country:tunisia

Islamist Threat Constrains Jordan’s Syria Policy - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/jordan-islamists-syria-civil-war.html

King Abdullah II is no longer hiding his worries about the fate of post-Assad Syria and the danger of it falling into the hands of Islamists, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, the king’s discomfort toward whom is locally and regionally well known. American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic, quoting the Jordanian monarch’s criticism of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who are brought together by a background of political Islam. Despite the king’s position stemming from foreign concerns, it also figures into the domestic equation.

.:Middle East Online ::Algeria : Mideast’s next revolt if soccer is barometer :.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=58854

Algeria: Mideast’s next revolt if soccer is barometer

there is increasingly little doubt that soccer is signaling popular discontent could again spill into streets of Algiers, other major cities.

James Dorsey, le spécialiste de la sociologie du foot arabe, verrait bien l’Algérie dans l’oeil du prochain syclone, à en croire le bruit des stades.

Saudi vegetable seller dies after self-immolation
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-vegetable-seller-dies-after-self-immolation

A Saudi newspaper says a vegetable seller who set himself on fire in Riyadh after police confiscated his goods for standing in an unauthorized area has died.

The website for newspaper Sada reported that the man, identified only by the family name of Sureihi, died in hospital late on Friday.

The self-immolation emulated that of a street vendor in Tunisia, whose 2011 death inspired a series of uprisings in the region.

Saudi vegetable seller dies from self-immolation-
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/May-19/217614-saudi-vegetable-seller-dies-from-self-immolation.ashx#axzz2Tk7R

RIYADH: A Saudi newspaper says a vegetable seller who set himself on fire in Riyadh after police confiscated his goods for standing in an unauthorized area has died.

The website for newspaper Sada reported that the man, identified only by the family name of Sureihi, died in hospital late on Friday.

Tunisia to reopen its embassy in Syria | Medafrica Times
http://medafricatimes.com/1619-tunisia-to-reopen-its-embassy-in-syria.html

Tunisia to reopen its embassy in Syria

Best analysis of the situation in the Middle East so far: “Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the US forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The US is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the US hopes to help topple. The US is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds the Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans wherever they can”
Source : http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/08/not-revolution/?pagination=false
#Iran #Iraq #Syria #Qatar #USA #Hamas #Egypt #democracy

178 self-immolations in Tunisia reflect despair of jobless Mideast youth

►http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/178-self-immolations-in-tunisia-reflect-despair-of-jobless-mideast-youth-including-vendor/2013/05/11/1e430bc0-ba61-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_print.html

In Tunisia, about 230,000 university graduates are unemployed, making up one-third of the jobless, according to the National Institute of Statistics. The Union of Unemployed University Graduates puts the actual number of jobless graduates closer to 350,000, saying many have stopped looking for work.

The few jobs available are awarded through nepotism and political connections, according to union member Soheil Idoudi, 32, who has an engineering degree but never worked in his field. His four college-educated siblings survive on odd jobs.

The problem is especially acute because in the Middle East, a job is often the first building block of adult life, as Adel soon found. Without a job, a young man cannot get married. And without marriage, a couple cannot live together.

178 self-immolations in Tunisia reflect despair of jobless Mideast youth, including vendor - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/178-self-immolations-in-tunisia-reflect-despair-of-jobless-mideast-youth-including-vendor/2013/05/11/1e430bc0-ba61-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_print.html

Adel is one of 178 people in Tunisia who have set themselves on fire since the self-immolation two years ago of another high school dropout-turned-street vendor launched the Arab Spring.

...

In Tunis, Issam briefly took over Adel’s stand, but has since returned to construction. He finds life unbearably lonely without his father and brother. He says getting married is out of the question as long as he has to support his mother and brothers.

He remembers how he and Adel talked after Bouazizi’s self-immolation.

They agreed it was “just inconceivable” that either of them would do such a thing.

Echoes of Lebanon in Syria-
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/echoes-lebanon-syria-8436

By the early 1980s Lebanon had been suffering several years of combat among sectarian militias, reflecting disagreement over the fairness of old power-sharing agreements among the confessional communities. The biggest stirring of this already turbulent pot came in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. The principal Israeli targets—declared targets, at least—were fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who had been in Lebanon ever since being kicked out of Jordan a decade earlier, after losing the Black September confrontation with King Hussein. A small multinational force of U.S., French, and Italian troops entered Lebanon in August 1982 and supervised the extraction of the PLO to Tunisia before itself withdrawing to ships in the Mediterranean.

Israeli objectives were not limited just to booting the PLO out of Lebanon, however, and Israeli forces remained enmeshed in the sectarian fighting, besieging Beirut. Menachem Begin had ideas about trying to maintain a client to the north in the form of the pro-Israeli Christian government of Bachir Gemayel, who became president about when the PLO was leaving. Three weeks later Gemayel was assassinated, triggering the most horrid blood-letting of the Lebanese war. At least several hundred—and by some outside estimates perhaps something closer to 2,000—Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The massacre was carried out by the Christian Phalangist militia, which was allied to and supplied by the Israelis. Israeli forces, whether wittingly or not, facilitated the massacre by maintaining a cordon around the area of the camps, and fired illuminating flares that enabled the Phalangists to continue their work by night.

The massacre stimulated the Reagan administration to organize a new multinational force that eventually included 1,800 U.S. marines as well as French and Italian troops. The force initially had some success in acting as a buffer between contending elements. But the intervention later became a textbook example of the near-inevitability of getting drawn into ever costlier commitments and endeavors in any situation as messy as Lebanon at that time. U.S. military engagement included not only the marines on the ground but also combat between carrier-based U.S. aircraft and Syrian forces (which had originally entered Lebanon as part of an Arab League peacekeeping force). At one point even the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey were brought into action.

Those striking back at the increasingly resented foreign forces used methods against which jet fighters and battleships are of little use. In April 1983 a truck bomb was detonated at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 persons. Six months later, another truck bomb was used against barracks housing U.S. troops (along with an identical and simultaneous attack against French troops). 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in that bombing—the deadliest terrorist attack against U.S. citizens until 9/11. Congressional pressure on the administration to withdraw from Lebanon increased. The last U.S. forces left in February 1984. The Lebanese civil war continued for several more years until sheer exhaustion, and a new political accord brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria, brought it to an unsatisfying end.

Some parallels between that experience and the current situation regarding Syria are obvious. There is the overall complexity of the conflict and the presence of bad guys all around. There also is Israel taking advantage of a neighboring state’s civil war to pursue its own objectives, whether those are to smash a Palestinian force or to intercept long-established Hezbollah supply lines, regardless of how much its actions stoke and escalate the war. And if much of the discourse in Washington about Syria since the (presumed) Israeli attacks there over the past few days are any indication, there again is the pattern of Israeli actions increasing the chance of the United States getting sucked into the mess.

Let us hope that those eager to get into the mess will reflect more than the statesmen of 1982 did about how this all will end. Moreover, those who talk about damage to U.S. prestige or credibility also ought to think about that aspect of the experience in Lebanon. Withdrawing the U.S. troops in 1984—although it was the least bad thing the Reagan administration could have done at the time—was a U.S. defeat by Hezbollah. There is no way to sugar-coat that conclusion. It was just the sort of caving in to bad guys that we so often hear that we need to avoid. And it could have been avoided in Lebanon if the United States had not gotten involved in the mess in the first place, or at least if Israel had not—in its futile pursuit of absolute security for itself regardless of the insecurity it causes for everyone else—made the mess worse.

Salman al-Awdah: In the shadow of revolutions
The Middle East in London Magazine April-May 2013

Madawi Al-Rasheed charts how religious scholars in Saudi Arabia reacted and adapted to the Arab uprisings

Unlike the majority of official Saudi religious scholars, veteran Islamist Salman al-Awdah (born 1956) anchored peaceful collective revolutionary action in an Islamic framework and reached out for humanist interpretations that assimilate Western intellectual positions with his own Salafi orientation. He surprised his audiences as when he published As’ilat al-Thawra (Questions of Revolution) in 2012. Al-Awdah rehabilitated revolution after decades of Sunni religious scholars associating it with instability, chaos and danger. This book put him in a position different from both traditional official Saudi ulama and Jihadi ideologues, who had adopted violent strategies locally and globally. Needless to say the book was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia, prompting the author to circulate it on the internet. In this book, al-Awdah’s engagement with the question of revolution brought him back as a relevant figure at a critical moment in the Saudi and Arab public sphere. The eruption of unforeseen and unexpected revolutions needed an Islamic endorsement, interpretation and justification. Al-Awdah swiftly seized the opportunity and improvised a text that moved away from the duality of the permissible and prohibited in Islamic political theology.
Al-Awdah fuses western political thinking on revolutions by Marx, Popper and Fanon with his own Islamic Salafi heritage, producing a hybrid discourse that aims to reach beyond religious study circles. He defines revolution as building on the past, reform and reconstruction rather than destruction. It always starts peacefully but may later become militarised when confronted with oppression. Simply phrased, revolution is a fruit that ‘may ripen, dry prematurely or be belatedly harvested.’

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rjv2cp

Drone Strikes are the Face of America to Yemenis: al-Muslimi
Alice K. Ross writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Informed Comment:
►http://www.juancole.com

‘Drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis,’ Farea al-Muslimi told a rare US Senate hearing on targeted killing last week.

The Yemeni journalist and activist gave emotive testimony at a Senate subcommittee about the impact of drone strikes and targeted killings on his homeland. His statement was a view from beneath the strikes that is almost unique in Washington and drew some applause from the chamber.

#drones

Femen : You’re Doing it Wrong
►http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/femen-youre-doing-it-wrong

The words of Femen leader Inna Shevchenko perfectly illustrate the group’s total lack of respect for women. "They say they are against Femen, but we still say we are here for them. They write on their posters that they don’t need liberation but in their eyes it’s written ’help me.’”

Reading these words, one cannot help but wonder where Femen was during the Arab revolutions. Indeed, women in the MENA have played a leading role in the revolutionary processes in their countries.

To stand in solidarity with these women would have been to help deconstruct the myths and prejudices of Arab women in mainstream western media. Instead, Femen repeats clichés and strenghtens discrimination against them, further isolating them form public debate.

Femen is telling women from the MENA region what to feel and how to act, but isn’t that what patriarchy has been doing for millenia?

Hammonda. » Blog Archiv » Arab awakening: Qatar’s controversial alliance with Arab Islamists
http://hammonda.net/?p=1548

Hammonda.
Mideast Politics, Language, Media. Popculture!
Arab awakening: Qatar’s controversial alliance with Arab Islamists

Andrew Hammond sur Qatar : excellente mise en perspective.

Marzouki Asks Tunisians to Respect Qatar; Many Loudly Disobey - Tunisia Live : Tunisia Live
http://www.tunisia-live.net/2013/04/12/marzouki-asks-tunisians-to-respect-qatar-many-loudly-disobey

Marzouki’s comments immediately drew criticism in Tunisia.

“I respect the Qatari people and Tunisians respect other Arab nationalities,” said Ahmed Sedik, a leader of the Popular Front, on the Ettounisia television station. “But Marzouki was not talking about the Qatari people. He was defending the prince of Qatar who opened his country for American military bases that were responsible for the destruction and chaos in Iraq.”

“Our president, who is a human rights activist, knows that Qatar does not have political parties or democracy,” continued Sedik. “This is the Qatar that Marzouki is defending. What he says does not represent me or Tunisians. Arabs, even the poorest ones, are richer than the leaders of Qatar.’’

Qatar, a wealthy oil-producing nation, has invested billions of dollars in Tunisia.

Online social networks have been awash with jokes at Qatar’s expense since Marzouki’s comments. A Facebook page called “Campaign to Insult the State of Qatar,” created shortly after Wednesday’s speech, now has over 23,000 members. Posts on the page offer a broad selection of jokes and insults.

The story of a Somali refugee: ’Now that I’m in Sweden I feel free and very happy’ – video

Omar, a Somali refugee, fled the war in Libya last year to live in a camp on the country’s border with Tunisia. This episode of his story, Rain is Beautiful, begins with emotional farewells at the camp as Omar leaves his friends behind to begin a new life in Sandviken in northern Sweden. He is met at Stockholm airport by the Swedish migration board, visits a doctor, gets his ’right to remain’ signed and learns what margarine is

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/video/2012/aug/16/somali-refugee-sweden-video?CMP=twt_gu

#asile #migration #Suède #somalien

Al-Qaeda in Maghreb Recruits Locals for Jihad
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2013/04/al-qaeda-maghreb-jihadists-syria.html

Signs of a war between al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria have started lurking in the horizon.

Events took this drastic turn after AQIM issued a statement accusing groups that are trying to send jihadists from Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Western Europe to fight in Syria of coordinating with France and Arab regimes in the Maghreb. These groups are also accused of hindering cooperation with cells working on sending jihadists to Syria by way of Turkey. This is the first time that such tensions have arisen between two branches affiliated with al-Qaeda.

(Note : je ne sais pas ce que vaut el-Khabar, source de cet article.)

Tunisia Now Exporting ‘Jihadis’ to Syria by Giuliana Sgrena — Antiwar.com
►http://original.antiwar.com/giuliana-sgrena/2013/04/08/tunisia-now-exporting-jihadis-to-syria

Tunisian families have begun to dread knocks on their doors, or late-night phone calls, fearing that the messenger will bear the news that their son has been smuggled out of the country to join the “jihad” in Syria.

[…]

On Mar. 29, local sources reported that between 6,000 and 10,000 men have left the country, while the Algerian press say the number could be closer to 12,000.

[…]

Most families who spoke to IPS were too afraid to give their names, fearing reprisals. They suspect powerful and wealthy interests have a hand in the smuggling of fighters, since some families have received as much as 4,000 dollars in “payment” for each jihadi recruit.

Al Jazeera targets Spain as Middle East popularity wanes

Al Jazeerais seeing its viewership numbers decline with Arabs turning increasingly to local news broadcasters and growing perception that it is in bed with Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.

Market research company Sigma Conseil reported recently that Al Jazeera’s market share in Tunisia had dropped from 10.7 in 2011 to 4.8% in 2012 and that the Qatari network was no longer among Egypt’s 10 most watched channels. Tunisia’s 3C Institute of Marketing, Media and Opinion Studies said that Al Jazeera Sports was the only brand of the network that ranked in January among the country’s five most watched channels.

Middle East Online By James M. Dorsey

http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=57911

.:Middle East Online::Overwhelming chaos at Tunis airport ahead of Salafist sheikh arrival:.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=57918

Overwhelming chaos at Tunis airport ahead of Salafist sheikh arrival

Imed ben Salah, also known as Abou Abdallah Ettounsi, was arrested on March 21 and ordered out of Egypt, according to local press reports, for organising the falsification of documents to help jihadists travel to combat zones.

The World Social Forum: Still Meeting Its Challenge
http://www.iwallerstein.com/world-social-forum-meeting-challenge

The WSF was founded as a space of resistance. Twelve years later, it remains the only place where all sides to these debates come together to continue the discussion. Are there people who are tired of the same continuing debates? Yes, of course. But there also seem always to be new persons and groups arriving who seek to participate and contribute to the construction of an efficacious world left. The World Social Forum is alive and well.

#Wallerstein #FSM_2013

Altermondialisme et islam politique : la gauche face aux conservatismes

| Mediapart

►http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-idees/290313/altermondialisme-et-islam-politique-la-gauche-face-aux-conservatismes

Quasiment personne, au Forum social mondial (FSM) de Tunis, ne se revendique comme islamiste et altermondialiste tout à la fois. Même Tariq Ramadan, qui continue d’incarner, aux yeux de beaucoup, l’épouvantail même de « l’islamo-gauchisme », refuse ce genre de qualification lorsqu’il est interrogé par Mediapart : « Musulman, oui. Islamiste, non. Altermondialiste, j’espère, même si on ne sait plus exactement ce que ça veut dire. »

Le Forum social mondial est venu se ressourcer en plantant ses tentes dans le premier pays arabe ayant fait sa révolution. Un geste politique fort, mais non dénué d’embarras, puisque cette révolution tunisienne, comme son alter ego égyptienne, a entraîné l’accession au pouvoir de partis à référentiel islamique, conservateurs sur les mœurs et libéraux en économie, donc à l’opposé des projets séculiers, progressistes et solidaires portés par l’altermondialisme. En s’installant dans un pays clivé par l’opposition entre laïcs et religieux et en accueillant en son sein des organisations des deux bords, le FSM réactive donc la délicate question des divergences entre la gauche et la religion, notamment quand il est question d’islam.

Un pseudo-féminisme raciste et morbide

Donc, l’inénarrable Martine Gozlan de « Marianne » a « retrouvé Amina, la Femen tunisienne » :

►http://www.marianne.net/J-ai-retrouve-Amina-la-Femen-tunisienne_a227722.html

Il est frappant de constater à quel point on adore ce genre de scénarios : le héros solitaire musulman, ou, encore mieux, l’héroïne solitaire musulmane, seul-e touché-e par la grâce des Lumières occidentales, uniformément entouré-e de barbares obscurantistes, névrosés et violents qui l’étouffent et/ou lui veulent du mal, et qu’on se donne pour mission de protéger, car il/elle est des nôtres : c’est nous qui sommes sa vraie famille – comme cela apparaît très clairement dans le papier ci-dessus, où Martine Gozlan, qui la rencontre pour la première fois, postule d’emblée une affinité entre Amina et elle-même qui éclipse celle existant entre la jeune fille et sa famille.

Il ne s’agit pas de prétendre qu’un milieu familial ne peut pas être étouffant ou néfaste, mais il est très problématique d’en retrancher un individu pour rejeter l’ensemble de son entourage dans l’inhumanité en en faisant une peinture à la "Jamais sans ma fille". Cette démarche ne laisse à cet individu le choix qu’entre deux attitudes extrêmes : soit la rupture nette et franche, présumée facile par les « amis » occidentaux (elle ne peut quand même pas être attachée à ces bouseux… ?), soit une adhésion inconditionnelle, affirmée en réaction, dans un mouvement de révolte et de solidarité avec les siens face aux propos racistes tenus à leur sujet (une attitude que l’on trouve notamment dans le discours des Indigènes de la République, les mêmes mécanismes étant à l’œuvre au sujet des descendants d’immigrés en France).

Ce storytelling est sûrement très valorisant d’un point de vue narcissique, mais il est, au mieux, complètement stérile, et au pire, dans la plupart des cas, ravageur pour la cause qu’il prétend défendre : des individus isolés, vite récupérés par des instances flirtant avec le racisme, sont impuissants à faire évoluer leur société. Seuls des mouvements qui y sont enracinés ont ce pouvoir, comme le souligne très bien la féministe égyptienne Sara Salem :
►http://muftah.org/femen-strikes-in-tunisia-the-case-of-amina

Mais se pourrait-il que faire avancer la cause des femmes dans les pays musulmans ne soit pas réellement le but ? Je n’ose pas l’imaginer…

On en arrive pourtant à la situation éminemment malsaine où il est de l’intérêt objectif des Femen qu’il arrive les pires horreurs à Amina. Dans le cas contraire, on ne parlera plus d’elles – ou du moins, plus à ce sujet, puisqu’on fait confiance à leur créativité pour relancer la machine. Difficile de ne pas en retirer l’impression qu’il s’agit moins de se montrer solidaire des femmes musulmanes que de prouver la barbarie atavique et irrécupérable des hommes musulmans. Ce pseudo-féminisme morbide ne profite à rien ni à personne, sauf aux Femen elles-mêmes et à leur besoin obsessionnel de publicité. Et au "choc des civilisations"...

#Femen #racisme

Femen Strikes in Tunisia – the Case of Amina
►http://muftah.org/femen-strikes-in-tunisia-the-case-of-amina

When it comes to women, nudity is a great tactic if your priority is to get media attention, but can be problematic because, often, that is the only way the media will pay attention to women — i.e. if we are performing for the male gaze. Source: Muftah

La liberté à l’ombre de la crise du patriarcat: Practicing Freedom in the Shadow of Patriarchy’s Crisis, Zeina Zaatari
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/practicing-freedom-shadow-patriarchy%E2%80%99s-crisis

In a recent article by Turkish feminist Deniz Kandiyoti titled “Fear and Fury: Women and Post-Revolutionary Violence,” the author comes to the conclusion that patriarchy is in crisis.

I felt that the author was speaking for me, as I and many of my feminist colleagues have been trying to explain the continued violence against women in the Arab world, particularly in countries like Egypt and Tunisia that experienced revolutionary upheaval.

.:Middle East Online ::Rap in Tunisia : Between hammer of courts and anvil of prisons :.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=57479

Rap in Tunisia: Between hammer of courts and anvil of prisons

C’est l’affaire du jour, les rappeurs de Weld el-15 arrêtés pour un rap injurieux à l’encontre de la police (c’est pas chez nous qu’on verrait ça...)