidential bid with John McCain two months ago

Recent Jadaliyya Articles on Egypt: 

April 6: Genealogy of a Youth Movement

New Texts Out Now: Nelly Hanna, Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600-1800)

Video: Islam Harbi Will Spend His Childhood in Military Prison

المرشح لرئاسة مجلس إدارة مصر

رغم مضي ما يقارب العام على بدء الانتفاضة السورية، التى راح فيها أكثر من 7500 قتيل، لم يحظ النزاع الذى طال أمده بفهم جيد أو تغطية إخبارية جيدة على الرغم من  طوفان الكتابات، يلاحق معظمها أحداثاً تتحرك بسرعة دون التوقف لتقديم تحليل رصين للسياسة والمجتمع السوريين. وفى أول الأمر، كانت الحجة السائدة أن النظام سوف ينهار بسرعة. وفى وقت لاحق، صارت الحجة أن هذا النظام سوف يدوم. ونادراً ما تظهر رؤية بعيدة المدى. وعندما يكون هناك مثل هذه الرؤية فهي في الأغلب تلجأ إلى العوامل الثقافية الأزلية، خصوصا الطائفية، لشرح المأزق الواضح.

ولا يوجد عامل واحد يمكن اعتباره مفتاح فهم أسباب الانتفاضة أو توقعاتها. غير أن هناك حقيقة أساسية واحدة ثابتة: ما زال النظام حتى الآن موحداً ومتماسكاً، بينما يعتبر المجتمع غير متجانس، ومنقسماً على نفسه إلى حد ما. وبطبيعة الحال، عمل النظام بدأب عبر عشرات السنين على إعادة إنتاج الانقسامات وتعميقها، سواء الطائفية، أوالعرقية، أو الطبقية، أو الإقليمية. وفى نفس الوقت، عمل النظام جاهداً على تعزيز الوحدة عند قمته، ببناء الجيش وأجهزة الأمن بحيث يتشابك مصيرهما مع مصير النظام. ولكن أى تحليل لأوضاع سوريا يغفل دائما حيلة أخرى: بداية من سبعينيات القرن الماضي، أنشأ النظام شبكات رأس المال التى تربط كبار رجال الأعمال بمسؤولي الدولة، بينما انخرط هؤلاء المسؤولين وأبناؤهم فى عالم التجارة. وكان لهذه الروابط فوائدها أوقات الأزمات، سواء فى الماضي أو الحاضر.

فبعد وصول حافظ الأسد إلى السلطة عام 1970، تقرب إلى كبار رجال الأعمال المحافظين المتمركزين فى المدن الكبرى، ولا سيما دمشق وحلب، وكانوا قد تضرروا بشدة جراء موجة من عمليات التأميم البعثى فى الستينيات. ونشأت العلاقات عبر الحوارات فى الغرف التجارية والصناعية التى تديرها الدولة. وصارت ثنائية مع اقتران النظام برجال الأعمال المختارين أصحاب رؤس الأموال الضخمة والخبرة الكبيرة، أو العلاقات مع الشركات الأجنبية. وينتمي رجال الأعمال هؤلاء إلى خلفيات متنوعة. فبعضهم من أصول برجوازية قديمة، من طبقة التجار التى كانت تهيمن على الساحة السياسية السورية فى الخمسينيات، وآخرون من شخصيات صاعدة ارتبطت بمشروعات القطاع العام التى استفادت من الطفرة البترولية بعد عام 1973. وكان معظم هؤلاء المستثمرين ممن عملوا فى ظل الدولة، يقدمون العروض لمناقصات القطاع العام، ولكن تم جذب المستثمرين الجدد مع توسع شبكات الأعمال.

وحمل التقارب ثماراً سياسية فى السبعينيات وأوائل الثمانينيات، عندما واجه النظام تمرداً قاده الإخوان المسلمون. وكان الأسد قد فرض سلسلة من السياسات التى أضرت بمصالح كوادر الإخوان ومشروعاتهم فى السوق التقليدية، وغيرهم من صغار التجار والحرفيين. كانت الدولة قد دمرت المشروعات التجارية المتواضعة لحساب منتجات الشركات الكبرى المملوكة للدولة، مدعومة من دول الخليج العربية خلال مرحلة ما بعد الطفرة البترولية 1973. وانتشرت هذه المصانع فى أرجاء البلاد وسببت استياءً حاداً خصوصاً فى الأحياء السنية المحافظة من المدن السورية، حيث ينظر بالفعل للنظام باعتباره نظاماً قمعياً وخارجاً عن الدين لأن العلويين يرأسونه. وتفاقم الأمر بعد صفقة عرضت على مجموعة ثلاثية من الرجال سمح لها، تحت رقابة الدولة، بإطلاق أول مشروعات استثمارية خاصة واسعة النطاق فى عهد البعث. وتألفت المجموعة الثلاثية من نحاس صائب، وعثمان عائدى وعبد الرحمن العطار. وصارت صفقتهم مع النظام نموذجاً للشراكات بين الدولة وقطاع الأعمال، فتصاعدت حدة التوتر بين الدولة وصغار رجال الأعمال ذوى الميول الإسلامية السنية.

●●● 

استمرت المواجهة مع الإخوان المسلمين لأكثر من ست سنوات. وحظى التجار السنة الذين نالوا امتيازات من الدولة على غرار المجموعة الثلاثية، بصداقة حافظ الاسد. وفى لقاء تاريخى 1982، طمأن بدر الدين الشلاح، رئيس اتحاد غرف التجارة السورية آنذاك، الأسد إلى أن الشركات الكبيرة التي يضمن ولاءها ستقف إلى جانب النظام. وواصل النظام صد الانتفاضة فى شمال غرب مدينة حماة، حيث قتل ما لا يقل عن 15 ألف نسمة. وأسفر الاعتداء الوحشى بالدبابات والمدفعية على حماة عن هزيمة قوية للإخوان. كما ربط أيضا مستقبل شلح وأقرانه بمصير النظام.

وبعد 1982، واصلت الشراكات غير الرسمية بين رجال الأعمال والنظام، ازدهارها. وحصل كبار رجال الأعمال على مجموعة متنوعة من الامتيازات الخاصة، بما فى ذلك عمولات مشاريع القطاع العام، والإعفاءات الضريبية والحماية التجارية لبعض السلع. ونمت هذه الشراكات فى أواخر الثمانينيات وبدأت فى ممارسة التأثير على السياسة الاقتصادية. وكانت المؤسسة الرئيسية تسمى فى الأصل «لجنة التوجيه»، وهى هيئة مكونة من مسؤولين فى الدولة ورجال أعمال من القطاع الخاص، مكلفة بوضع سياسة اقتصادية تعلو جميع اللجان التى كلفت بصياغة الخطط الخمسية الاشتراكية اسماً.

وكان تعبير «الخاص» قد اكتسب معنى جديداً، لأن العديد من رجال الأعمال هؤلاء كانوا مسؤولين فى الدولة إما بأنفسهم أو أقاربهم أو شركائهم. وفى 1982، بلغ فساد السياسات الاقتصادية أعلى مستوى له على الإطلاق، حيث كان صانعو السياسة والمنتفعون بها يعملون بنفس المشروع، أو فى بعض الأحيان يشكلان طرفاً واحداً، وواصلت الشراكات بين الدولة ورجال الأعمال الازدهار. وحقق كبار رجال الأعمال مجموعة متنوعة من المكاسب الهائلة.

●●●

فى التسعينيات، كان مكتب رئيس الوزراء محمود الزعبي، نواة هذه المؤامرة. واختار معظم المسؤولين الذين اتجهوا إلى الاستثمار تحقيق الربح السريع، الأمر الذى قادهم نحو التجارة، بدلاً من الصناعة، والمناطق الحضرية، بدلاً من المناطق الريفية. وفضلاً عن عديد من الآخرين، حقق آل الزعبي، وكذلك أسرة خدام (كان عبدالحليم آنذاك نائباً للرئيس) وأسرة طلاس (مصطفى كان آنذاك وزيرا للدفاع)، مكاسب هائلة من التجارة فى السيارات والمنتجات الاستهلاكية الفاخرة. وحقق الأقطاب الجدد، لا سيما رامي مخلوف، ابن شقيق زوجة الرئيس، عوائد عالية أيضاً من السياحة، ومناطق التجارة الحرة وفى وقت لاحق الاتصالات السلكية واللاسلكية.

وبحلول أواخر التسعينيات، كان مجتمع الأعمال الذى خلقه آل الأسد على هواهم قد حول سوريا من دولة شبه اشتراكية إلى دولة المحسوبية الرأسمالية بامتياز. وكان التحرر الاقتصادي الذى بدأ عام 1991 يصب بكثافة فى صالح كبار رجال الأعمال أصحاب العلاقات مع الدولة، أو أولئك الذين لديهم شراكة مع المسؤولين. وتغلب القطاع الخاص على القطاع العام، ولكن معظم الأثرياء من القطاع الخاص كانوا من المسؤولين فى الحكومة، والسياسيين، وأقاربهم. وكان معظم النمو الاقتصادي المسجل فى منتصف التسعينيات، نتيجة تعاف من عثرة قصيرة الأجل فى الاستهلاك، كما يدل على ذلك التراجع فى نهاية القرن. وانخفضت معدلات النمو التي كانت تتراوح بين خمسة وسبعة في المائة عام 1997 إلى ما بين واحد واثنين فى المائة سنة 2000 وما بعدها.

●●●

وبعدما خلف بشار الأسد والده عام 2000، سعى مهندسو السياسة الاقتصادية السورية إلى تعديل اتجاه الهبوط الاقتصادى عبر المزيد من تحرير الاقتصاد، بتخفيض الدعم الحكومى على سبيل المثال. وتم السماح بإنشاء البنوك الخاصة للمرة الأولى منذ أربعين عاماً، وطرح للبحث إنشاء سوق للأسهم. وبعد عام 2005، تم تعزيز الروابط بين الدولة ورجال الأعمال عبر الإعلان عن اقتصاد السوق الاشتراكية، وهو خليط بين نهج الاقتصاد الحكومي واقتصاد السوق، يحقق امتيازات فى نهاية المطاف للسوق، ولكنه سوق دون مؤسسات قوية أو مساءلة. ومرة أخرى، يدعم النظام تحالفه مع المشروعات الكبيرة على حساب المشروعات الصغيرة، فضلاً عن غالبية السوريين الذين يعتمدون على الدولة فى الخدمات والدعم والرعاية الاجتماعية. وتم تكريس المحسوبية، ولكن بثوب جديد. وسيطرت العائلات المرتبطة بصورة أو بأخرى بالنظام على القطاع الخاص، بالإضافة إلى سيطرتها الكبيرة على الأصول الاقتصادية العامة. وشملت هذه العائلات آل الأسد، ومخلوف، وأيضا عائلات شاليش، والحسن، ونجيب، وحمشو، وحمبوبه، وآل أسعد، على سبيل المثال لا الحصر. مجتمع الأعمال المعاد، والتى شملت مسؤولي النظام الآن، أنصار وثيقة وشظية سميكة من البرجوازية التقليدية، وتنفذ أعمق (وبالنسبة للنظام، أكثر خطورة) الاستقطاب فى المجتمع السوري على طول خطوط الدخل والمنطقة. وأسفر مجتمع الأعمال المعاد تأسيسه، بعدما صار يضم الآن مسؤولي النظام، والأنصار المقربين، وطبقة كبيرة من البرجوازية التقليدية، عن استقطاب أكثر حدة (وأكثر خطورة على النظام) على أساس الدخل والأقاليم.

وبعد عام 2003 مرت سنوات متتالية اتسمت بندرة مياه الأمطار والجفاف، أدت إلى زيادة الهجرة من الريف إلى المدن. بحلول عام 2009، كان أكثر من مليون مواطن قد نزحوا إلى المدن مما أسفر عن تزايد اتساع الفجوات الاجتماعية. واستطاعت المدن الكبرى، مثل دمشق وحلب استيعاب تلك الهجرة بيسر أكثر من المدن الصغيرة، التى تعاني شح الاستثمار فى البنية التحتية. وتمثل المدن الإقليمية مثل درعا وإدلب وحمص وحماة، مع المناطق النائية منها، الساحات الرئيسية للتمرد الآن. فقد شهد أولئك الذين يعيشون فى المناطق الريفية أرزاقهم تتآكل بفعل تخفيض الدعم، وسحب الاستثمارات، وآثار التحول إلى الحضر، فضلاً عن عقود من الحكم الاستبدادي الفاسد. وقد حرضتهم الانتفاضتان المصرية والتونسية على التعبير عن سخطهم علنا وبصورة جماعية.

غير أنه لا يوجد أي انشقاق كبير بين صفوف أصحاب الأعمال الكبار، على الأقل ليس فى دمشق وحلب. ولا يقتصر الأمر على أقارب الرئيس، مثل مخلوف، الذين ظلوا مخلصين. فقد وقف غيرهم من كبار رجال الأعمال الذين ينتمون إلى أسر كبرى فى صف النظام بحزم، ومولوا المسيرات والتجمعات الجماهيرية وحملات العلاقات العامة المؤيدة له. فضلا عن المساعدة على تعويم العملة السورية. ويقتصر معظم المتذمرين على تهريب رأس المال خارج البلاد والتعبير سراً عن تمني تغيير النظام. أما من يدعمون الانتفاضة، فهم يقومون بذلك سراً وبحذر شديد، بما يسلط الضوء على ولاء نظرائهم. 

●●● 

ويعلم هؤلاء الحيتان أن مصيرهم يرتبط بهذا النظام بفضل الاستثمارات المتشابكة، وكذلك سنوات الإثراء بتشجيع من النظام. وهكذا، فقد يصبح تغيير المواقف مقامرة هائلة. ولا يعتبر دعم الشركات التجارية الكبرى وحده المسؤول عن مرونة النظام، ولكن كان من الصعب على النظام أن يصمد فى دمشق وحلب إذا ألقت هذه المشروعات الاستثمارية بثقلها صراحة فى جانب المحتجين. فقد تشكل التحالف بين النظام ورجال الأعمال على مدى عقود، وليس من المتوقع أن يتحطم حتى آخر لحظة. ومن شأن حدوث انشقاقات علنية من كبار رجال الأعمال أن تكون مؤشراً جيداً على أن أيام النظام صارت معدودة. وحتى ذلك الحين، سوف ينصب الاهتمام على أرض المعركة.

[نشرت نسخة من هذا المقال بالانجليزية فى مجلة ميريب MERIP وقامت جريدة ”الشروق“ المصرية بترجمته إلى العربية.] 

. 

[This post is deliberately empty. See author's comment below]

.

.

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of revolutionary, writer and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was commemorated this past December. In late February, the not-so-revolutionary judge Asher Grunis was elected President of the Israeli Supreme Court. 

The fanfare that accompanied Grunis’ inauguration was an opportunity to extol Israeli democracy by playing out the ritualized Supreme Court induction ceremony. Yet, there was a disquieting stink about the celebration. Mum among the lot of Hatikva-singing judges was Justice Salim Jubran, the Arab. His refusal to join the chorus likely stemmed from not identifying with the lyrics, "as long as in the heart, within, a Jewish soul still yearns..." His silence, however, prompted loud condemnation from the public and Israeli Knesset members, leading some to propose legislation that would impeach Jubran and effectively bar Arabs from serving on the bench. 

This article reads Fanon's death anniversary and Grunis' appointment and inauguration ceremony against one another, as an opportunity to recycle Fanon’s ideas to better situate the place of Palestinians, as a colonized people, within the imagination of Israeli law today. In particular, the article traces the outlines of Fanon's historico-racial schema in Israel/Palestine, emphasizing the legal experience of Palestinians from the Beersheba region, or the Naqab. 

Look Mama, an Arab!

Fanon’s historico-racial schema builds on Merleau-Ponty's (1964) corporeal schema, which is the body's agency in relating to itself and its historical world (surrounding environment) wherein there is a communication between the two through a perpetual contribution to and reordering of one another. Therefore, as the world contributes to how the body sees itself, the body is an agent that continually transforms and disrupts the historical world, their mutual constructions always being altered and differentiated. For Fanon, the colonial context describes a historico-racial schema rather than a corporeal one. The colonized self does not contribute to this schema as a full sovereign (i.e., citizen) because in an encounter with whiteness, the black body constructs a self-image that is deficient, owing to signifiers by a white mythos that weaves the black body from "a thousand details, anecdotes and stories" (Weate 2001, Fanon 1967: 89-119).  This article shows how Israeli law functions as a powerful element of a similar white mythos, weaving the ”Bedouin, Palestinian” subject out of anecdotes of comparable mythical proportion.  As a result, the possibilities are similarly thin for Naqab Palestinians to effect free agency and participate fully in the schematization of the historical world they inhabit.

The legal status of Palestinians in other locales in Israel/Palestine also reveals how Israeli law is in fact, vis-à-vis Palestinians, not only illiberal and undemocratic, contrary to the claims of certain enthusiasts, but even more harmful. After the Arab Supreme Court Justice stood out like the reluctant elephant in a room full of Hatikva-singing comrades, the liberal and democratic court could be forced to ask very existential questions. Why were the Court's most touted values denied to one of its own members by the larger society, including the legal community? Why was a Supreme Court judge, who happened to be Arab, not allowed the liberal privilege of being “tolerated” for his silence? And why was he condemned for exercising his democratic right to non-participation and silent expression?

The heterogeneous strands of Fanon's works can be applied in the Israeli/Palestinian context to speak about the need for an episteme of colonialism to inform the power-knowledge system of Palestinians' habitation, to highlight the shortcomings of national consciousness, and to probe the psychiatric treatment of political prisoners in a colonial context. Edward Sa'id (1989) also mobilized Fanon to criticize fixed ideas of identity as a mark of colonial thought.

To discover how the Fanonian white mythos is propagated by Israeli courts, we look at  the discursive effects of a few cases over the past two decades. Law is a major propagator of the white mythos, though the media (see Kabha), education and the medical establishment are also contributing factors (Fanon 1963: 249-310).

Legal rules, decisions, settings, negotiations, confrontations, affidavits, minutes, appeals, orders nisi and other temporary remedies, press releases, news reports and analyses recycle the facts of the case and the ways in which Palestinians are mythified. As each textual form peters down to the lived conditions of those who are immersed in but unequal before the law, or all Palestinians, it leaves an imprint on how the senses see the self and the historical world they inhabit. 

The dominant legal framing of Palestinians from the Naqab is within the strictures of criminality by a homogenous mass, even in cases that achieve legal victories for the community. Other characteristics that the courts contrive are those of violent, irresponsible Palestinians, and those who deserve “a minimal right to life in dignity,” or in layman's terms, the right to be ”the living dead.” 

"The native...a sort of quintessence of evil... invisible to ethics... the corrosive element, destroying all that comes near him" (Fanon 1963: 41).

The first case we will examine is the 1984 “landmark” el-Hawasheleh decision (CA 218/74). This decision set the precedent for future courts to undermine Bedouin settlement and pastoral lifestyle, thereby classifying their lands as mawat (dead), thus providing the basis to conclude that Bedouin had no historical rights to the land. In reaching this conclusion, the court cited the work of the nineteenth-century British explorer E.H. Palmer, who "found a wasteland, ruins of antiquities, Bedouin vagabonds, who did not work the land in any particular manner.” Later in the same text Palmer wrote that “the Bedawí... wherever he goes... brings with him ruin, violence and neglect.”

"The fellaghas are ambitious peasants, criminals... (1963: 287)... The Algerian people: they were born slackers, born liars, born robbers, and born criminals" (1963: 296).

Between 2002 and 2004, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) sprayed thirty square kilometers of Palestinian agricultural land with the herbicide Monsanto's Roundup. The court found in the Abu Mdeghem case (HCJ 2887/04) that the state's actions were illegal, as they endangered life and violated the dignity of those affected. Yet, blacking out any even-handed reference to the contested status of the land, the court foregrounded Bedouin criminality throughout the decision. On the basis of illegal Bedouin squatting and planting, the court found that the ILA acted in a manner befitting the values of the state and that the spraying had a proper purpose, which was to protect state land. It was because Bedouin illegally squatted and planted on state land and used violence against police enforcing eviction laws that the court then recommended that the State "take determined and uncompromising action” to evict Bedouin squatters and continue with the destruction of crops, but by using tractors and not planes. The myth of mass Bedouin criminality was foregrounded, despite documented evidence that some families were forcibly and illegally displaced by the authorities and had returned, while still others had been ordered by the authorities to live and work on the land under question.

"My body was returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on this white winter's day" (Fanon 2008: 93).

Justice Procaccia begins her decision in the Abu Musa'ed case (CA 9535/06) by asking the question, "To what extent do Bedouins living in various illegal places of settlement in the Negev have a legal right to demand that the State install private connection points to water in their illegal place of accommodation?” In the twenty-three-page Supreme Court decision, reference to illegal settlement features forty-four times. The decision concerns the petition for water provision to six villages, including the sister-village duo of Atir-Umm al-Hieran. The case of this sister village is not so clear-cut as to be ”illegal,” given that its residents were moved to their location in 1956 by the authorities. Nevertheless, in a hallmark for legal rationales concerning Naqab Palestinians, they are framed within the confines of criminality, making court intervention seem like a benevolent humanitarian intervention in spite of Bedouin incorrigibility. The Court rules that the Bedouin have a right to “minimum access to water” on the basis of having a ”human right to minimal existence in dignity.” This pronouncement bears an eerie familiarity to the biopower function of the modern racist state (Foucault 2003, Mbembe 2003) which allows for the precarious Palestinian population to float in the interstices between being made to live and left to die. The Palestinian then comes to understand himself as belonging to a people who deserve to be kept just barely alive, as “living dead.”

Some Context

One way to characterize liberal/activist rulings of the Israeli courts vis-à-vis Palestinians that are evident in the Abu Mdeghem and Abu Musa'ed cases besides bequeathing legitimacy (Shamir 1990, Al-Haq 2010) to colonial rule by dressing it in liberal clothing, is to trim the excesses of colonial government. Therefore, in the 1953 decision in Kol Ha'am, the Court rescinded the suspension of the publication of two papers critical of the Israeli-American relationship as a violation of the right to free speech and freedom of the press. Fast forward to the more recent past; in 1997 it called on the Ministry of Health to establish six mother-child health clinics to serve a population of over eighty thousand. No mother-child health clinics existed previously in these “unrecognised villages,” a gross violation of the community's right to health. In 2007, it called on the Ministry of Education to open the first high school in the unrecognised villages, its prior nonexistence a flagrant violation of the right to an education. In the 2004 Beit Sourek decision, the Court called for a portion of the separation/apartheid wall to be redirected. The wall's construction constituted gross violations over three years to the petitioners' right to property, right to earn a livelihood, and freedom of movement, affecting forty-two square kilometers of land and the lives of thirty-five thousand villagers. Justice Barak did not waste the opportunity to racialize and mythify the schema as being a matter of terror/security whereby "Palestinians use guided human bombs... sew destruction and spill blood... [T]he forces fighting Israel are terrorists.”

In all of these cases, the court is seen as performing “landmark“ work (Shamir 1990, Sultany 2007). Mautner (2011) and former Chief Justice Barak (2006) have lamented the strict confines within which Israeli courts and the law work: namely, the Zionist imperatives that underpin statutory law and judicial interpretation, the lack of a constitutional framework to provide backing for the Supreme Court in pro-civil liberties rulings, and the courts’ deference to the Knesset and executive to formulate and execute the law. Yet, these material conditions should not obfuscate the law's violence and its mythos-generating activities vis-à-vis Palestinians.

Not that liberal legal theory shuns critique—it can hide historical materialism, its ideological work, or the violence of the law, all while operating bureaucratically and formalistically (Sultany 2011). In fact, as Yousef Jabareen demonstrated in comparing the law's utility in the civil rights struggles of African Americans and Palestinians, the Israeli Supreme Court has not yet developed an express methodology to deal with equal rights cases and lacks doctrinal standards such as strict scrutiny and suspect class analysis for deciding such cases. Rather, the legal victories were formal remedies, individual in character and lacking context to bring about wide-ranging substantive equality. In that they resembled decisions of the US Supreme Court.  

The colonial world is a Manichean world (Fanon 1963: 41).

Fanon has been criticized for adopting a Manichean dichotomy between colonizer and colonized, which (allegedly) denies the native agency. Postcolonial theory advises us to watch out for these blind spots (Gates 1991). Nevertheless, Fanon does not claim that these are intrinsic, natural divisions. Rather, they are constructions as a form of colonial rule, an “us” versus ”them” scenario, formal compartmentalization into racial hierarchies to legitimate differential exclusion that is propagated by state machinery such as the law.

Why is the isolated and embattled Naqab region emblematic of the place of Palestinians under Israeli law? Colonial law is a tool of dispossession, displacement and oppression and functions across the distinct legal entities that have been carefully carved out for Palestinians to facilitate their management. Therefore, dispossession of Bedouin in the Jordan Valley resembles that of not so distant relatives in the Naqab, the South Hebron Hills of Dahriya, and the Jahalin in Area C' east of Jerusalem. Similar legal rationales enable the dispossession of Palestinian citizens in Lydd and Ramleh, while the ban on Palestinian family unification across the Green Line is a legal somersault to keep distinct legal persons in their distinct legal environs. Though, in terms of death-world rulings (Mbembe 2003), these may seem oppression-lite alongside the Court's slow-death (cutting off fuel and electricity) and chop-chop, swift kill (targeted assassinations) rulings vis-à-vis Gaza. 

As law functions with similar colonial objectives across the distinct legal environs for Palestinians, we can summarize its mythos-generating activities for Palestinians with differentiated legal statuses. As racial others under Israeli sovereignty, the courts tell us to see Palestinian citizens of the State as “cultural others” who pose a latent security threat, and citizens from the Naqab as criminals. The Israeli courts repeatedly remind us, to the point of badgering, of the proclivity to terror by Palestinians in the occupied territories. The law in practice teaches the Palestinian that he is not what law's ideal holds him to be: equal (Fanon 1963: 89).

Pacifists and legalists, they are in fact partisans of order, the new order... [calling] “give us more power” (Fanon 1963: 59).

Law is an abettor. First are those legalists in dialogue with colonialism who negotiate improvements in the material conditions and more adequate representation for Palestinians (see Fanon 1963: 59-60). They must call out racism and dehumanization as opposed to being resigned to its behemoth-like, monotonously regularized proportions. Palestinian legalists tussle with the possibility that their work confers shades of legitimacy to colonial rule. When Esmael Nashef dissects how Palestinian citizens of Israel collude with colonialism, he explains how practical necessity necessitates the adoption and use of professional legal language. This legal language necessarily collapses any historical materialism (pre-existent class, race, ideological stratifications in society) and feeds the dehumanizing work of legal discourse. Nashef’s recommendation seems to be an epistemic break from the language provided by the law, and suggests a radical political praxis to repudiate the existing colonial order. 

The construction of the historico-racial schema is possibly most damaging at the point where its subjects propagate their own disparagement, where black bodies are complicit ”in the reification of a parodic and inferiorised black body-image (Weate 2001, Fanon 2008).” 

During an interview I conducted in December 2011 with an Umm al-Hieran resident (for whom I will use the nom de guerre Abdesallam), he admitted to the benefit of “appearing Jewish” at checkpoints to facilitate crossing. Yet, he was very critical of the racism underpinning checkpoint logic, and that of the law. Despite his investment in a legal battle to keep his home from being demolished, he was aware that the law as a site of equality was a fabrication and that its promises of justice were evasive. Yet, embedded in the milieu of the Naqab and absorbing the historico-racial schema of his habitat, he has internalized a view that Arabs (unlike Jews, who in their dealings with each other are exemplary), are violent and dangerous—including to their own. "I have ceaselessly striven to show the Negro man that in a sense he makes himself abnormal," cautioned Fanon (2008: 200), speaking of a process whereby the colonized native sees himself, instead of the colonial order, as the biggest problem.

The election of conservative-leaning Judge Grunis, for whom Israelis living closer to more Palestinians could spell “national suicide,” seems to portend that the tales will only get taller. For Palestinians, breaking from the chains of subjugation means undermining the historico-racial schema by challenging the white mythos created by the law and sustained by the self, including the carefully crafted legal fictions of the separateness of Jerusalemites/Bedouin/Arab-Israelis/West Bankers/Gazans/refugees. By doing so, they will be better placed to effect free agency in the schematization of the colonial world they inhabit. 

An emancipation of sorts happens when the native realizes his humanity and that of his community (1963: 43), and when he “overstands” that he is equal to the settler and is therefore no longer on-edge in his presence (1963: 45). Fanon's insistence on feeling black zeal and the density of being black as a challenge to Sartre (who had snatched it from him by calling prematurely for humanism (1967: 111-114)) is possibly one opening towards a deconstruction of the historico-racial schema. It takes poetic expression in his citation of Aimé Césaire:

My negritude is not a stone 
nor a deafness flung against the clamor of the day 
my negritude is not a white speck of dead water 
on the dead eye of the earth 
my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil 
it plunges into the blaxing flesh of the sky 
my negritude riddles with holes 
the dense affliction of its worthy patience.

And yet, I hear the echo of the similar in the poetry of Palestine's national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, In Identity Card, Darwish is wise to his community's dehumanization, proudly stubborn in his refusal to follow the law of the bluest eye, fiery about his roots, aware of his capacity for love and patience; and yet awakened to the sounds of hungry bellies.

The question remains for the rest of us: what about our own situatedness as embedded in the law prevents us from hearing them?

Bibliography

Al-Haq (2010) Legitimising the Illegitimate: The Israeli High Court of Justice and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Barak Aharon (2006) A Judge in a Democracy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press)
Fanon, Frantz (1963) The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press)
Fanon, Frantz (2008) Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press)
Foucault, Michel (2003) Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976 (New York: Picador)
Gates, Henry Louis (1991) 'Critical Fanonism' Critical Inquiry 17(3): 457-470
Mautner, Menachem (2011) Law and the Culture of Israel (New York, US: Oxford University Press)
Mbembe, Achille (2003) “Necropolitics” Public Culture 15(1): 11
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962) Phenomenology of Perception (London, New York: Routledge)
Sa'id, Edward W. (1989) "Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors," Critical Inquiry 15: 205
Shamir, Ronen (1990) "'Landmark Cases' and the Reproduction of Legitimacy: The Case of Israel's High Court of Justice" Law & Society Review 24(3): 781-805
Sultany, Nimer (2007) "The Legacy of Justice Aharon Barak A Critical Review" 48 Harvard International Law Journal Online 83.
Weate, Jeremy (2001) 'Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology' in Robert Bernasconi, ed., Race (Oxford: Blackwell)

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention, and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week]

Academic Journals

“The Legal Environment of the Environment in the Gulf”, Rolf Meyer-Reumann

“The Islamic Law of Tort: A Study of the Owner and Possessor of Animals with Special Reference to the Civil Codes of the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan and Iraq”, Abdul Basir bin Mohamad
Animal rights and the liability of animal owners in Islam.

“Arab Islamic Developments on Human Rights”, Tabet Korayem
Analysis of the declarations of Human Rights in the Arab Islamic World in the last 30 years given the regional context.
 

Blogs

"Israel’s Destruction of Solar Panels in the West Bank”, Kevin Jon Heller
Israel's demolition of Solar Panels integral in privdign electrivity in the West Bank because they are "illegal".

“Report of Bomb Plot Puts Afghan Defense Ministry in Lockdown”, Matthew Rosenberg and Jawad Sukhanyar
10 suicide vests have been found inside the Afghan Defence Ministry causing  the arrest of more than a dozen Afghan soldiers.

"U.N. Leader Presses Assad on Peace Plan”, Anne Barnard and Alan Cowell
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon urges President Assad to put into effect a peace plan to end revolts.

"Ahmed on Drone Attacks in Pakistan”, Kevin Jon Heller
How Pakistan can utilize international law principles to stop US drone strikes.

“Blurred Lines”, Jane Harman
Argues that the United States has never had a public conversation about the relationship between its values and its need to gather intelligence, the result being a litany of unclear legal boundaries and abuses such as those at Abu Ghraib.  Points out four legal issues that should be given “top priority” by the next President.  

News

"Abu Hamza can be extradited to US, human rights court rules", Vikram Dodd
Rejecting arguments that the United States' practices of solitary confinement long prison sentences would violate the suspects' human rights, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the United Kingdom may deport suspects wanted in the United States on terror charges.

“FBI Documents reveal profiling of N. California Muslims”, Maria L. La Ganga
In a practice one legal expert called outrageous, FBI agents are reported to have gathered intelligence about Muslim communities in the Bay Area under the guise of “outreach programs” between 2004-2008, according to reports released by the ACLU.  

“Secrecy likely to surround Guantanamo testimony of alleged USS Cole bomber”, Carol Rosenberg
Though Abd al Rahim Nashiri is expected to testify about his treatment at the hands of the CIA in the detention center at Guantanmo Bay, much or all of his testimony may be kept from public ears.

“Lawyers tested in court over anti-terrorism act”, Grant McCool
Describes the efforts of New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges and others to challenge the National Defense Authorization Act's “Homeland Battlefield” provisions.  Hedges and other journalists and civilian activists are concerned that the relevant provisions could leave them in fear of being detained, and argued in court against the “chilling effect” it might have on their work.

“CIA Drone war in Pakistan in sharp decline”, Peter Bergen
Discusses the recent slowdown in America's use of drones to kill al Qaeda leader in  Pakistan within the context of the outrage these activities have provoked in the Pakistani parliament and public opinion.

From Jadaliyya

“On Kony2012: In Defense of the Armchair”, Tendayi Achiume

“Bahrain Human Rights Report on Human Rights Violations since the BCI Report”

"Does International Law Shelter States from Accountability?", Sharon Weill

"Reading Fanon in Palestine/Israel", Nasser Rego 

Upcoming Conferences

“The Judge and Women’s Right to Nationality”; Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5pm; Ashkal Alwan Organization Building, Beirut, Lebanon

“When Drones Attack: The Legal and Political Implications of US Policy”; Friday, April 13, 2012, 5:30pm; St. John's Univ. School of Law, Manhattan Campus, 101 Murray Street, New York, NY 10007

“The Legal Dimensions of the Arab Spring”; 17 April 2012, 9am-3pm; City View Room, 7th Floor, 1957 E St, NW, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.  RSVP here.

"The ILA British Branch Spring Conference 2012"; 20 April 2012, 9:30am-5:30pm to 21 April 2012, 9:30am-2pm; University of Nottingham School of Law, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD.  Register here.

Sonia M’Barek, Proshansky Auditorium, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY, 23 March 2012.

In traditional Arabic music, a vocalist is not just referred to as a singer, but is instead spoken of as a mutrib/mutribah. Literally translated, they are the people who bring tarab, or musical ecstasy. As such, the craft of a traditional Arabic vocalist is a demanding one. The singer must possess a pleasing voice, have clear diction, and sing impeccably in tune, all while comfortably navigating the Arabic maqam (mode) scales, whose intervals are smaller than the ones in Western music and therefore require particular precision. Additionally, a good singer is expected to be able to perform a mawwal (a spontaneous vocal improvisation) when needed, and to be skilled at ornamenting the melodies as they sing. The role requires clout and self-confidence, since he/she is the focal point of the audience: a funnel for the melody, the artistry of the lyrics, and the virtuosity of the musicians backing them.

I had had the pleasure of seeing Sonia M’Barek perform twice in the past, and so I knew going in to see her performance on 23 March in New York that she was a consummate artist in all of these ways and more. M’Barek, in a concert sponsored by Alwan for the Arts, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, and the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center of the CUNY Graduate Center, presented an evening of contemporary Arabic music with a large majority of Tunisian composers and some songs inspired by the Andalusian muwashah tradition.

Aside from being a shining example of a mutribah, as well as being a composer and arranger, Sonia M’Barek’s career in music is impressive in its length and breadth. She started singing at the age of nine, earning a diploma in Arabic music from Tunisia’s National Conservatory of Music. She has released seven albums, has taken part in dozens of festivals in twenty countries, won numerous awards, regularly holds advanced workshops and master classes in Arabic music, and is currently a music educator at the High Institute of Musicology in Tunisia. She is a former board member of the illustrious Rashidiyya Music Institute, and served as the director of the official Tunisian Music Festival for three years.

Although M’Barek’s name is often associated with the Tunisian malouf genre, singing that traditional genre was not where she began her career; instead she began by singing her own repertoire of music, composed for her mostly by Tunisian musicians. Tunisian malouf is the descendant of music that originated and prevailed for centuries in al-Andalus (the present day Iberian Peninsula) while it was part of the Islamic Empire, and which then migrated to North Africa after the Catholic conquests. It is a demanding classical genre, with sets organized in suites of several pieces sharing the same maqam, performed back to back, starting with a slow rhythm and progressively shifting to faster and busier rhythms. Until the late twentieth century, the malouf was sung exclusively by choirs of men, with suites lasting an hour or longer.

Sonia M’Barek worked on half a dozen suites and chose just enough pieces to keep them around the twenty-minute mark. She then rearranged them for a takht (the traditional Arabic chamber ensemble) and moved them to a range more suited to the female voice. She recorded these suites in her Takht and Tawchih CDs, released in the late 1990’s. The CDs included a combination of malouf and contemporary pieces, and earned her a reputation for being the first female malouf singer. Sonia’s interpretation of the malouf repertoire is precise and true to its roots, and yet manages at once to be intimate, direct, and informal.

Aside from malouf, M’Barek is well versed in the Egyptian classical Tarab tradition, dating from the Golden Age of Arabic music (early to middle twentieth century). In her 2005 New York appearance during Mahrajan El-Fann (Festival of Art), she performed a mixed repertoire of malouf and Egyptian Tarab at Symphony Space, accompanied by the Palestinian violinist, oud player, and composer Simon Shaheen and his Near East Music Ensemble. In 2009, she partnered again with Simon Shaheen during his Aswat (Voices) tour and sang three Egyptian Tarab pieces by Zakariyyah Ahmad, Fareed el-Atrash, and Muhammad Abd el-Wahhab. She ended her set with a spectacular interpretation of Asmahan’s classic “Layali al-Unsi Fi Vienna” (Nights of Passion in Vienna), to a standing ovation. That performance offered the New York audience a rare glimpse into what live performances of music from that golden period would have been like in their heyday.

After performing the malouf repertoire around the world for over ten years to great acclaim and with wide popularity, M’Barek felt the need to make her mark with a contemporary repertoire composed for her. “I cannot keep repeating other singers’ songs. Although there will never be composers like the great Riyad el-Sunbati, Zakariyyah Ahmad, and Khemais Ternane, theirs cannot be the only repertoire that the public knows me by,” she explained. M’Barek’s approach to diversification and innovation was to experiment without self-imposed boundaries: “Sayyed Darwish and Zakariyyah Ahmad were revolutionaries in their innovation, and we need to do the same thing, to create something new. Music for me is an adventure; it is real freedom!”

And so it was that she embarked on a new direction. For her concert tour “Mediterranean Voyage,” she created a dialogue between Tunisian-Andalusian and Arabic maqam scales, rhythms, and instruments, and their Mediterranean counterparts from Spain, Italy, and France. Her choice of lyrics was equally diverse, including Jacques Prévert's poem "Les Feuilles Mortes" (Autumn Leaves) translated into Arabic; a poem by the Tunisian poet Abou al-Qassem al-Shabi translated into French and Italian; and poems by Federico García Lorca from Spain, Nizar Qabbani from Syria, and Nâzım Hikmet from Turkey. “Music is a means to create conversations between nations, away from economic and political conflicts. Because of my conviction that music is an international language, I used it to create bridges in the Mediterranean region,” she explained.

M’Barek continued to diversify her musical output with the release of the album Wajd II in 2011, based on a repertoire of Sufi music, some of which she composed herself, inspired by Sufi poems from Andalusia, Tunisia, and Pakistan. As she explained, “I don’t like to be confined to one form. What’s important for me is to always contribute something new, even if only in my interpretation [of a song]. I like to keep finding new material, as long as every show or recording has a unifying concept behind it.”

Despite her exploration of different styles and her continuous innovation, a lot of commonality can be found in her works, and the elements that clearly matter to her are salient behind the diversity. For starters, there is an emphasis on poetry, whether in colloquial Tunisian or classical Arabic, and the lyrics in her songs are carefully chosen. Then there is a commitment to using acoustic instruments in her arrangements, and a deliberate avoidance of electric or electronic instruments like the synthesizer, which she calls a “dissonant instrument.” Finally, her songs don’t include much harmony and are rooted in Arabic maqam scales. Overall, the contemporary repertoire that was composed for her and by her can be considered a more modern version of the classical and traditional Arabic repertoire.

It was this contemporary Arabic repertoire that was presented by M'Barek on 23 March in New York. She was accompanied by an experienced takht ensemble of US-based Arabic musicians, including Hanna Khoury (violin and music director), Kinan Idnawi (oud), Hicham Chami (qanun), Kinan Abou-Afash (cello and arrangements), Jarrell Jackson (double bass), and Hafez Ali Kotain (riqq, tabla, frame drum, and Cajon). The takht performed three instrumental pieces, including one composed by cellist Kinan Abou-Afach entitled “Karnabal.” That piece showcased a short solo by every musician, including a very well received tabla solo by Hafez Ali Kotain that stood out for its impeccable technique and creative rhythmic variations and combinations. The ensemble was also accompanied by about twenty singers from the Keystone State Boychoir, who sang the refrain on many of her songs.

M’Barek’s repertoire for the evening included three songs written and composed for her, including the two oldies from her Takht CD, “Mihtara Bein Ithnein” (Torn Between Two Loves) and “Douroub el-Hayet” (The Paths of Life), as well as a recent remake of the classical Andalusian muwashah “Jadaka Al-Ghaithu” (The Rain Has Rescued You), which remained within the muwashah form. From her own compositions, she included “Hurriya” (Freedom), and “Al-Anadol” (Anatolia), a traditional Turkish tune that she adapted. More works by Tunisian poets and composers were represented with “Layali Ishbilia” (Nights of Seville), “Hubbi Yitbaddel Yitjadded” (My Love is Ever-Renewing), and “Illi T’adda W Fat” (What’s Gone is Gone). Finally the repertoire included one cover from the Egyptian Golden Age, Laure Daccache’s “Aminti Billah” (I Believed In God [when I saw your Beauty], 1939).

A consummate craftswoman, her delivery of the repertoire was majestic and flawless. Her deep and clear alto voice, with its slight smoky quality, filled the hall without being overpowering. Although many of the listeners, including myself, were expecting (or wishing for) more songs from her classical repertoire, the public was very engaged, and when she ended with her final piece, “Al-Anadol” with the KSB choir, she received a standing ovation and several minutes of applause. Unfortunately the concert ended without enough time for an encore, which would have been the perfect opportunity to include an old malouf favorite, or a second Egyptian Tarab piece.

The most pleasant surprise of the evening was offered by the choir, when they sang the refrain in “Aminti Billah.” Although their Arabic diction was not perfect, it was more than acceptable, and their singing of the Arabic scale that the song is based in (the Rast maqam) was surprisingly good, given that it is made of smaller intervals than Western music scales. The fact that the boys learned the melodies and lyrics for the entire concert by heart in only six rehearsals, then delivered them without the aid of sheet music, is an impressive feat in and of itself. Through her collaboration with them, Sonia M'Barek indeed proved her vision that music can be a bridge connecting cultures, that it is a universal language. It left both the boy choir who had the opportunity of sharing her stage, and the American audience who had the pleasure of hearing her perform live, with an experience to remember.

Alwan for the Arts, founded in NYC in 1998, is known for its robust musical programming centered around Middle Eastern music in its diverse forms: folk, traditional, contemporary, experimental, as well as music featuring other cultural and regional influences. Other branches of its programming include literary readings and book signings, film screenings, dance performances, visual arts presentations, and various other events that fall under Alwan’s multi-hued umbrella. For more information about Alwan, please click here. To join Alwan’s mailing list directly, and to hear about upcoming events, including Alwan’s upcoming concert featuring Marcel Khalife, click here.

Based in Philadelphia, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture is dedicated to presenting and teaching the Arabic language, arts, and culture. In the fall of 2011, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and other funders, Al-Bustan launched an Arab Music Concert Series, presenting a resident music ensemble performing classical Arab music repertoire that features a different guest soloist for each program. Led by Music Director Hanna Khoury, the ensemble brings together musicians of exceptional experience, providing them opportunities to hear exemplary live Arab music on a regular basis in Philadelphia. For more information, please click here.

[Read Part One here.]

"Epic" Turnout

After the 2 March polls closed, Khamenei said that the turnout had been “one of the highest” throughout the history of the Islamic Revolution. “These elections were a firm and clear answer” to the naysayers, he argued.

Yet even without a thorough inspection of the results, it is quite difficult not to question claims about “one of the highest” turnouts in the past thirty-three years. Official figures suggested a sixty-four percent turnout, higher than the fifty-one percent in the 2008 parliamentary elections. This means that despite the unparalleled damage to the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy following the unrest of 2009 and the ongoing crisis of mismanagement, the public’s trust in the political system has not suffered any decline. Quite the contrary, it has actually been able to shore up its legitimacy.

The staggering inflation, high prices, a surge in unemployment, the poor state of the national currency, regular reports of monumental embezzlement scandals and the authorities’ inability to prosecute the culprits, the growing constraints on political activity, the widespread crackdown on any form of dissent, and the continued stifling of civil liberties seem to have had little negative impact on the ordinary Iranian’s view of the political establishment. It’s worth mentioning that the deteriorating state of the economy coincides with a seven-year period during which the country’s oil revenues were equal to half of its total oil income since the initial discovery of oil 103 years ago. Iran is now officially the "world's worst jailer" of journalists, ahead of China. It is a recognized "enemy of the Internet." None of this appears to have deterred Iranians from casting ballots and thus “voting for the Islamic Republic” and showing their “trust” in the system.

Eyewitness accounts, as well as video footage from major cities, suggest that streets as well as polling booths were unusually silent, empty, and at times even deserted. This does not contradict reports about higher levels of participation in some of the more rural areas, where local issues tend to be the population’s main concern.

In the weeks and days ahead of elections, the Islamic Republic tends to open up to the world. In June 2009, the authorities were eager to show off its “democratic” spectacle and allowed many foreign journalists to travel to various parts of the country to cover the event and demonstrate to the world how free a country Iran is. The Daily Show’s Jason Jones even made a satirical report on the elections, interviewing leaders of the opposition. This would soon change, after the outbreak of protests, and the Culture Ministry would demand all foreign media and anyone affiliated with them to leave the country.

In March 2012, however, this is far from the case. This time around, far fewer journalists were granted visas. While Tehran governor Mohsen Nayebi spoke of three hundred and fifty foreign reporters covering the polls, an official at the Ministry of Culture admitted that no more than eighty visas had been granted to foreign-based journalists.

CNN’s Ivan Watson, one of the few foreign journalists allowed in Tehran to cover the elections, tweeted his telling description: “This is the 1st election I’ve covered anywhere in the world where authorities ordered reporters on buses to cover vote.” “All foreign journalists being BUSSED by authorities to polling stations. No alternative,” Watson added in another tweet.

If the authorities truly expected an “epic” turnout, they were intent on concealing it.

On his blog, Farhad Jafari, an Iranian author who endorsed Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections, recounted what he saw on 2 March in Mashhad, the holiest Iranian city in Shiite Islam. He noted that the number of polling stations had suffered a noticeable drop in comparison to previous elections. “I think this stemmed from a policy of reducing the number of polling stations in order to both increase the people’s movement in the streets and to make the remaining polling stations appear more crowded.”

Jafari’s description concurs with official figures. According to the Interior Ministry, around 48,000 polling stations were used during the 2009 election. In the 2012 elections, this number would drop to 46,924.

Jafari writes that he saw a “very noticeable fall” in the number of people present at the polling station (a mosque) near his home. “That year [2009], every time you went to the station, you would see long queues until outside the mosque. You would have to wait twenty to thirty minutes before casting your vote. [On 2 March] there was none of that.” Jafari describes another station where between ten to fifteen people were waiting to vote. Based on what he saw, he deduces, “the critics of the status quo are the majority.”

Judging by their absence at the ballots on Election Day, it would appear that eight of the country's most prominent religious figures also see themselves as being part of the discontented “majority.”

As if the relationship between Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pillar of the revolution, and Khamenei wasn’t rocky enough, the head of the Expediency Council had this to say as he cast his vote: “If the [announced] results are the same as what the people have voted for, we will, God willing, have a good parliament.”

Yet questioning the authenticity of the election results would not end with these scathing remarks. Three years after the widely disputed 2009 elections, one is baffled by how gross statistical anomalies are still a regular feature of Iranian elections, including the last one.

A day after Election Day (3 March), Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar announced that 64.4 percent of eligible voters had turned out to vote for their representatives in parliament. According to Najjar, the total number of voters tallied at around 26.4 million.

Yet prior to the vote, Najjar had said that around forty-eight million Iranians were eligible to vote. By simply dividing Minister’s own figures, it is revealed that the turnout was no more than 54.8 percent, ten percentage points less than the 64.4 percent he had been so keen to announce. Former reformist parliamentarian Ali Mazrooei was quick to point this out.

The Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) would soon take notice of the mathematical blunder and made changes after the fact to Najjar’s announcement of the final results that had appeared on its official website. The MOI website now quoted Najjar as saying that 26.4 million was in fact not the final turnout figure, and that the Ministry would post the final tallies soon!

Another problem was Najjar’s insistence that turnout had increased by “eleven percent” compared to the last parliamentary elections in 2008. This was problematic, because the turnout in 2008 was fifty-one percent, and an “eleven percent” increase could only have been achieved if the 2012 turnout had been sixty-two percent, not the sixty-seven percent announced by the Minister.

In fact, Najjar needn’t have made any announcements. Forty-eight hours before the polls opened, the IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency claimed that its own nationwide survey, carried out between 23 and 25 February, predicted a turnout of around 65.5 percent. The agency provided no information about its methodology or the size of its survey. In a country like Iran, where independent and accurate surveys are nearly impossible, the Fars figures seem too good to be true.

The Fars news forecast seems even more impeccable when one considers the fact that weeks after Election Day, the MOI has yet to release the details of the tallies, giving rise to speculation that election officials are still preoccupied with the daunting task of applying the finishing touches (or “adjustments”) to the final excel sheet. It is noteworthy that even after the widely contested 2009 elections, the MOI did in the end release the complete detailed results, which, ultimately, had the unintended effect of strengthening the case for fraud.

Najjar later added that participation had reached twenty-nine million. But not even this number yields a turnout of more than sixty per cent, that is, four percentage points less the Najjar’s announcement!

Another inconsistency is Najjar’s claim regarding the number of eligible voters: forty-eight million. Again, Mazrooei points out that based on Iran's 2006 census, the number of eligible voters in the country should have been closer to fifty-one million and not forty-eight as announced by the MOI. (He extrapolates a birth rate of 1.3 percent based on the decreasing birth rates obtained by the census.) Furthermore, a report by the newspaper Etemade Melli on 21 April 2009 argued that during that period, the number of voting-age Iranians was as high as 51.3 million people, five million more than what the MOI announced for the June elections.

A brief look at the announced results for Tehran Province, Iran’s most populous province, sheds further light on the authenticity of the recent parliamentary elections. According to MOI figures, fifty-two percent of the population in the province went to the polls on Election Day (forty-eight percent in Tehran city). This is problematic for two main reasons: In the last parliamentary elections in 2008, turnout was 30.32 percent. It strains credulity that the citizens of Tehran, who formed a significant core of the anti-government protests in 2009, would be so willing to go to the polls less than three years after the unrest.

Even former American national security officials Hilary Mann Leverett and Flynt Leverett, who have wasted no opportunity to ardently oppose the idea of fraud in the 2009 elections and to dismiss the Green Movement as an formidable force in Iranian political, ought to admit that in big population centers, in particular the capital Tehran, turnout could not possibly have been as high as official figures suggest.

Like the 2009 elections, another source of incongruity was the issue of provinces where turnouts of more than one hundred percent were recorded. For instance, two days before Election Day, the semi-official Mehr news agency ran a short story in which it claimed that Ilam Province had 373,000 eligible voters. To the amazement of its readers, the agency released another story after Election Day, in which it reported that 380,000 ballots had been cast in the province. Based on that number, Mehr also concluded that the turnout in the province had been seventy-six percent! Again, the election organizers seem to have failed at basic math. This unmistakable discrepancy means that at least one of these three numbers is problematic, to say the least. Having taken notice of the blunder, Mehr soon modified the 380,000 figure down to 280,000, explaining that “380,000” was a typo. This left only one problem: now the turnout was 75.067 percent, still one percent less than the previously announced seventy-six per cent!

Adjusting the numbers was proving to be a messy affair indeed.

According to provincial officials in the lead-up to Election Day, the number of eligible voters in Tehran and the newly formed Alborz Provinces was around 6.3 million. Yet based on the MOI’s own figures in 2009, the combined number of eligible voters in the two Provinces was around 8.8 milion. Astonishingly, not only has the number of voters old enough to vote not increase, but it has declined by 2.5 million voters.

If the election authorities did indeed deflate the number of eligible voters, it could only have served the purpose of inflating the overall turnout, and thereby delivering yet another “slap” in the face of the Islamic Republic’s adversaries.

Yet this meddlesome tactic was by no means a novelty. It was the case during both the 2008 and 2009 elections. For example, in 2008, less than two years after the Statistical Centre of Iran put the number of over-eighteen voters at around forty-eight million, the number of potential voters was announced by the authorities to be forty-three million!

Khamenei had promised an “epic” participation rate, and this had to be materialized. “Just as the Supreme Leader had predicted, the people’s participation in the elections was very high and better than previous elections,” said Ahmad Jannati, Chairman of the Guardian Council, after Election Day. As early as January, Khamenei’s representative in the IRGC predicted a turnout of between sixty to sixty-five percent. “People will partake in these elections and will not listen to those who bring up the issue of boycott,” Ali Saeidi told the official news agency Irna.

In a way, the elections really did represent an “epic” event—but “epic” in how problematic the announced results were. Allegations of voter fraud sparked limited protests in small cities such as Khorramabad and Amol, where the rivals were almost all exclusively from the Principlist camp and had been screened by the Guardian Council.

The election results prompted Khabaronline, a news site associated with current parliament speaker Ali Larijani, to state that poll results showed a “sudden change in voter behavior in the last two to three days” before Election Day. Even Ahmadinejad’s sister Parvin Ahmadinejad, who was defeated by a conservative rival in their hometown of Garmsar, accused the authorities of election rigging. Her defeat was emblematic of how an epoch of Iranian politics dominated by the Ahmadinejad clan was coming to an end.

Beginning of the End

If the authorities were confident about an “epic” turnout, this was not reflected in the state media’s extensive (and at times obsessive) coverage of former President Mohammad Khatami’s unexpected ballot on Election Day. Since the birth of the Green Movement, Khatami has often come under regular attack from the hardliners for his views (albeit these views have been quite moderate). He had been referred to as one of the leaders of the green “sedition” due to his close relationship with the opposition movement’s leaders, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi.

But in the rush to show the political establishment’s legitimacy, none of this seemed to matter anymore. It did not matter that he had cast his vote at a primary school in the village of Vadan, near the resort town of Damavand, even though it is custom for former and current officials to vote in the capital on Election Day and before journalists. It did not matter that Khatami published a note on his site explaining to Iranians why he had voted, even though he had hinted earlier that he would boycott. It is still unclear whether he had even planned to vote or whether this was a last-minute decision. An activist close to Khatami said that the former president was not concerned that the vote might “put his reputation on the line” in the eyes of Iranians, and he had “made this very hard decision” to prevent the hardliners from placing further pressure on the reformists. Even the governor of Damavand had to come out and prove that Khatami had indeed participated in the elections.

We may never know whether the results corresponded to the content in the ballot boxes. The Guardian Council’s vetting of candidates means that Khamenei effectively controlled who would be permitted to run. Out of 3,400 candidates, 1,200 were disqualified, half of them Ahmadinejad loyalists and some even MPs who had entered the Majlis following the 2008 elections.

The unusually clumsy manipulation of vote figures means that the only “epic” aspect of the vote was the scale of irregularities. However, authentic or not, the unsurprising result (a crushing defeat for the “Deviant Current”) implies that Khamenei acolytes have swept up an overwhelming majority of seats in the Majlis, which means that the Supreme Leader has succeeded in bolstering his position. In the event that Iran does away with the presidential system, Khamenei will be able to exercise full control over the appointment of his head of state.

Before the new (and far less pro-Ahmadinejad) parliament’s first session is held, the president has been questioned by MPs over his mismanagement of the economy and lack of obedience to the Supreme Leader (though Ahmadinejad made a complete mockery of the questioning, infuriating the MPs.)

This, and the judiciary’s recent action over the largest embezzlement scandal in Iran’s history—in which Ahmadinejad aides are also implicated—serve as a reminder of what might become of Ahmadinejad if he is to persist in his protest against the Guardian Council’s vetting process. Surely the political life of a once thundering Ahmadinejad now seems to be drawing to an end. Ahmadinejad’s close aides and media outlets affiliated with him have thus far shown no willingness to challenge the Guardian Council over its disqualification of around six hundred pro-Ahmadinejad candidates.

This is not to say that it is likely that Ahmadinejad will be impeached. After all, Khamenei tied his destiny to that of Ahmadinejad when he showed his unstinting support for his favorite president on 19 June 2009. Fully aware of this, staunch Ahmadinejad rivals, such as conservative lawmaker Ahmad Tavakkoli, have hinted that Ahmadinejad will have to be tolerated for the next fifteen months. Tavakkoli adds, however, that should Ahmadinejad continue to rebel, his “displacement” will be the only option.

Almost exactly two years ago, Karroubi described the direction in which the Islamic Republic was moving: “The ship of state is today no more than a boat.” The events of 2 March demonstrated how this boat had become just a bit more unstable without actually capsizing.

The election results imply that Gholam Ali Haddad Adel finished first in Tehran district, the most important district of all. Haddad Adel has proven time after time his loyalty to the Leader. His supposedly high vote total and his family ties with Khamenei make him an appropriate candidate for speaker of the parliament. Also, his daughter is married to the leader’s son Mojtaba.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the grace of the Revolutionary Guards, who immediately distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad when he dared defy the Supreme Leader.

The irregularities in the 2012 Majlis elections have also reopened the case of electoral fraud the June 2009 election. The sheer scale of the anomalies has further reinforced the hand of those who argued the 2009 race had been “engineered.”

In 2009, when Ahmadinejad won re-election, he enjoyed the firm backing of most conservatives as well as the IRGC, which were determined to prevent the rise of the reformists. Things were quite different on 2 March, when the same election process marked the end of an era referred to by some as "Ahmadinejadism." His own sister accused the electoral authorities of having carried out fraud. Yet less than three years ago, her brother was seen by most as one of the main culprits behind the “election coup,” as his Ministry of Interior was the body in charge of holding elections.

It is difficult to predict how the relationship between Khamenei and the IRGC will evolve in the more than one year we have until the next presidential elections. The elite fighting force now owns a huge chunk of the Iranian economy, and thus far, its ambitions have not clashed with the Leader’s worldview. It remains to be seen whether this will continue.

Just days after the elections, an article titled “For Whom Are the Bells Tolling?” appeared in the conservative newspaper Resalat. It asserted that the election results were the “last nail in the coffin” of the faction absent from the whole election process: the reformists. Many reformists, however, see the elections as the last nail in the coffin of the “Republic” in “The Islamic Republic.” While the 2009 presidential election was far from fair or free, for a sizeable portion of the Iranian population it provided a rare opportunity for political expression. “[Today] we saw people at the polling stations who had never voted,” Mousavi said on the polling day in 2009.

The 2009 elections highlighted a major crack within Iran’s political elite. The 2 March elections only deepened those divisions. Less than three years later, the Islamic Republic’s overall march towards a form of military government has gained further pace and its leader has shown little sign of relenting in the face of dissent. At this pace, Khamenei will be seen as the person responsible for every state action and its consequences.

In an article published before the elections, Ali Reza Eshraghi and Yasaman Baji pointed out that a real yardstick for Khamenei’s self-confidence would be whether or not he decides to keep Hashemi Rafsanjani as the head of the Expediency Council. “If he does not approve Rafsanjani's presidency…it will mean he feels powerful enough not to keep Rafsanjani as a scarecrow, or that he has realized this scarecrow does not scare anyone anymore.”

But in the end, Khamenei decided not to eliminate his old friend and reappointed him as the head of the Council. Whether or not the past three years have taught him anything remains to be seen.

Since the start of the events in the Arab World, termed as the so-called “Arab Spring,” Vijay Prashad has been writing about the different countries where people turned against their regimes across the region. He has done so by consistently contextualizing the events, while still providing thorough analyses of local dynamics and histories. In his book--Arab Spring, Libyan Winter-- Prashad discusses the case of Libya, its similarities and differences with other revolutions in the Arab world, and the history of the Libyan regime, as well as the “international” intervention.

Magid Shihade (MS): Were the revolutions in the Arab world sudden events, disconnected from the past?

Vijay Prashad (VP): The revolts in North Africa and West Asia were both sudden and anticipated, although the scale was a surprise. Over the course of the past decade, there has been an escalation of protests in the region – largely around issues of well-being, rising prices and so on. The great demographic shifts (with youth being sixty percent of the population) are compounded by high rates of joblessness. Young people were four times likely to be jobless than others in the region. This was always a combustive situation. The joblessness is not driven by Malthusian pressures – too many people, too few jobs to sustain them. It was rather the result of a tonic of neoliberal domestic policies and by the general second-class status of the Global South as the North constructs international policy to favor the corporations.

Add to this troubled economic situation a barren political climate, with the national security state as the dominant form from Tunisia to Syria. These states have run away from the promise of Nasserism or Arab Nationalism – the original form was itself slightly allergic to democracy, but this new form, incubated in the 1970s is entirely premised on ruthless suppression of the populations and a pretense of democracy with closely managed elections. The Mukhabarat or internal security forces are far more the significant institution than the parliament (which was often cosmetic) and the media (which was simply gibberish when it came to political matters, but of course very effective with its soap operas when it came to transforming culture into anesthesia).

Social life in North Africa, and in West Asia to an extent, already pushed against the boundaries of the consensus sought by the neoliberal authoritarianism of the regimes. Protests had become commonplace, whether from the workers of Mahallah or the Muslim Brothers, or indeed the array of small liberal and left organizations from the cities or the peasant organizations from the countryside.

What was unexpected was the scale of the uprising, and the resilience of the protestors. It seemed almost as if they knew that they were fighting for their lives. To return home was to be not only defeated for the moment, but it would mean that the neoliberal authoritarian regimes would now seek them out to crush their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That is why both the central square in Tunis and Tahrir Square in Cairo could not be vacated. It was a matter of life and death. The spontaneous sensibility was well matched by the organized forces – it was this combination that sent Ben Ali and Mubarak into their various forms of exile.

MS: How different is the Libyan case? Or what difference is there between Libya and say Egypt or Tunisia?

VP: Libya was always different. Its people had been partly cushioned from the collapse of economic life – the subsidies fueled by oil exports had not been withdrawn. But people do not live by bread alone. Over the course of the past two decades, the Qaddafi regime sought to privatize vast areas of social life, and to turn the Libyan state into something that would more properly resemble the state in Egypt – subordinate to private enterprise but harsh in its use of an already harsh Mukhabarat. In Libya, the Islamists had faced the wrath of the internal security forces. The long history of repression against them galvanized their revolt. It was the means by which this repression that was carried out against the Islamists since 1996 that turned the professional and liberal class against the regime and into a sympathetic relationship with the Islamists. I’m thinking here of the human rights activists, who joined the Islamists against the authoritarianism of the regime without themselves being Islamists politically or devout religiously.

But in Libya despite the fact that the people were not able to experiment through political struggle, the deep gulf between the people and the regime enabled them to seize vast sections of the landscape for the rebellion very quickly. Within weeks, the entire east was in the hands of the rebellion. Sections of the west, notably Misrata, had also slipped from Qaddafi’s grip. Parts of Tripoli itself, particularly the working class districts of Tajoura and Suq al-Jumah, turned against the regime. The harshness of Qaddafi’s response has to be measured by the habits of his regime (they always responded like this) and by their fear that society was lost to them (they had not previously experienced such a wave of disaffection in so many places). Yes, Qaddafi’s regime struck back hard, but it had become clear by early March that the progress of the revolution was swift and it would have succeeded in its terms. In the process of its fight, it would have clarified its own commitments and its own measure of what the new Libya would have been. Before it could do so, the West intervened. And it was this intervention that has made the creation of a new Libya very problematic. That is precisely the story I tell in my book.

MS: You say that people do not live by bread alone. Given that, are there other foreign policy or regional issues that perhaps motivated the upsurge?

VP: Here the story is interesting. You might remember in Orientalism, Edward Said took to task Harold Glidden’s analysis of honor and shame in Arab culture. Glidden was interested in the humiliating defeat suffered by the Arab armies in 1948. I had always found this an interesting section in Said’s book. I agreed with him that Glidden’s account bordered on racism, with a psychological narrative about the Arabs that portrayed them as infantile and overly sensitive. Glidden’s claim was that humiliation of honor had to be regained through the shedding of blood, and so on. It was mostly ridiculous.

But there is a kernel of truth in the first part of the suggestion – which is to say that there was something humiliating to be both under authoritarian dictatorships that promised so little and took so much, and it was humiliating to see the West and the Israelis walk all over the Palestinians for at least the past thirty years. The humiliation of Mohamed Bouazizi is a general condition amongst the casual workers of North Africa and West Asia – to be caught with no plan for one’s life and to suffer the indignity from a neoliberal authoritarian structure that takes so much from you – that is intolerable. One should not underestimate the great hunger for self-determination or democracy or whatever you want to call it. The West seeks to assume that this “democracy” is its donation to the world, but that is ridiculous. The striving for justice and for self-government is as old as human civilization.

The idea of humiliation should be extended as well to the disdain for the general sense of the proneness of the Arab nation since at least the late 1970s. In terms of international relations, Arab Nationalism has been utterly vanquished. No Arab political force has been able to exert itself against imperialism, and when the shadow of such a force tried, as with Saddam Hussein in 1990, its hollowness was shown for what it was (and tragically its appearance brought out many in support of Saddam’s adventure, thinking it was the emergence of independence when it was the ridiculous mimicry of what had been and no longer was, which is a genuine popular Arab Nationalism). The total domination of the Israelis over the Palestinians, and for decades over Lebanon, simply underscored this sense of historical defeat. The intifadas of 1987-1993 and 2000-2006 were able to galvanize support, but only for a contest that was militarily (not morally) always on the side of the Israelis. It is no surprise therefore that among the liberal-left in Tahrir Square were Kefaya, which emerged in 2004 but drew from currents associated with the solidarity campaign with the second Intifada, and the March 20 Movement, named for the large protest against the 2003 War on Iraq. These two are indicators of the broad vision for the Arab Nation, something akin in time to the Bolivarian consciousness set forth by the 1989 Caracazo and the “pink tide” in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the rest of South America.

MS: What was the position of Western powers towards the Arab revolutions? What opportunity did the situation in Libya provide Western powers with, and for what end?

VP: The West was stunned by the uprisings in North Africa, and of course in the Arabian Peninsula. It was the latter that was most threatening because they came too close to the great allies of the West, the Gulf Arab monarchies. The Saudis have made it clear that they will not tolerate any democratic experiment on their borders. The history of Yemen’s republicanism is testament to that – the Saudis ran a long standing insurgency against it, and brought the regime to heel (Saleh was once a very close ally of Saddam Hussein, and even supported Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait; his knee went to the ground before the Saudis not long after). Defense of the realm of the Saudis is an extension of the defense of the US (as the Carter Doctrine makes clear). The Saudis would have none of the revolt in Bahrain and Yemen. These had to be controlled. And the transition in Egypt needed to be managed. The West also feel flat before the Saudis on this.

Even the Israelis, for all their talk of being the “only democracy in the Middle East,” were not happy to welcome the revolts. Their intelligence services are often good, and they recognized that absent the neoliberal authoritarianism, political Islam would make major gains. Israel benefits greatly from the old regimes. It is what allowed Israel to have asymmetrical domination over the Palestinians and Lebanon – the Egyptians had been bought off with their annual bursary from the US government to their military, and the monarchies were always wary of any challenge to the US and its proxy in the region, as well the Syrians had become Israel’s border guard in the Golan region. With the “Arab nation” prone, Israel could indulge in its one-sided adventures against Lebanon (1982 and then 2006), the Occupation in general and then the occasional merciless bombardment (Operation Cast Lead, Gaza, 2009).

No attempt to control the dynamic in the region (special envoys and so on) was successful. It took the Libyan war to enable the West to insinuate itself as the active agent. It is remarkable that NATO became a social force in North Africa . . . taking space from the rebellion from below that had generated its own history, and produced its own gains. It would now have to share the spoils with NATO, and the NATO states. Where the West was almost discredited for its affiliation with the neoliberal authoritarian regimes, it was able to rehabilitate itself via the NATO intervention.

MS: What do you say to the argument that Western powers (US, Europe, and Israel) are interested in destabilizing the region, and that either they encourage the revolutions in some places, or they will be benefit anyway from it?

VP: I tend to have a more contingent view of history than that question implies. In other words, I think that the West was caught off guard. It had assumed that the neoliberal autocrats were there for good. Where the revolts could be properly managed, with Saudi tutelage, they were handled appropriately – in Yemen, Vice President Hadi took over from President Saleh, but it is Saleh’s son, Ahmed, who controls the Republican Guard and lives in the Presidential Palace; nothing changed in Bahrain; nothing was permitted in Saudi Arabia. What the West seeks is stability and the Saudi-Qatari momentum promises this to the oil merchants and the arms merchants, to the White House and to the Élysée Palace.

The revolt in Libya had its own dynamic. It was not forged by NGOs or “democracy promotion” funds from the US. It emerged out of the contradictions of recent Libyan history. What the West did was to insinuate itself into the revolt as the protector of civilians, when it seemed pretty obvious that the civilians and the defected troops were doing a pretty good job of defending themselves. I go over the evidence of the potential genocide in my book, and essentially junk it. It was propaganda to allow NATO entrance, and to blind us from what was going to happen in Saudi and in Bahrain – the Libyan war was smokescreen to block out evidence of the massive crackdown in the Peninsula, including in Yemen. The US and its allies encouraged their pillars of Order to reestablish themselves--the 5^th Fleet in Manama had to have a stable home, after all, and the Iranians were not to be allowed any successful allies in the Peninsula, having already lost Iraq to the Revisionists thanks to the US intervention there.

MS: What is the ethical stand that you think is suitable for people of progressive politics when it comes to peoples’ revolutions, and to western powers interventions?

VP: This is a very important and difficult question. When a revolt breaks out, should the Left join with it regardless of its social basis? Does the revolt have to have a Left character to be defended by the Left? Not necessarily so. The first obligation of the Left it seems to me is to defend a popular uprising against any state that seeks to use overwhelming force against it. That is the minimum for any kind of humanist Left. No regime, however progressive, should be given carte blanche to bomb civilian areas.

That said, there is no question that none of the regimes in North Africa had a progressive cast by 2011. Qaddafi’s regime began well in 1969, but by the 1980s its entire national liberation agenda had collapsed. The Ba’ath regime always had an antipathy to the Left and to the agenda of Nasserism--it tethered the Syrian Communist Party and sequestered the agenda of Arab nationalism to the interests first of its bureaucracy and then, by the 1990s and 2000s, to the neoliberal elite that had emerged in the major cities, principally Damascus. To believe that these are progressive regimes that need to be defended by the Left is to live in a delusion. Just because they make noises every once in a while about imperialism or Zionism should not blind us to their role as subcontractors of imperialism (both Syria and Libya have welcomed prisoners from the West to torture through the extraordinary rendition program).

Finally, history does not move forward following some kind of script, with the revolutionaries always coming forward trained in the kinds of books we wish them to have read or with the kind of agenda that we would fully get behind. The move by the various social forces against the neoliberal authoritarian regimes lays open space for the emergence of a proper new Left, which will have to be very clever in the way it makes room for itself against political Islam and imperialism, two social forces that are by their programs given to the suffocation of the people. The Islamists will probably ride to power in each of the newly opened up spaces, and because they have a retrograde economic and social agenda will quickly either lose their legitimacy or else will push a very harsh social platform that will be divisive and so might allow them a lease of life. The Arab Left that resurfaces and regroups will have to be very creative on this new terrain.

MS: Given this position you have staked out, should progressives support foreign (especially) NATO interventions in the South, or more specifically in the Arab world?

VP: If, for instance, people are being butchered and there is no way to defend them, and NATO is the only chance for their lives – only a hard-hearted ideologue would not see that NATO’s intervention would be essential.

Such a scenario is rarely what we are presented with. This is a cartoon image of what the NATO media announced about Libya. Going back and looking at the evidence two things are clear: first, that the numbers being thrown about in February-March 2011 for a death count were grossly exaggerated (notably a famous tweet from al-Arabiya) and second, that the rebels were holding their own, and indeed had the momentum on their side.

The problem with a NATO intervention is not entirely germane to the rebels on the ground--they would likely welcome any armed force on their side. That is without question. The problem is rather with the growing power of NATO to act without any oversight, and to act “out of area” (that is to say Europe). When the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 asking all member states to use “any means necessary” to protect civilians, the African Union hastened to send a high level panel to Tripoli and Benghazi to begin talks towards a ceasefire. NATO, meanwhile, powered up its jets, forbade the African Union team from flying into Libya and began its bombardment. Since that bombing started, evidence has emerged that during the 24,000 sorties there were considerable civilian casualties. In other words, in the name of protecting civilians, NATO killed untold numbers of civilians. A team of Arab human rights organizations and the UN Human Rights Council has asked for NATO to allow them to investigate its records to trace the numbers of civilian casualties and whether these were because of deliberate targeting of civilian areas. NATO refused. Indeed, its legal advisor wrote to the UN Human Rights Council to argue that NATO could not ever be seen to commit war crimes. The suggestion was impossible. Then, in the Security Council, the Russians have called for an evaluation of Resolution 1973, to see if it was indeed used most effectively to protect civilians. Of interest is the Libyan town of Tawerga, where the rebels under NATO cover removed the 30,000 largely dark skinned residents; this is ethnic cleansing with NATO collusion. NATO has refused to comply with any such evaluation. This is one of the reasons why the Security Council is loath to allow NATO any leash to act in similar situations, such as Syria.

So NATO does not want any evaluation of its role in Libya. This is a very important problem. In our modern, democratic world we have come to terms with the central idea that the military must be subordinate to and accountable to civilian authorities. But NATO is not subordinate to or accountable to any other bodies but itself. To allow NATO to operate without accountability violates this important prejudice of modernity. One cannot allow NATO to run roughshod over the political authorities and over the planet. That is unacceptable.

NATO is a not a social force for the rejuvenation of Arab society and Arab politics. The agenda of the NATO states is antithetical to the dreams of the “Arab Spring.” NATO states will push the same kinds of neoliberal programs that they have pushed over the course of the past few decades, and NATO states will seek to build up the military in the new states as their main door to control the destiny of the region. All this has to be rejected. History has begun to move away from the days of Western imperialism. They will seek to prolong their power with all means necessary. It is for the people of the Arab lands, like the South Americans before them, to show NATO the door.

When protests in North Africa ousted dictators and began spreading elsewhere in the region, decades-old alliances between the Arab monarchies were strengthened with the common interest of staying in power at all costs. While Morocco’s political and economic ties have historically been predominantly directed toward European markets, Morocco has recently oriented its outlook toward the East, finding common ground with the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.

Morocco’s relationship with the monarchies in the Gulf is nothing new. When King Hassan II of Morocco prioritized the acquisition of the Western Saharan territory as the principal objective of his reign, Saudi Arabia provided an annual allowance of one hundred million dollars throughout the 1980s. The amount was specifically intended for “anti-Polisario activities.” Hassan II returned the favor in 1990 when he sent over one thousand troops to the Saudi-Iraqi border during the Gulf War. The move was largely a political gesture in support of the Arab monarchies, but one that angered the Moroccan public and fueled widespread protests against the deployment of Moroccan troops.

Morocco’s economic ties with the Gulf were and continue to be crucial to Morocco’s economic development. In 2001, Morocco signed a free-trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and in 2010, both private and public investment from the UAE was the second biggest from any country in Morocco. UAE investment in Morocco’s economy has been especially pivotal in the tourism industry, with the construction of luxury resort projects emerging all over the country, especially in the northern port city of Tangier, the location of a free economic zone. Just a few years into the free-trade agreement between Morocco and the UAE, Dubai-based Jafza International was awarded the contract to manage the logistics of the Tangier-Med Free Zone in 2005. The UAE is also present in Morocco’s energy industry, namely the Jorf Lasfar Project, funded by a subsidiary of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, making up the biggest independent power facility in the region. The funders of the Jorf Lasfar Project are also common sponsors for music festivals, such as the annual international Mawazine Festival, which is partially state-funded. Additionally, in 2011, Qatar and Kuwait pledged to invest three billion dollars in Morocco’s tourism industry to help Morocco meet its 2020 tourism development plan.

The close relationship between Morocco and the monarchies of the Gulf is equally reflected through Morocco’s foreign policy. In 2009, Morocco severed diplomatic ties with Iran on the grounds that Iranian imams were proselytizing, a punishable crime in Morocco. A Wikileaks cable from US diplomats in Rabat dated 12 March 2009 goes into extensive detail regarding the diplomatic riff:

Moroccan policy decisions on this have almost surely come personally from King Mohammed VI, who had injected himself early into the row with Iran with a high profile letter of support for his fellow Arab royals in Bahrain.

The cable also highlights the frustration of Moroccan officials with the growing trade imbalance between Morocco and Iran. Morocco was becoming increasingly dependent on Iranian oil, while Moroccan phosphate exports to Iran were on a decline. This is juxtaposed with the increasing trade and investment between Morocco and Bahrain:

By contrast, Bahraini FDI in Morocco saw a massive increase from 2007 to 2008, shooting from USD 3.2 million from January to September of 2007 to USD 53 million during the same time period in 2008.

Despite Morocco’s geographic distance from the Gulf, Morocco’s foreign policy is heavily driven by its ties with the Gulf monarchies and its decision to embed itself in the geopolitics of the Gulf, even if it comes at the expense of cutting ties with other countries. This would be especially relevant in May 2011 when Morocco was proposed for membership for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The timing of the proposal to include Morocco—as well as Jordan—in the regional organization of the only monarchies in the Arab world, suggested the move was beyond a matter of political interests. Morocco’s inclusion in the GCC was never detailed, nor publicly mentioned much after the initial statement, save for a couple of summits. The May announcement came at a peculiar time in Morocco’s response to its own pro-democracy movement. The spike of police violence against protesters in the month of May contributed to mounting dissent, resulting in some of the February 20^th Movement’s biggest marches and demonstrations. Yet, leading up to the 1 July constitutional referendum, followed by the 25 November parliamentary elections, police repression saw a decline. The February 20^th Movement’s momentum also hit a stagnant wall. The movement had failed to garner popular support on the scale of the protest movements in other parts of the Maghreb, such as Tunisia and Libya. In order to quell a popular uprising, the Moroccan regime increased public wages at a record thirty-five percent, in addition to food subsidies. It appeared that the GCC announcement was a mere knee-jerk reaction to what appeared to be the rise of a popular uprising, meant to solidify the Moroccan-Gulf alliance under the guise of a relatively vague “membership.” When it was clear that the pro-democracy movement failed in gaining popular support, the urgency of the proposed membership diminished.

Yet, what would have Morocco’s GCC membership entailed for the monarchies of the Gulf? Morocco’s policies for the past years already indicate its interests are in line with the Gulf monarchies and Gulf investors have been flooding Morocco. If Morocco were to join the GCC, the integration of the Gulf rentier economies would undoubtedly clash with Morocco’s weak economy that mostly depends on the volatile tourism industry and remittances. However, the unclear process of membership in the GCC makes evaluating the consequences difficult. The current GCC charter would have to be amended in order to make sense of Morocco’s membership since the only article on country membership is not applicable to Morocco. During a meeting of GCC members, details pertaining to membership were not clarified. Instead, GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said Morocco must “complete required procedures” in order to join.

Morocco’s alliance with the Gulf has also been redefined through regional politics, namely with regard to the ongoing crisis in Syria. Morocco is the only member of the Arab League to currently hold a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. Not only is it positioned as a representative of the Arab League but it also acts as a proxy for Saudi and Qatari foreign policies, both of which support foreign intervention. Further, soon after Jordan’s King Abdullah condemned Bashar al-Assad, Morocco hosted the first Arab League meeting on 16 November, at which officials agreed to send monitors to Syria.

Despite the Moroccan and Gulf monarchies’ similar neotraditionalist policies and close ties with the United States, public opinion on both sides opposed the proposal. One of the reasons for this opposition is rooted in a lucrative underground sex trafficking market that has been a major issue between Morocco and the Gulf, forging many misconceptions. Morocco’s lax policies with regard to job recruitment to the Gulf, has allowed for extensive prostitution rings. Despite Morocco’s ratification of various international treatises and conventions that address sex trafficking, such as the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, Moroccan lawmakers have failed to draft comprehensive legislation that applies these international conventions at a national level. Additionally, while the new Moroccan constitution calls for the precedence of international law over national law, courts have indicated adherence to national law, as was evident in the case of Amina Filali. Aside from the lack of legislation that addresses sex trafficking, high illiteracy and poverty rates, especially in rural areas, have turned the sex industry in Morocco into a lucrative market.

A story of Saudi women accusing Moroccan women  of practicing witchcraft and stealing husbands went viral, yet the response to the story overlooked the causes of these views. These misconstrued perceptions went so far as Saudi Arabia banning Moroccan women of a "certain age" from performing umrah. Conversely, in Morocco, the perception of the wealthy, sex-driven, and morally void Khaliji man has also been shaped by the sex trafficking market. The Moroccan government responded to these widely-held views by passing a law that would require Saudi court approval if a Saudi man seeks to marry a Moroccan woman, as well as notifying prior wives of the marriage.

It was also argued the proposal suggesting the flow of goods, services, and citizens that would be facilitated through the membership would have long-term repercussions for human development in Morocco. Although the geographical distance would remain an obstacle to some extent, Morocco, unlike the Gulf, averages significantly lower on the Human Development Index (HDI). The indicators point to a multitude of factors contributing to Morocco’s low ranking, including illiteracy, poverty, income inequality, etc. The looming fear is that Moroccans who struggle to make a living would forfeit the pursuit of education for hard labor work in the Gulf in exchange for a steady income. A sizeable portion of Morocco’s economy already depends on remittances, yet as the remittances have increased over the years, human development in Morocco has consistently remained below the regional average.

The proposal of Moroccan integration into the GCC is most obviously an act of political desperation. Should the Moroccan monarchy have fallen to a popular uprising, the Gulf monarchies would have lost one of their remaining political and economic extensions in North Africa. Even as a nonmember of the GCC, Morocco is already benefiting from its ties with the Gulf monarchies. Investment from the Gulf contributed in placing Morocco at the top of FDI Markets 2011/12 “African Countries of the Future” list, before South Africa and Mauritius. It is imperative to assess the rationale behind Morocco joining the GCC in the context of government-led reforms in response to protests. The Moroccan regime’s response to protests through quick reforms and rushed elections provided a model for another Arab monarchy, namely Jordan. Several months later, Bahrain also played lip service to the idea and announced constitutional reforms of its own.

Economically, Morocco’s European trade partners face significant hurdles, posing a risk to Morocco’s weak economy—one that is plagued by a record high trade deficit and budget deficit. The point of economic integration was a concern for members of the GCC. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan of the United Arab Emirates stated, “We must learn from the experience of the European Union, which at some point accepted 10 countries to its membership and look now what happened with the euro.” The oil-rich states of the Gulf offer a temporary solution to Morocco’s political and economic woes, while allowing for the sustenance of the Moroccan authoritarian regime. About a month after the meeting where al-Nahayan made his comments, it was announced that the GCC would set up a "$5 billion development fund"  to be split evenly between Jordan and Morocco. Meanwhile, procedural moves to include them in the GCC remained unclear.

Through a combination of efforts across the political and economic spheres, Morocco succeeded in temporarily postponing the inevitable wave of dissent. The Gulf monarchies provided a comfortable cushion for the Moroccan monarchy, while boosting the confidence of the regime’s allies both within and beyond Morocco’s borders. However, Morocco’s income inequalities remain the highest in the region, along with a staggering 56.1% illiteracy rate. Morocco can seek temporary economic assistance through aid packages from the Gulf, but all this succeeds in doing is nurturing a dependent and weak economy still coping with the obstacles of post-colonial development. Meanwhile, Morocco’s commitment to democratization has stalled with consistent cases of arbitrary arrests, politically-motivated trials, and ongoing protests met with repression. This only shows that the constitutional reforms have done little to change the social reality of Moroccans, and the Gulf monarchies have no intention of challenging Morocco’s approach to addressing popular grievances. Instead, the Gulf monarchies have rewarded Morocco with billion-dollar aid packages, investment, and an increasingly stronger political alliance.

The day Hazfez al Assad died, I was having lunch with a friend. We were eating pasta at a family owned Italian restaurant in Ras Beirut when the news was announced. With everyone else, we stared at the small television. The owner kept changing the channel, and each time the news was confirmed.

I don't remember if we finished lunch. But I do remember that when we went outside the streets seemed deserted. Beirut is not a quiet city, but that day it seemed as if sound had retreated from picture. My father called and demanded that I come home. Less than five minutes later my friend received the same call from her mother. No one knew what would happen next. The questions, I suppose, were obvious: Would a power struggle erupt in Syria? Would it erupt in Lebanon? Would “the war” return? What would Israel do?

Three days of public mourning unfolded. Three days of having these conversations and asking these questions. I placed bets with friends about the longevity of Bashar al-Assad's rule. In person, of course. Never on the phone. I argued with family members about what Hafez al-Assad's legacy would be. I spoke to people who did not live or grow up in West Beirut, and was again struck by the multiple and sometimes diverging histories that saturate this small country.

When a dictator or an authoritarian leader dies, his image soon follows his body into memory. I grew up with images of Hafez al-Assad on walls, cars, and checkpoints. As a child I listened to adults argue about what “he would do now,” and how this or that decision would affect us in Beirut in the 1980s. Officially, he was largely credited with the end of the Lebanese civil war, as well as for the fact that it did not flare up again throughout the 1990s. The fact that he was also responsible for the longevity of the the civil war was made forgettable, just as later the fact that he was just as responsible as his partner Rafik al Hariri for the so-called post war “boom” in Lebanon was also made forgettable. After his death was announced, there was a final orgiastic papering of his image to every available space in Beirut, and then he began to be replaced with images of his son Bashar—who had long been the “spare” to the real “heir,” Basil. For a while there were pictures of both of them together, father and son. A photographic transition period. A final seal of mediated approval. An urge, and a warning, to accept.

When Hafez al-Assad died, I thought an uprising in Syria was immanent. I looked for it in the newspapers, scrutinizing reports and op-eds for signs of censorship. I watched international news broadcasts for what I was sure was not being shown on Lebanese television. I was naïve. I was naïve again last January, when I confidently told a friend that the regime in Syria was different. We were playing the game of “who's next?” and I argued that because it operated within a different geopolitical space and currency than the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, the Ba`ath regime in Syria would weather what we were prematurely celebrating as the “Arab Spring.” I lost another bet last summer, when I thought that the regime had less than six months of life left. In fact, since Hafez al-Assad died, I have lost countless wagers concerning Syria. I am sure that many people have.

Here is what we know: Today the regime continues to brutally stamp out the flames of uprising. It tries, anyway. But fire spreads with contact. The uprising is being re-scripted by exiles in waiting, international politicking and deal making, and by an Iran-Saudi Arabia not so cold war. The regime cannot stay, but the character, politics, alliances and tactics of the organized opposition renders this future at best bittersweet. Still, this future—because it is uncertain, vulnerable and exposed to change—must be struggled for. We now know that we do not have to choose between authoritarianism and US-Israeli interests, that we can be both pro-democracy and pro-Palestine, both pro-revolution and anti-Zionist. The days when Arab leaders bequeath their states and the people within them to their sons on their deathbed are over. People—and politicians—will not forget this year's lessons.

This year's lessons include the fact that the uprisings of 2011 did not materialize magically. People from all corners of the political spectrum have been resisting the Ba`ath regime in Syria for decades and at great cost. They have been jailed, tortured, killed, and officially forgotten. But unofficially, their stories and their struggles have been smuggled out and shared across the region, joining stories from Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and so many other countries. Braided together, these narrative threads become a noose.

Time—like scar tissue and like memory—does not stop. It accumulates. It coagulates. It thickens. Like desperation. Like mourning. Like rage.

I usually get along with white people. For starters, I grew up in a white country. Some of my best friends are white. In my long history of befriending them, I have learnt one thing: if you want to retain white friends, you must adhere to a number of sacred rules: the stuff white people like. For those who are not familiar with it, there is a helpful website aptly titled by the same name. Although they‘ve managed to exhaust the concept with their 134 entries spanning issues as diverse as TED talks, Ultimate Frisbee or Asian Fusion Food, the site remains lacking in one glaring way, to wit, it failed to include humanitarian intervention. The following attempts to remedy to this bleak state of affairs.

When approaching prospective white friends, tips for solving the third-world crisis du jour can be very efficient icebreakers. However widespread a white conversational hobby, humanitarian intervention is also a thorny issue fraught with intricate codes matching the complexity of croquet or bridge. During the ensuing conversation, avoid openly belittling the value or intentions of humanitarian intervention, or of its less militarized cousin, humanitarian aid. They are, by nature, noble and typically exclude financial or geostrategic incentives. If these surface at a later point in time, they do not delegitimize the whole enterprise. They simply suggest it could have been done better. Stating otherwise will certainly ensure that your white acquaintances will talk of you as a heartless conspiracy theorist behind your back, or worse, and this will depend on how outrageous they find you, in your presence.

Unbeknownst to yourself, your choice of regions for humanitarian intervention will reveal a great deal about the depth of your character. For instance, a focus on blasting Palestinians suggests a rather traditional, impulsive, frontier-Orientalist personality whereas opting for Syria says you’re a more sensitive Kosovo intervention-type, who dreads a repeat Srebrenica. In contrast, caring for child soldiers in Africa tells the prospective white friend that you’re not only extremely devoted to the well-being of the wretched of the earth, but also that you tend to be knowledgeable about regions that regularly drop from the radar of cutting-edge mainstream infotainment.

In all this confusion, beginners will typically commit the faux pas of supporting all humanitarian interventions. It is of the utmost importance to maintain a semblance of taste in these matters. So while some interventions can be justified, based on geographical terrain—for instance, flatter is more open to intervention, like in Libya—or ethnic uniformity—too much diversity might lead to armed civil strife, like in Iraq—others will strike your friends as completely out of line. For instance, oil-rich countries with regimes that hold white interest close to heart, such as the UAE or Saudi, are a clear no-go, and so are neighborly aspiring white settler colonies, like Israel, that regularly confuse democracy for a weapon of mass destruction.

With the “Arab spring” on the menu, the height of sophistication this season is to introduce the notion of ‘types of intervention’. Although it might require serious research on specialized blogs and a subscription to the Economist, explaining in great detail the type you believe most appropriate for the context under scrutiny reveals a subtle personality attuned to the minute nuances of killing non-white people abroad. Should the strikes be preemptive, or should we wait until a certain number of oppressed innocents have died before putting our foot down?

Once you’ve decided upon this matter, you must further pick between interventions that aim at drawing defensive curtains around specific zones of strategic white interest, surgical strikes that destroy the enemy fire capacity which a white government sold them the previous week, and physical military intervention which might ensure your current president won’t get another term in office. Alternatively, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, you may incense the unorthodox virtues of economic sanctions, guaranteeing local native children will starve in dignity, fully sheltered from international media attention.

Now that you’ve successfully added your new white friends on Facebook, you begin to think you can stop talking about how much it means to you to kill other people in far away places that you know little about—through “saving” them. Wrong. Since lobbying one’s representative lost its edge, it is almost as important to discuss intervention in cyberspace as it is at dinners. Digital media activism has replaced letters and phone calls as a paramount weapon in the arsenal available against global injustice. This mostly involves watching activist videos on YouTube to raise your friends’ and representatives’ awareness but liking links on Facebook usually matters almost equally in the cyber-guerilla warfare against oblivion.

For those who feel a bit constrained by the range of options, digital activism now finally allows you to put your money where your mouth is. After the adopt-a-starving-orphan and/or endangered-pet moments, white e-revolutionaries have seen their prospects for global justice expand significantly with the Adopt a Revolution movement. Bastard offspring of H. Clinton’s commitment to a human right to communication and of the “Adopt a Monk” movement, the website allows the concerned world citizen to provide a friend or kin—for Christmas or a birthday, for instance—the joyous gift of ‘adopting’ a Syrian revolutionary activist, i.e. covering all his phone expenses for a period of time. Unfortunately, at the moment, adopting Hamas ‘freedom fighters’ remains an unavailable option, except for Guantanamo Bay employees.

Stuff white people don’t like so much

No decent rough guide to white etiquette surrounding ‘humanitarian intervention’ would be complete without mentioning the central absolute rule whose violation would seriously jeopardize all white friendships: never ask a white friend why ‘humanitarian intervention’ is a specifically white hobby. This taboo question might lead down one or four abrupt dead-ends, namely, white privilege, white man’s burden, white supremacy, and your friend losing his white temper.

This becomes evident if you’re fond of thought experiments. Try asking a white friend whether it would have been wise to recommend a preemptive UN targeted attack on US military production facilities in the spring of 2003, to prevent, for instance, a million Iraqis dying in the name of freedom fries. You may find your friend, choking on the difference between Bush and Saddam or Qaddhafi: Bush might have been a little trigger-friendly but he didn’t stoop so low as to kill his own people—sure sign of a non-white management style. In white corporate democracies, governments are service-providers, which generally exclude euthanasia. A government killing its own peaceful protesters would be a bit like Wal-Mart employees opening RPG-fire at the information desk or down the pastry aisle; absurdly bad PR. In liberal-speak, white privilege entails a government gifted with managerial common sense.  

About twelve years ago, the Global South realized that whites faced this extra hurdle of white privilege preventing them from a lucid grasp of their own predicament. For this reason, they issued a Declaration signed by 133 countries, approximately two thirds of the globe and 100% of the non-white world, gently explaining that killing your own people and fighting over the leadership of your country is generally understood as sovereign politics, and that interfering with it wasn’t particularly legal. White leaders and policy makers immediately dismissed the reminder. French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, for example, launched his ‘putative referendum’ campaign. Humanitarian intervention was justified if whites could imagine Iraqis saying yes to carpet-bombing their own country in a hypothetical referendum—basing the idea on the necrophiliac’s motto: Qui ne dit mot consent [Silence gives consent]. It thus became clear that it wasn’t so much that whites felt a ‘right to humanitarian intervention’—a form of privilege assuredly—as much as they were self-invested with a ‘duty to protect’ the poor and oppressed of the world.

This dismissal takes us back to the good old colonial days, when the ‘duty to protect’, the white man’s burden, was very regularly invoked to support military interventions. What we fail to understand though is why. Why is white man’s burden so white? It is common Northern lore that white folks are genetically predisposed to greater empathy. They just care more. The time is not far-off when a white scientist is bound to discover whites have some gene that allow them to empathize more intensely with the suffering of people that regularly show up on the front page of the New York Times. Contra this genetic argument, it is best to treat the phenomenon as historically grounded and culturally-specific. The ‘duty to protect’ incumbent on the white-skinned derives from the same justification as the ‘civilizing mission’ so dear to the colonial project: Whites can govern best.

This form of contemporary white supremacy takes a slight twist of the imagination to fully grasp but remains within analytical reach: White governors don’t kill their own; democracies, i.e. white polities, don’t wage wars against each other. The impeccable syllogism according to which whites imagine their supremacy and their burden is that they have a duty to protect life because they do it best. From conservations to protectorates, zebras to Zambians, ecological disasters to oil wells, the humanitarian refrain is the same.

1) There is an equal right to life for all humans
2) White governments maintain life better
3) All government should be white.

At the end of the day, humanitarian intervention stipulates that there is a human right to life, and that no one is better placed than whites to take care of such a precious commodity. Whites keep life alive longer. The argument is unstoppable for once we accept that whites are plain better at life management, and that the legal sovereignty of nation-states can be overridden to save lives, there is no moral reason to resist a return to colonial administration of native affairs. After all, statistics demonstrate without a doubt that white governments take care of their citizens’ lives better—hence a responsibility to take care of the rest of the globe. The taboo surrounding the issue—the reason you can’t ask a white friend why humanitarian intervention is a white hobby—results from this oft muddled fact: just wars and humanitarian interventions tap into the deep and pleasurable roots of white supremacist sentiments.

Conclusion: what can you do?

So you want to save the world and make white friends, but you know that YouTube videos and family bake-sales to arm the Ugandan government against the LRA won’t be enough. You are God-fearing and warmongering, yet you suspect your government is more interested in doling out your tax monies to investment bankers than weapon factories. You want to participate in promoting global justice but you’re not perfectly white. And most importantly you’re getting deadly bored of being as passionate about invading a random country in the Orient as you are over watching your favorite football team win yet another decisive game. We have the perfect solution for you: be a real champ, go get yourself a machinegun and a ride to Syria. You might put your life on the line for ideals you’re not yet sure you fully subscribe to. On the bright side, you’ll be the stuff white people like, limbless and free.