Deep Politics Forum

Arab states: a quagmire of tyranny

Arabs are rebelling not just against decrepit autocrats but the foreign backers who kept them in power

Soumaya Ghannoushi
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 January 2011 23.00 GMT
Article history

We are witnessing the breakdown of the Arab state after decades of failure and mounting crises. The Arab political establishment has never looked weaker than it does today. It is either dying a protracted silent death, corroded from within, or collapsing in thunderous explosions. Tunisia, which toppled its dictator through popular revolution two weeks ago, is by no means an exception. The symptoms are evident throughout the region, from the accelerating movement of protest in Egypt, Algeria and Jordan, or the increasing polarisation of Lebanon's sectarian politics, to the near-collapse of the state in Yemen and Sudan, and its complete disintegration in Somalia.

The postcolonial Arab state has always carried deficiency as part of its genetic make-up. It had emerged as a substitute for the complex network of local elites, tribal chieftains and religious groupings through which the imperial authorities had maintained their grip; and its mission was the regulation of the indigenous population. This system of indirect control over the region, which assumed its present shape in the aftermath of the first world war, specifically required a "state" that is capable of keeping the local populations under check and maintaining "stability" at home, but too weak to disrupt foreign influence or disturb the regional balance of powers.

The first generation of post-colonial Arab leaders, the likes of Egypt's Nasser and Tunisia's Bourguiba, had been able to soften the repressive nature of the Arab state by virtue of their personal charisma, and promises of progress. With their exit from the stage, and the entry of a new class of colourless autocrats and crude generals, the Arab state lost any cover of legitimacy, and became synonymous with violence and oppression.

Much of the turmoil plaguing the region today is traceable to its diseased political order. Its degeneration has wrought havoc on the social sphere too. It has led to weaker national identities, and to individuals reverting to their narrower sectarian affiliations, sparking conflicts between Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Kurds, Copts and Muslims. The result has been a growth in extremism, self-insulation, and what the French Lebanese novelist Amin Maalouf calls "killer identities".

Beyond the Arab state's aura of physical might embodied in its terrifying coercion apparatus lurks a moral vulnerability and an abysmal dearth of popular allegiance. This paradox has been laid bare by protesters in Tunisia and is in the process of being exposed in Egypt today. These demonstrators are discovering the extreme frailty of the instruments of repression that have long crushed and suffocated them simultaneously, with the staggering power of their collective action on the street. The ousting of Tunisia's tyrant after no more than a month of perpetual protests has handed millions of Arabs the magical key out of the prison of fear behind whose walls they have been incarcerated for decades.

Events in Tunisia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Algeria are harbingers of a change long impeded and postponed. Were it not for the international will to maintain the worn out status quo, what happened in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s could have occurred in the Arab region too. Its decrepit autocrats were allowed to stagger on, shedding their old skins and riding on the wave of rampant economic liberalism, which benefited the narrow interests of ruling families and their associates alone, and thrust the rest into a bottomless pit of poverty and marginalisation.

Arab rulers aided by their foreign allies have been able to steal over two decades of their societies' political life. Today they face the hour of truth: either radically transform the structure of authoritarian Arab rule, or depart for ever. The trouble is that an entity that has made coercion its raison d'etre and violence its sole means of survival has left itself no option but to sink deeper in the quagmire of tyranny. And the trouble for its sponsors, who have made its preservation the cornerstone of their "stability" strategy in the region, is that they have now tied their own hands, with no choice but to blindly stick with their "friends" to the last breath.

That is why those demonstrating on Arab streets today feel that they are not only rebelling against a band of corrupt local despots, but against their foreign backers too. And though we cannot predict the future, the likelihood is that just as Latin Americans had seen the fall of many Pinochets in the 1980s, Arabs will witness more Ben Alis before the close of this decade.

I've just heard the military have open fired on the renewed protests.

Yeah, it will get very bloody in the next days...but it is inevitable, IMO, Mubarak is finished....what will replace it is unknown. You can be sure the US Deep Political Cabal is busy trying to install their own [new replacement] one now. They always bet on the bad ass dictators....Shah, Mubarak, Pinochet.... and all the other despots from around the world. I can't think of one 'nice guy or gal' ruler they voluntarily backed. In fact, when they find a nice guy [like Allende, Aristide or Mussadeh] they either kill 'em or overthrow them.....often with UK or other Capitalist allies help.

Can't wait for when this kind of Revolution comes 'home'!!....ah, dream on......

Posted at 1:45 PM ET, 01/28/2011
What should the CIA do in Egypt?
By Jeff Stein [from a Mockingbird to your ears...or eyes!]

The ghost of the 1979 Iranian revolution is very much on the minds of veteran intelligence officials as Egypt explodes in street protests.

Most historians agree that the CIA was largely in the dark when anti-American students, radical Islamists and mullahs ignited street protests in Tehran because the U.S.-backed shah had forbidden the CIA to have contact with opposition groups.

The CIA can't let that happen again in Egypt, intelligence veterans say -- and it probably isn't.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey says agency officials' main mission in Egypt today is "to make sure that they are getting information from all factions where they don't already have relationships and that they are not making the same mistake they did under the shah -- talking only to regime-approved people."

"Hopefully," echoes Jeffrey White, a former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Middle East intelligence division, "the CIA has contacts within the opposition or else is working to make them."

There are "lots of important intelligence questions to be asked about their leadership, motivation, intentions, organization [and] external influences," said White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"The CIA's response should be to perform its usual missions of collecting information about, and providing assessments on, events in countries important to US interests, as is the case with both Egypt and Yemen," said Paul R. Pillar, who retired in 2005 as the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. "Anything beyond that in which the CIA might become involved would not be the 'CIA's response' but instead something done at the behest of policymakers."

"For now, we need to walk on both sides of street, stay close to the government and work the opposition hard for new sources and contacts," added a senior former CIA operations official, speaking only on background because he conducts extensive business in the region.

"The priority is collection and analysis about what's going on," said Richard K. Betts, a frequent consultant to U.S. intelligence agencies and director of the International Security Policy program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

"Our capacity to shape events by more active measures, such as covert action to support moderate elements of the opposition, is probably minimal, and more likely to backfire than to control events," added Betts, author of "Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security."

"Popular revolutions can hardly ever be contained or channeled effectively by foreign forces," he said.

"The agency's work is pretty much over, as no part of the U.S. government can do much to influence the situation, unless [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton makes things worse by continuing to speak as if we are supporting the demonstrators," said Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA's Osama Bin Laden unit. "Ditto for Yemen."

Mark Lowenthal, the CIA's assistant director for analysis and production from 2002 to 2005, agreed about the limits of covert action.

"I do not see any role per se for the [intelligence community] other than tracking what is going on and giving the policy makers enough intell to make proper choices," he said.

"I would be hard put to think of a covert action. Now, you might want to put out discreet feelers to some folks in the opposition, just to get in touch, sound them out, find out their intentions, etc. But you have to be careful not to [anger] the powers that be."

Lowenthal added, "But I would make this approach via diplomats, not intelligence [agents].

In any event, Lowenthal said, "overt is better than covert, if at all available."

All emphasized that any new or major CIA initative in Egypt--or elsewhere in the region--would be undertaken at the direction of the White House.

"Rule No. 1: the Intelligence Community does not create or have policies," said Lowenthal. "It carries out activities to support policy makers. So, there can be no 'CIA response' to Egypt and Yemen."

A major fear among policymakers is that the Cairo protests could open the door for the country's largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, to take power.

Two years ago, Emile Nakhleh, the former head of the CIA's political Islam strategic analysis program, said the United States should be reaching out to the Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah, to "find common ground on daily issues, including issues of education, economics, commerce, health services, and community services."

"To engage the Islamic world, the U.S. needs expertisecultural, political, and languages, said Nakhleh, author of "A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World," in an interview with Harpers blogger Ken Silverstein.

"The CIA was the first government agency that recognized this and systematically began to assign resources to acquire expertise on the Islamic World. This started before 9/11," he also said. "The Agency's directors in the Analytic section saw this challenge many years ago and proceeded to allocate resources to begin the process. But the bad news is that the CIA remains the only entity in the U.S. government that has cultivated this expertise."

Nakhleh could not be reached for comment Friday.

"I would think that all of our officers across the Near East are spending a good amount of time on the streets trying to gauge the public mood and [assess] the chances of any more dominoes," said Scheuer, who has just authored a new biography of Osama Bin Laden.

"For myself, I hope that each [CIA chief of station] and/or the ambassador are writing commentaries for Washington to disabuse them of the idea that any of this unrest is going to lead to secular democracies in the region. We are either going to get either more ruthless dictatorships or--if they fall--a year or two of chaotic governments with patinas of democracy until the Islamists take over," Scheuer said.

Mobile phones are back on.
50,000 protesters in the main square Tahiir Square defying military orders not to be there.
Fairly good coverage on Al Jazeera English live streaming if you can get it.
Mass public funerals being organized for the 100 dead.

I've been watching live on Al Jazeera. Very interesting and peaceful in the main squares....good vibes between people on street and military; however some person killed who tried to enter the Interior Ministry. Curfew started over an hour ago and no one is going home or observing it and no one is enforcing it.....

The US as always is on the wrong side in these things. We have been propping up rightwing dictators and arming their repressive police forces which are now using our taxpayer funded weapons GIVEN to these right wing despots to oppress and kill the people in these countries.

The US will try to spin it and put in another puppet who will simply be the same with a new face and name and, if not from the get go, will morph into that in the very near future as more control measures are quietly passed to the new puppet regime.

As people become more and more desperate with "nothing left to lose" they will give their lives in a struggle for the lives of their children and loved ones. We're getting there and this is the only way to stop right wing thugs.

These thugs have realized the power of a peaceful charistic LEADER to marshall the forces of discontent into a mass movement and so they assassinate them ASAP, rewrite history and wait for the next one who they will take out if he or she is bold enough and egotistical enough to try to lead any sort of response to the oligarchs who dominate the world, the village, the city, the region... you name it.

I am very impressed with the Egyptians and by their courage.

The former spy chief is the new Vice-President [there has been NO vice-president before]. Another high-level miliary man was just appointed Prime Minister. It is an all Military, all Mubarak government...no change and I predict tomorrow will be the beginning of the end of the current regime! Obama/ Clinton/ USG backed the wrong horse...but don't they always. In fact they are the 'wrong horse' for America too!

What I fear is he US Military moving into Egypt and/or Israel. Either would spell Armageddon.

US reported 'routine' police brutality in Egypt, WikiLeaks cables show

Torture widely used against criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers, embassy cables suggest

Luke Harding
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 January 2011 15.23 GMT

Egyptian riot police in Cairo. The WikiLeaks cables paint a picture of an Egyptian police force out of control. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks.

The batch of US embassy cables paint a despairing portrait of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. They suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.

"The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharoahs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.

Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.

Some middle-class Egyptians did not report thefts from their apartment blocks because they knew the police would immediately go and torture "all of the doormen", the cable added. It cited one source who said the police would use routinely electric shocks against suspected criminals, and would beat up human rights lawyers who enter police stations to defend their clients. Women detainees allegedly faced sexual abuse. Demoralised officers felt solving crimes justified brutal interrogation methods, with some believing that Islamic law also sanctioned torture, the cable said.

Another cable, from March 2009, said Egypt's bloggers were playing an "increasingly important role" in society and "in broadening the scope of acceptable political and social discourse". There had been a significant change over the past five years, it said, with bloggers able to discuss sensitive issues such as sexual harassment, sectarian tensions, the military and even abortion.

At the same time, a clampdown by the Egyptian government and other repressive measures meant bloggers were no longer a "cohesive activist movement". In 2009, an estimated 160,000 bloggers were active in Egypt, writing in Arabic and sometimes English. Most were 20-35 years old.

Bloggers now appear to be at the vanguard of this week's anti-Mubarak demonstrations, which led to the government switching off internet access. One woman had told the Americans, presciently, that the blogging community was bereft of "compelling and achievable political causes" but would play a crucial role "during the eventual succession".

The WikiLeaks cables also shed intriguing light on the US's staunch relationship with Egypt, its closest Arab ally. They show US diplomats concerned about the country's woeful human rights record and keen to promote an agenda of democratic reform and greater political pluralism. There appears to have been little progress on these goals.