This Middle East power struggle could kill off the Arab spring by David Hearst: Guardian UK

The Iran 'terror plot' drama involves four players who have much to lose from Arab self-determination. Let's hope they fail

The drama of the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington features four players who, whatever the substance of the allegations, are engaged in a series of proxy battles for control of their interests in the Middle East, a great game if you will. Three of the four – Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel – are struggling to contain and deflect the tidal wave of democratic protest known as the Arab spring. While mouthing support for it, each have genuine reason to fear Arab self-determination. The fourth, Iran, sees in the same events a challenge to its stewardship of the Shias and the loss of the regional influence it was unexpectedly handed when the US invaded Iraq.

Between them, they could kill off the Arab spring, just as its first fragile shoots are beginning to poke through. In Egypt, registration opened this week for candidates for the first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Tunisia will hold its first election in 10 days. Its current foreign minister, Mouldi Kefi, said Tunisia's election would be a bellwether for the region. But it must be sounding more like the bell for the final round of Arab absolute monarchies.

Let's start with the House of Saud. That the horror film of street protest is soon to play in cinemas near them, the ageing and feuding princes can now have little doubt. The Sunni regime tried to stop the rot of revolt by the Shia majority in neighbouring Bahrain by sending in troops, but the revolt has migrated over the bridge that separates the two kingdoms to the eastern, predominantly Shia, city of al-Qatif, where there were armed clashes on Sunday between police and protesters after two elderly men were arrested to pressure their sons to surrender to police.

Just as important is the evidence of Sunni dissatisfaction with one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world. The government denies holding political prisoners, but admits to arresting around 5,700 "military extremists". Human rights organisations put the real figure of political detainees much higher. These include peaceful opponents of the regime such as Dr Saud Al Hashimi, or Mohammed Saleh Albejadi, the co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association.

Dissatisfaction is being voiced more openly in Riyadh and Jeddah. The independent religious leader Sheikh Salman Aloda, who expressed support for the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia on his popular weekly programme on a Saudi-owned TV channel, has been taken off the air and banned from leaving the country. The Saudi kingdom needs a script to quell unrest. The interior ministry blamed an unnamed foreign country for the unrest in al-Qatif – which in the Gulf is a coded reference to Iran.

The kingdom's closest ally, the US, also needs a new way of re-establishing itself in a region so central to its interests. Once the power behind many thrones, it finds itself in the unusual position of bystander to events rather than their shaper. Its stated support for Arab democracy is riven with inconsistencies. It has gone seamlessly from supporting Mubarak and Tunisia's former president, Ben Ali, to supporting their ousters, without even trying to explain its relationship to these dictators or account for the services they provided.

Barack Obama has instead tried to wrap the Arab spring into a narrative of his own aspirations. This is not destined to have a long shelf life. US allies who are expendable in Tunisia and Egypt are not in Bahrain. Still less would they be in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Palestine if that rose up against occupation. Let the Arab spring continue, and core US oil and military interests would be affected. The gap between stated policy and national interest will go from being latent to something that has to be bridged. What better way to do that than a conflict with Iran?

It is evident that Israel thinks its date with destiny is not with the Palestinians but with Iran's as yet untamed nuclear programme.Apologising to Egypt for deaths of Egyptian soldiers in hot pursuit of attackers in Eilat, and reaching a deal with Hamas over Gilad Shalit, can be interpreted in many ways. But one of them is clearing the tables in preparation for an attack on Iran.

The street battles in Syria between government forces and opposition forces are a major threat to Iran. If it lost Syria, it would lose not just its closest ally, but the conduit of arms, missiles and money to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, whose external leadership is in Damascus. Hamas avoided the strategic error that Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah made when he urged Arabs to end the unrest in Syria. But Hamas's external leadership may well have to find a new home as a result of staying on the fence. The biggest deterrent card that Iran has left to play is Iraq, a country that US troops are intent on leaving, and whose rulers have announced their support for Syria's Bashar Assad.

The final part of a bleak jigsaw is time. There is only a limited window of opportunity for readjusting the furniture in the region before Egypt forms a government and begins to play once again a seminal role. The options being mulled now may not be available in a year's time. Let us hope they never are.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/13/middle-east-arab-spring-saudi-ambassador

Ten killed in slew of attacks targeting Iraq police

BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials say 10 people have been killed in a string of attacks targeting security forces in Baghdad.

Two police officials say a suicide attacker blew himself up near a police station in western Baghdad while another targeted a police station in a northern Shia neighborhood. Nine people were killed in the two bombings.

In western Baghdad, a parked car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded and killed one civilian. Another roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol in western Baghdad wounded three policemen.

A hospital official confirmed the causalities.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/10-killed-in-slew-of-attacks-targeting-iraq-police.html

Alleged plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador: Biden warns Iran of ‘serious consequences’

WASHINGTON, Oct 12: US Vice President Joe Biden warned Iran on Wednesday that it would have to face ‘serious consequences’ for allegedly plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. US President Barack Obama called the plot a “flagrant violation” of US and international law but allowed his deputies to do most of the talking.

Also on Wednesday, the US imposed sanctions on an Iranian commercial airline – Mahan Air – for allegedly “ferrying operatives, weapons and funds” on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is also known as the Quds force.

“The consequences for Iran, I think, will be serious. I think what we have to do is unite the entire world against the Iranian behaviour,” Mr Biden told CBS News.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that senior members of Iran’s Quds force had participated in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi envoy, Adel al-Jubeir.

“It’s clear that senior levels of Quds force were engaged in the plotting,” he said, adding that Washington would respond by intensifying efforts to isolate Iran.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the alleged plot was a “dangerous escalation” in Iran’s support of terrorism.

The plot is “a flagrant violation of international and US law and a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government’s long-standing use of political violence and sponsorship of terrorism”, she said.

On Tuesday afternoon, the US Justice Department announced that it had charged Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, and Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Quds force with conspiring to carry out a bomb attack on the Saudi envoy.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called the plot “an amateurish scenario” and told the news agency ISNA there have been similar allegations over the past few decades.

“The Islamic Republic never seeks to get involved in this kind of behaviour and, despite 32 years of pressure brought to bear on Iran, the country has always acted and reacted ethically,” he said. But the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington endorsed the US claim saying that the plot was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions” and said it was “not in accord with the principles of humanity”.

In London, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal told a conference that “someone in Iran is going to have to pay the price” for the plot.

Vice President Biden said the US was laying out its case to world leaders and demanded “accountability for Iran and further isolation of Iran in terms of their ability to operate around the world”.

Iran was already subject to numerous American sanctions but on Wednesday, the US Treasury Department expanded the sanctions to include Mahan Air, claiming that it was “yet another facet of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism”.

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in condemning Iran.

“This would constitute an act of war not only against the Saudis and Israelis but against the United States,” said Congressman Michael McCaul.

“Iran’s assassination of a foreign diplomat in our country would have violated both US and international law, and represented an act of war,” said Congressman Peter King.

Congressman Ted Poe called the plot an “act of war” against the United States and said: “We have to do something.”

But a senior US Defence Department official told Fox News the announcement was “not a trip wire for military action” in Iran.

“No one should read into this as preteens for any type of military response,” the official said.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/alleged-plot-to-assassinate-saudi-ambassador-biden-warns-iran-of-serious-consequences.html

Civil war in Syria? By Gwynne Dyer

BACK in 1989, when the communist regimes of Europe were tottering towards their end, almost every day somebody would say `There`s going to be a civil war.` And our job, as foreign journalists who allegedly had their finger on the pulse of events, was to say: `No, there won`t be.`

So most of us did say that, as if we actually knew. But the locals were pathetically grateful, and we turned out to be right.

It was just the same in South Africa in 1993-94. Another non-violent revolution was taking on another dictatorship with a long record of brutality, and once again most people who had lived their lives under its rule were convinced there would be a civil war. So we foreign journalists (or at least some of us) reassured them that there wouldn`t be, and again we turned out to be right.

Now it`s Syria`s turn, and yet again most of the people who live there fear that their non-violent revolution will end in civil war. It`s not my job to reassure them this time, because like most foreign journalists I can`t even get into the country, but in any case I would have no reassurance to offer. This time, it may well end in civil war. Like Iraq.

The Assad dynasty in Syria is neither better nor worse than Saddam Hussein`s regime was in Iraq. They had identical origins, as local branches of the same pan-Arab political movement, the Baath Party. They both depended on minorities for their core support: the Syrian Baathists on the 10 per cent Alawite (Shia) minority in that country, and the Iraqi Baathists on the 20 per cent of that country`s people who were Sunni Arabs.

They were both ruthless in crushing threats to their power. Hafez al-Assad`s troops killed up to 40,000 people in Hama when Sunni Islamists rebelled in Syria in 1982, Saddam Hussein`s army killed at least as many Shias in southern Iraq when they rebelled after the 1991 Gulf War, and both regimes were systematically beastly to their local Kurds.

When the American invaders destroyed Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq in 2003, however, what ensued was not peace, prosperity and democracy. It was a brutal civil war that ended with Baghdad almost entirely cleansed of its Sunni Muslim population and the whole country cleansed of its Christian minority. Only the Kurds, insulated by their own battle-hardened army and their mountains, avoided the carnage.

So if the Baathist regime in Syria is driven from power, why should we believe that what follows will be any better than it was in Iraq? The country`s ethnic and sectarian divisions are just as deep and complex as Iraq`s.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/civil-war-in-syria.html

CNN: Syria opposition gains regional backers

(CNN) -- International powers put more heat on Syria's government Tuesday, as a new umbrella opposition group gained key backers in the Arab world and China exhorted the government to respond to people's "reasonable" demands.

The developments come amid a seven-month government crackdown against protesters, an ongoing operation that has stirred condemnation across the world.

The United Nations estimates that 2,900 people have been killed. Activist groups have said the toll exceeds 3,000. The government says it is fighting armed gangs that have killed 1,100 members of the security forces.

The new opposition movement, the Syrian National Council, has received backing from a coalition of Egyptian activists -- the Democratic Alliance for Egypt.

Syrian opposition gains Arab support

Clashes intensify in Syria

The alliance and the council held a meeting in Egypt, said Sayed el-Badawi, whose al-Wafd party is a member of the alliance.

"The meeting aimed to foster a stronger relationship between the Syrian Council and the Egyptian parties," Adeeb Shishakly, a senior member of the Syrian National Council told CNN. "At the conclusion of the meeting, the 43 parties recognized the Syrian National Council as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people," he said.

Egypt's military and political leaders have not recognized the Syrian opposition group, despite the delegation's efforts. The Arab League has not recognized it either.

But in Libya, the new authorities there have recognized the Syrian National Council as the "sole representative of the Syrian people."

The support from Libya and the Egyptian parties comes two days after Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem warned countries against recognizing the opposition.

"Syria will take strong measures against any country that recognizes the opposition council formed in Turkey," al-Moallem said Sunday.

"I am not interested in what they seek," he said, according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

Syria hailed last week's vetoes by China and Russia of a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at the Bashar al-Assad regime. But even though they opposed the U.N. initiative, both countries have called for changes in Syria.

On Tuesday, China exhorted the government to react properly to calls for change.

"We believe the Syrian government should respond to people's reasonable expectations and appeals, and resolve the issues through dialogue and consultations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country wants an end to the bloodshed and is calling for the regime to implement changes, state-run RIA Novosti reported Friday.

"If the Syrian leadership is unable to complete such reforms, it will have to go, but this decision should be made not by NATO and certain European countries, it should be made by the people of Syria and the government of Syria," Medvedev told the Russian Security Council.

Many world powers have been outraged over the government's crackdown. The European Union and United States have already imposed sanctions against the regime.

The EU Monday demanded that al-Assad step aside, saying his government's crackdown on opposition demonstrations could amount to crimes against humanity.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz, Jennifer Deaton and Amir Ahmed contributed to this story.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/11/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=wo_c1

Cairo killings raise heat on military: FT

Cairo Protesters Against the Massive Killings

Dressed in black, Teresa Youssef crouched sobbing and banging on the wooden coffin adorned with a large photograph of a young man, outside the morgue at the Coptic Hospital in Cairo.

“Get up, Mina,” she cried, to the 20-year-old in the coffin who was killed by a bullet which burst his lungs. “He was a lion. He had no weapon but he defended us when we were attacked.”

Mina Danial was one of some 25 people, mostly Coptic Christians, killed on Sunday evening when Egyptian military police used force to disperse a demonstration by thousands angered by the burning of a church in the south of the country. The violence, in front of the television building in downtown Cairo, was the bloodiest in the country since the popular uprising which ousted Hosni Mubarak, the former president, in February.

By Monday morning 17 bodies lay in the morgue of the Coptic Hospital, some with bullet wounds, others with smashed heads and limbs after armoured vehicles, driven by military police, ploughed into demonstrators to disperse them.

“They shot at us and the armoured vehicles shook the ground under us as they crushed people,” said Ms Youssef, one of the demonstrators. “We tried to pull our friends out by their feet but we could not.”

The violence in central Cairo has shocked Egyptians and brought renewed calls for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled the county since the fall of Mr Mubarak, to speed up the transition to elected rule. The council on Monday ordered an investigation into the violence, while Pope Shenouda, the head of the Coptic church, alleged that unknown individuals infiltrated the demonstration to provoke the army to attack the Christians.

In the current atmosphere of mistrust, many Egyptians believe remnants of the former regime are intent on derailing the revolution. Others put the blame on the army.

“The military council is the main reason for what happened last night,” said Ahmed Maher, head of April 6, one of the youth groups which launched the revolt against the former president. “They are using the same tactics used by Mubarak to address sectarian problems [by failing to take action against Muslims who burnt down the church in Upper Egypt.] State television was essentially inciting against the Christians. We need to transfer authority to an elected government as soon as possible.”

The military council initially said it wanted to leave power after six months, during which parliamentary and presidential elections would be held.

It now appears the generals will be in power at least until the end of 2012, when a new president is due to be elected. Although the army is still popular and many Egyptians view the council as the last remaining protection against chaos, their management has come under mounting criticism.

Analysts say the generals’ lack of political experience and their authoritarian inclinations are at the root of the problems in Egypt, rather than a conspiracy to cling to power. The end of dictatorship has unleashed demands and pent-up anger from many sectors of Egyptian society.

Workers and civil servants have staged strikes for higher pay and ultraconservative Muslim groups have emerged. Sectarian tensions have risen, with more attacks against churches. The normally quiescent Christians have also been emboldened to demand their rights.

The military has used increasingly authoritarian methods to maintain its grip, referring thousands of civilians to military courts for summary trials and reviving Mr Mubarak’s hated emergency law and widening its scope.

On Sunday night, the security forces entered the offices of two independent television channels overlooking the demonstration to take them off air. Hisham Kassem, a political analyst, said the violence could have been prevented if the authorities had taken action against those who burnt the church in Aswan that sparked the demonstrations and against the provincial governor who made statements to the press which appeared to justify the attack.

“We do not have trained people in the army or the police capable of dispersing demonstrations peacefully,” he said.

“The solution has to be preventive by applying the law, not by using the methods of Mubarak. There is no joking with these [sectarian] issues. The country could go up in flames and history will place the blame with the council.”

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b6ab5c00-f35c-11e0-b98c-00144feab49a.html#axzz1aRxTVMtq

Egypt forces clash with Copt protesters, 24 dead

CAIRO: A curfew was imposed overnight in Egypt’s capital after 24 people, mostly Coptic Christians, died in clashes with security forces in the deadliest violence since President Hosni Mubarak’s fall.

More then 200 people were injured in fighting that erupted during a protest by Copts on Sunday, prompting a curfew in central Cairo, said official statements broadcast on public television.

At least five of the dead were mown down by a speeding army vehicle, a priest from the minority Coptic community said, while an AFP correspondent saw other bodies with gunshot wounds.

Some activists blamed government-backed provocation for the bloodshed which has triggered fears of worsening sectarian strife.

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf appealed for Egypt’s Muslims and Christians “not to give in to sedition because it is a fire which burns up everybody”.

As the military police gave assurances that calm had returned to the capital, Sharaf warned on public television that Egypt was “in danger” following the most serious clashes since Mubarak was ousted in February.

Sharaf, appointed by the military council that took power after mass protests led to Mubarak’s downfall, heads a caretaker government ahead of elections the council has pledged will be democratic.

A 2:00 am (0000 GMT) to 7:00 am curfew was declared in the area from Maspero to Abbassiya square, while security was stepped up around parliament and other official buildings in central Cairo.

“These events have brought us backwards… instead of moving forward to construct a modern state on a healthy democratic basis,” Sharaf said.

The clashes broke out during a demonstration in the Maspero district on the Nile, an AFP correspondent said after counting bodies at a Coptic hospital.

Amid scenes of mayhem at the hospital which was filled with grieving relatives, a priest named Daud told AFP at least five of those killed were mowed down by an army vehicle.

“Here is the brain” of one of them, he said, pointing to white matter in a plastic bag next to the body and disfigured face of a dead man. “Wael, wake up my dear Wael. Speak to me,” sobbed his sister in despair.

Other bodies bore gunshot wounds.

State television reported that three soldiers were shot dead and dozens of their comrades wounded as angry Copts wielding batons protested over the burning last month of a church in Aswan, southern Egypt.

“They fired at my colleague. He was standing next to me  Christians, sons of dogs,” one wounded soldier said on the television.

Later Sunday night, hundreds of Muslims and Coptic Christians exchanged blows and threw stones at the hospital treating the wounded from the earlier clashes, an AFP journalist witnessed.

The hospital morgue housed the bodies of those killed.

Some 200 to 300 protesters marched on the hospital to meet up with several hundred Christians already gathered there, including family members of the dead and wounded.

Several cars were set on fire in a wide street next to the hospital, and protesters were tapping the cars to make petrol bombs.

Users of social networking sites such as Twitter said the earlier clashes were provoked by thugs at the scene, while state television was accused of fanning anti-Coptic sentiment.

The prime minister said on his Facebook page, “What is taking place are not clashes between Muslims and Christians but attempts to provoke chaos and dissent.”

The protesters clashed with anti-riot police and soldiers guarding the state television building, after thousands took part in a protest march from the Shobra district.

A standoff degenerated as the demonstrators started hurling stones and set fire to two cars, an AFP correspondent said. The television channel said that an army vehicle was burnt.

Security forces fired into the air to disperse the crowd, and dozens of people fled.

“Down with the marshal,” the demonstrators chanted on the march to Maspero, referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who heads the military council.

Copts complain of systematic discrimination, but since Mubarak’s fall, tensions have also mounted between the military — initially hailed for not siding with Mubarak – and groups that spearheaded the revolt, which say the army is reluctant to carry out genuine reforms.

Sectarian clashes are frequent in Egypt, where the Coptic minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the Muslim-majority country’s 80 million people, has often been the target of attacks.

Hundreds of Copts took part in a protest last Tuesday outside the state television building over the September 30 burning of a church in the southern province of Aswan, demanding that its governor be sacked.

The church in Merinab village was attacked after governor Mustafa al-Seyyed was reported as saying Copts had built it without the required planning permission, according to state television.

The caretaker cabinet has pledged to reopen closed churches and ease church building restrictions.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/10/egypt-forces-clash-with-copt-protesters-24-dead.html