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A fundamental change of government in Egypt may lead to a “revolution in Israel’s security doctrine,” a defense official told Ynet Friday night, as protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s rule continued to intensify.
The security official made it clear that Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt constitutes an important strategic asset, “which enables the IDF to focus on other theaters.” The defense source said that the IDF would have to dedicate major resources in order to devote any attention to the Egyptian front as well.
“It is no secret that the IDF focuses on certain theaters and earmarks most resources to them,” the official said. “The Egyptians are only addressed on the margins. We are holding discussions, including updates relevant to recent years, yet without a doubt Egypt is not considered a theater that requires attention.”
Should a revolution indeed take place in Egypt, the rules of play will not necessarily change at once, the source added. “It won’t mean, heaven forbid, that Egypt would immediately turn into an enemy country, yet our attention would most certainly have to shift.”
Advanced Egyptian army a threat?
Defense officials are closely monitoring developments in Israel’s southern neighbor, considered the “heart of the Arab world.” The immediate Israeli concern has to do with possible developments on the Egypt-Gaza border, where Egyptian forces have been working intensely as of late to curb weapons smuggling. According to security officials, the riots currently raging across Egypt may have negative implications on its Gaza border.
Another concern voiced within Israel’s defense establishment has to do with Egypt’s advanced army, which includes thousands of tanks, hundreds of fighter jets, and dozens of vessels.
“This is a Western army in every way and it enjoys US aid,” one security official said. “There is no doubt that should we see an extremist regime over there controlling such army, this will place Israel in a wholly different position.”
“There is no doubt that in the coming days, many eyes have to be monitoring Egypt. Later we’ll make all the calculations as to the implications,” the official said.
Earlier, an Israeli minister told Time Magazine that officials in Jerusalem believe President Hosni Mubarak will survive the current upheaval.
The cabinet member, who asked to remain anonymous, characterized recent events as an “earthquake” in the Middle East. His comments were made ahead of Friday’s escalating riots and before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his ministers to refrain from addressing the situation in Egypt.
The leader of Jordan’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood warned Saturday that unrest in Egypt will spread across the Mideast and Arabs will topple leaders allied with the United States.
Hammam Saeed’s comments were made at a protest outside the Egyptian Embassy in Amman, inspired by massive rallies in neighboring Egypt demanding the downfall of the country’s longtime president, Hosni Mubarak.
About 100 members of the fundamentalist group and activists from other leftist organizations and trade unions chanted “Mubarak, step down” and “the decision is made, the people’s revolt will remain.”
Elsewhere, a separate group of 300 protesters gathered in front of the office of Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai, demanding his ouster. “Rifai, it’s time for you to go,” chanted the group.
Jordan’s protests have been relatively small in size, but they underline a rising tension with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a key U.S. ally who has been making promises of reform in recent days in an apparent attempt to quell domestic discontent over economic degradation and lack of political freedoms.
But as a monarch with deep support from the Bedouin-dominated military, Jordan’s ruler is not seen as vulnerable as Mubarak or Tunisia’s deposed leader. Even the Brotherhood – a fiery critic of Jordan’s moderate government – has remained largely loyal to the king, who claims ancestry to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Many believe it’s unlikely King Abdullah will bow to demands for popular election of the prime minister and Cabinet officials, traditionally appointed by the king.
Saeed said Arabs have grown disgruntled with U.S. domination of their oil wealth, military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and its support for “totalitarian” leaders in the region.
“The Americans and (President Barack) Obama must be losing sleep over the popular revolt in Egypt,” he said. “Now, Obama must understand that the people have woken up and are ready to unseat the tyrant leaders who remained in power because of U.S. backing.”
Saeed did not specifically name King Abdullah. But he said Jordan’s prime minister “must draw lessons from Tunisia and Egypt and must swiftly implement political reforms.”
“We tell the Americans ‘enough is enough’,” he said.
Rifai has in the last two weeks announced a $550 million package of new subsidies for fuel and staple products like rice, sugar, livestock and liquefied gas used for heating and cooking. It includes a raise for civil servants and security personnel.
Still, Jordan’s economy struggles, weighed down by a record deficit of $2 billion this year, rising inflation and rampant unemployment and poverty.
Police agencies around the USA soon could have a new tool in their crime-fighting arsenal: unmanned aircraft inspired by the success of such drones on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Local governments have been pressing the Federal Aviation Administration for wider use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — a demand driven largely by returning veterans who observed the crafts’ effectiveness in war, according to experts at New Mexico State University and Auburn University. Police could use the smaller planes to find lost children, hunt illegal marijuana crops and ease traffic jams in evacuations of cities before hurricanes or other natural disasters.
The FAA is expected this year to propose new rules for smaller unmanned aircraft, a process that will include input from the public, says FAA spokesman Les Dorr. The agency also is talking with the Justice Department and national law enforcement groups “about possibly trying to streamline the process of applying for certificates of authorization” to operate such planes, he says.
Drones have flown in the USA for several years but have been limited to restricted airspace and to portions of the borders with Canada and Mexico.
The FAA authorized the Physical Science Laboratory at New Mexico State University to research the issues involved. “We’re extremely interested in being able to pave the way to integrate unmanned aircraft into the civil airspace,” says Doug Davis, deputy director of the Technical Analysis and Applications Center at NMSU.
Davis says UAVs range in size from 15 ounces to 34,000 pounds and a wing span bigger than a Boeing 737.
One of the chief obstacles to widespread use of UAVs is their inability to “see and avoid” other aircraft as required by federal regulations, a key to flight safety. Davis says he believes operators on the ground can comply with federal rules if they can see the aircraft and the surrounding environment. Wesley Randall, principal investigator on an FAA grant awarded last year to researchers at Auburn University to study the risks associated with unmanned aircraft, predicts drones will be used by police departments in five to 10 years. Randall predicts that much larger unmanned aircraft will be used to transport cargo within 15-20 years.
No local police departments have been authorized to use unmanned aircraft, although police departments in Houston and Miami have conducted field tests of such planes, Dorr says.
The Miami-Dade Police Department has tested two 18-pound UAVs equipped with a camera for about 18 months, Sgt. Andrew Cohen says. The department has been licensed to operate the craft up to 200 feet in the air, but the drone must remain within 1,000 feet of the operator.
Cohen says the department wants to use the craft to reduce risks to manned aircraft or personnel in circumstances involving a hostage situation or a barricaded suspect. “It’s an opportunity to increase safety for the officers,” Cohen says.
Malaysia has released 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes into a forest in the first experiment of its kind in Asia aimed at curbing dengue fever.
The field test is meant to pave the way for the official use of genetically engineered Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes to mate with females and produce offspring with shorter lives, thus curtailing the population.
Only female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread dengue fever, which killed 134 people in Malaysia last year.
However, the plan has sparked criticism by some Malaysian environmentalists, who fear it might have unforeseen consequences, such as the inadvertent creation of uncontrollable mutated mosquitoes.
Critics also say such plans could leave a vacuum in the ecosystem that is then filled by another insect species, potentially introducing new diseases.
A similar trial in the Cayman Islands last year – the first time genetically modified mosquitoes have been set loose in the wild after years of laboratory experiments and hypothetical calculations – resulted in a dramatic drop in the mosquito population in a small area studied by researchers.
Government authorities have tried to allay the concerns by saying they are conducting small-scale research and will not rush into any widespread release of mosquitoes.
The Malaysian government-run Institute for Medical Research said it released about 6,000 non-biting sterile male lab mosquitoes in an uninhabited forest area in eastern Malaysia on December 21.
Another 6,000 wild male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes were also placed in the area for scientific comparison, it said in a statement.
The institute provided few details of the experiment, but said it was ‘successfully’ concluded on January 5, and that all the mosquitoes were killed with insecticide.
It was not planning to release any more mosquitoes until it had analysed the results of the lab mosquitoes’ life span and extent of their dispersal in the wild.
It was the first such trial in Asia, an official in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to make public statements.
In the Cayman Islands, genetically altered sterile male mosquitoes were also set loose by scientists in a 40-acre region between May and October last year.
By August, mosquito numbers in that area dropped by 80 per cent compared with a neighbouring area where no sterile mosquitoes were released.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said last year the project was an ‘innovative’ way to fight dengue after a lack of success in campaigns urging Malaysians to keep neighbourhoods free of stagnant water where mosquitoes can breed.
The number of dengue-linked deaths in Malaysia increased by 52 per cent last year from 88 deaths in 2009. The total dengue infections rose 11 per cent from 2009 to more than 46,000 cases last year.
Dengue fever is common in Asia and Latin America. Symptoms include high fever, joint pains and nausea, but in severe cases, it can lead to internal bleeding, circulatory shutdown and death. There is no known cure or vaccine.
The move by Egyptian authorities to seal off the country almost entirely from the Internet shows how easily a state can isolate its people when telecoms providers are few and compliant.
In an attempt to stop the frenzied online spread of dissent against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, not only Facebook and Twitter but the entire Internet was shut down overnight, leaving some 20 million users stranded.
Hundreds of service providers offer connections in Egypt, but just four own the infrastructure.
Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, a European not-for-profit Internet infrastructure forum, says immature markets with few providers can achieve such shutdowns relatively easily.
“The more simple the topology is and the fewer Internet services providers there are, the easier it is for any government or the telco themselves to control access into any geographical area,” he said.
“If you have a relatively diverse telecoms market and a very much meshed Internet topology then it’s much more difficult to do than if you have the traditional telecoms structure of two decades ago and they control all the international connections. Obviously that creates a choke point,” he said.
Despite the rapid transformation of the Web during its short history, and the unprecedented freedom of expression it has enabled, the Internet still has vulnerable points that can be exploited by governments or for commercial interests.
Cut Off From The World
“Virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide,” Jim Cowie, chief technology officer of U.S.-based Internet monitoring firm Renesys wrote on the company blog.
“Every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world.”
Vodafone said in an emailed statement: “All mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas. Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply.”
A few large organisations with independent connections were able to stay connected to the Internet. Cowie said on Friday he was investigating two apparent exceptions to the block: the Commercial International Bank of Egypt and the Stock Exchange.
Iran, Tunisia and most recently Syria have imposed Internet restrictions in attempts to quell opposition, but Egypt’s is by far the most drastic move so far.
The closest precedent has been in China, which has more Internet users than any other country and also the strictest controls. It cut off Internet access to its Xinjiang region for almost a year after deadly ethnic unrest in 2009.
Centralized
The world’s biggest social network Facebook, and Twitter with its real-time mini-blog posts, have proved extraordinarily effective in gathering large numbers of people together and helping them to be nimble in dodging the authorities.
Lynn St Amour, president of the Internet Society, says they could have made revolutionaries of many who had not seen themselves as activists, thanks to the ease of signing up to groups or sending messages of support while sitting at home.
But the danger of depending on such services is that they can be blocked simply by targeting their IP addresses, since they are centralized on a single site – as witnessed in Iran and Tunisia.
“It’s quite easy, as we’ve seen,” St Amour told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In Tunisia, dissidents even found their Facebook pages taken over without their knowledge. But when access to an entire site is blocked from outside, there is little that Facebook or Twitter can do – although users often find ways around the problem by using proxy servers.
“We try very hard to keep Facebook available wherever people want to access it,” Dan Rose, who is responsible for Facebook’s worldwide business development, said in London this week.
“We have outreach and relationships with governments all around the world. We can only do what we can do.”
Diversity
The resilience of the Internet in any particular country also depends on the diversity of its international providers, the routes in an out of a country.
In 2008, Egypt suffered an 80 percent outage of Internet services when submarine cables in the Mediterranean linking Egypt to the rest of the world were accidentally cut.
On Friday, key fibre-optic cables that pass through Egypt as they link Europe to Asia appeared unaffected.
Renesys’s Cowie contrasted a country such as Egypt with those that have highly dispersed international connections.
“In the United States you have every global carrier available to you, you have multiple cable landing points …you have a country that effectively can’t be taken off the Internet,” he told Reuters.
The super-volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has been rising at a record rate since 2004
It would explode with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer 10ft deep up to 1,000 miles away.
Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.
This is the nightmare that scientists are predicting could happen if the world’s largest super-volcano erupts, as it could do in the near future.
Yellowstone National Park’s caldera is believed to have has erupted three times in the past and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another eruption.
They said that the super-volcano underneath the Wyoming park has been rising at a record rate since 2004 – its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923.
But hampered by a lack of data they have stopped short of an all-out warning and they are unable to put a date on when the next disaster might take place.
When the eruption finally happens it will dwarf the effect of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which erupted in April last year, causing travel chaos around the world.
The University of Utah’s Bob Smith, an expert in Yellowstone’s volcanism told National Geographic: ‘It’s an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high.
But he added: ‘Once we saw the magma was at a depth of ten kilometres, we weren’t so concerned.
‘If it had been at depths of two or three kilometre we’d have been a lot more concerned.’
Robert B. Smith, professor of geophysics at the University of Utah, who has led a recent study into the volcano, added: ‘Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock.
‘But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again’.
The Yellowstone Caldera is one of nature’s most awesome creations and sits atop North America’s largest volcanic field.
Its name means ‘cooking pot’ or ‘cauldron’ and it is formed when land collapses following a volcanic explosion.
In Yellowstone, some 400 miles beneath the Earth’s surface is a magma ‘hotspot’ which rises to 30 miles underground before spreading out over an area of 300 miles across.
Atop this, but still beneath the surface, sits the slumbering volcano.
Scientists monitoring it believe that a swelling magma reservoir six miles underground may be causing the recent uplifts.
They have also been keeping an eye on a ‘pancake-shaped blob’ of molten rock he size of Los Angeles which was pressed into the volcano some time ago.
But due the extreme conditions it has been hard to work out what exactly is going on down below, leading researchers unable to say with certainty what will happen – or when.
Since the most recent large blast there have been around 30 smaller eruptions.
They filled the caldera with ash and lava and made the flat landscape that draws thousands of tourists to Yellowstone National Park every year.
‘Clearly some deep source of magma feeds Yellowstone, and since Yellowstone has erupted in the recent geological past, we know that there is magma at shallower depths too,’ said Dan Dzurisin, a Yellowstone expert with the U.S. Geological Survey at Cascades Volcano Observatory in Washington State.
‘There has to be magma in the crust, or we wouldn’t have all the hydrothermal activity that we have.
‘There is so much heat coming out of Yellowstone right now that if it wasn’t being reheated by magma, the whole system would have gone stone cold since the time of the last eruption’
As if you didn’t have enough worries, here is one more to add to that massive list:
“It’s been 300 years,” Bill Steele said Tuesday. “We have a fully loaded subduction zone.”
Actually, it’s been 311 years since the Great Cascadia Earthquake of 1700.
Steele, a University of Washington seismologist and spokesman for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, said scientists have determined the monster quake occurred Jan. 26, 1700 — 311 years ago tonight.
It happened off the Northwest coast, and created huge tsunamis that devastated shorelines here and in Japan.
What’s amazing is how much is known, considering that in 1700 there were no Europeans in the Northwest. British Capt. George Vancouver wouldn’t find his way here until 1792. The Lewis and Clark Expedition to the West didn’t start until 1804. Historians have no original account of the 1700 quake written from a Western perspective.
“There’s quite a detective story of how we know all that. It’s fantastic,” Steele said.
First, a quick explanation of what happened from the online encyclopedia HistoryLink:
“The earthquake ruptured what is known as the Cascadia subduction zone — the area of overlap between two of the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s surface, the Juan de Fuca plate and the North American plate.” The 2003 HistoryLink essay by Greg Lange, citing scientists who studied the quake, said the event dropped the whole Pacific Northwest coastline 3 to 6 feet, and that the tsunami was as high as 33 feet.
Knowledge of all that comes from both recent science and long-ago legends and tales of American Indians. Ruth Ludwin, a former University of Washington geophysics professor, has studied and published evidence of the quake found in native lore, Steele said.
“There are a large number of Native American legends and tales of meadows reclaimed by the sea, of great shaking and landslides, and of whole villages wiped out with canoes found in the trees,” he said. “It may have killed tens of thousands of people, but there is no written record of that.”
Scientific evidence of the 1700 earthquake comes from Dr. Brian Atwater of the U.S. Geological Survey, Japan’s Kenji Satake and other researchers. Their work identifying “ghost forests” and an “orphan tsunami” is no less compelling than the Native legends.
“Brian Atwater uncovered a layer cake of soils,” Steele said. At Willapa Bay on the southwest Washington coast, he said, there are five layers where scientists see transitions from marshy tidal estuary to woody soil, indicating trees, all covered by layers of sand and bay mud.
The layers show places where land levels rapidly changed. And studies of the roots of trees in what Steele called “ghost forests” showed that trees died between the growing season of 1699 and before their sap would have come in 1700.
Steele said Kenji Satake, of the Geological Survey of Japan, found records of samurai lords, who kept track of rice harvests. Those detailed records, Steele said, showed that an “orphan tsunami” — a giant wave without any shaking in the area — hit the coast of Japan on Jan. 27, 1700. “It did kill a number of people in Japan,” Steele said.
By working with those records and wave speed, he said, scientists determined that the quake hit the Northwest coast about 9 p.m. Jan. 26, 1700.
“It’s quite a marvelous story, what happened and the impact. No one wrote about it in the West,” he said.
It’s fascinating, but frightening, too.
Steele said it takes hundreds of years to build up the strain that causes a subduction zone earthquake. “The toe of North America, the edge, is being shoved downward. It’s like bending a ruler back,” he said, adding that the 1700 quake was the last one known to have occurred on the Cascadia subduction zone.
Remember — it’s “fully loaded.”
“It could produce another one tomorrow, or maybe a century or more away,” Steele said. “Certainly geologically, in the not too distant future we’re going to have another one.”
Steele is all for being prepared — whether it’s keeping supplies on hand at home, making sure homes and public buildings are up to withstanding big quakes, or assuring that people who live on the coast have evacuation routes.
This article was published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) as an e-note and it is available here. I have made a number of additions in the version below and present it here for your convenience.
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By Barry Rubin
There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama Administration may be adopting something close to the worst option. This is its first real international crisis. And it seems to be adopting a policy that, while somewhat balanced, is pushing the Egyptian regime out of power. The situation could not be more dangerous and might be the biggest disaster for the region and Western interests since the Iranian revolution three decades ago.
Experts and news media seem to be overwhelmingly optimistic, just as they generally were in Iran’s case. Wishful thinking is to some extent replacing serious analysis. Indeed, the alternative outcome is barely presented: This could lead to an Islamist Egypt, if not now in several years.
What’s puzzling here is that a lot of the enthusiasm is based on points like saying that the demonstrators are leaderless and spontaneous. But that’s precisely the situation where someone who does have leaders, is well organized, and knows precisely what they want takes over.
Look at Tunisia. The elite stepped in with the support of the army and put in a coalition of leadership, including both old elements and oppositionists. We don’t know what will happen but there is a reasonable hope of stability and democracy. This is not the situation in Egypt where the elite seems to have lost confidence and the army seems passive.
Can Omar Suleiman, long-time head of intelligence, as vice-president and former Air Force chief (the job Mubarak himself used to have) Ahmed Shafiq as prime minister stabilize the situation? Perhaps. He is an able man. But to have the man who has organized repression running the country is not exactly a step toward libertarian democracy.
There are two basic possibilities: the regime will stabilize (with or without Mubarak) or power will be up for grabs. Now, here are the precedents for the latter situation:
Remember the Iranian revolution when all sorts of people poured out into the streets to demand freedom? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now president.
Remember the Beirut spring when people poured out into the streets to demand freedom? Hizballah is now running Lebanon.
Remember the democracy among the Palestinians and free elections? Hamas is now running the Gaza Strip.
Remember democracy in Algeria? Tens of thousands of people were killed in the ensuing civil war.
It doesn’t have to be that way but the precedents are pretty daunting.
What did Egyptian tell the Pew poll recently when asked whether they liked “modernizers” or “Islamists”? Islamists: 59%; Modernizers: 27%. Now maybe they will vote for a Westernized guy in a suit who promises a liberal democracy but do you want to bet the Middle East on it?
Here’s the problem.
On one hand, everyone knows that President Husni Mubarak’s government, based on the regime that has been running Egypt since the morning of July 23, 1952, is a dictatorship with a great deal of corruption and repression.
This Egyptian government has generally been a good ally of the United States yet has let Washington down at times. For example, the Mubarak government has continued to purvey anti-American propaganda to its people; held back on solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict (it did not endorse the 2000 Clinton plan, though I have good sources saying Mubarak said later he regretted that decision); has not taken a strong public stance on pressuring Iran; and so on.
For a long time it was said that Egypt was the most important U.S. ally in the Arabic-speaking world. There is truth in this but it has been less true lately, though due more to passivity in foreign policy than to hostility.
Clearly, though, Egypt is an American ally generally and its loss to an anti-American government would be a tremendous defeat for the United States. Moreover, a populist and radical nationalist—much less an Islamist—government could reignite the Arab-Israel conflict and cost tens of thousands of lives.
So the United States has a stake in the survival of the regime, if not so much that of Mubarak personally or the succession of his son, Gamal. This means that U.S. policy should put an emphasis on the regime’s survival. The regime might be better off without the Mubaraks since it can argue it is making a fresh start and will gain political capital from getting rid of the hated dictator. Given the weakness of designated successor, Gamal Mubarak, who is probably too weak to deal with the situation the regime might well be a lot better off.
On the other hand, the United States wants to show that it supports reform and democracy, believing that this will make it more popular among the masses in the Arab world as well as being the “right” and “American” thing to do. Also, if the revolution does win, the thought is, it is more likely to be friendly to America if the United States shows in advance its support for change.
Finally, the “pro-democracy” approach is based on the belief that Egypt might well produce a moderate, democratic, pro-Western state that will then be more able to resist an Islamist challenge. Perhaps the Islamists can be incorporated into this system. Perhaps, some say (and it is a very loud voice in the American mass media) that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t really a threat at all.
So in this point of view, U.S. policy should favor the forces of change.
Of course, it is possible to mix these two positions and that is what President Obama is trying to do.
Thus, Obama said:
“I’ve always said to [Mubarak] that making sure that they are moving forward on reform — political reform, economic reform — is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt, and you can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets….Violence is not the answer in solving these problems in Egypt, so the government has to be careful about not resorting to violence and the people on the streets have to be careful about not resorting to violence. I think that it is very important that people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances. As I said in my State of the Union speech, there’s certain core values that we believe in as Americans that we believe are universal: freedom of speech, freedom of expression — people being able to use social networking or any other mechanisms to communicate with each other and express their concerns.”
On paper, this is an ideal policy: Mubarak should reform; the opposition should not use violence; and everything will turn out all right. Again, this is the perfect policy in theory, and I’m not being sarcastic at all here.
Unfortunately, it has little to do with reality. For if the regime does what Obama wants it to do, it will fall. And what is going to replace it? And by his lack of support–his language goes further than it might have done–the president is demoralizing an ally.
And it is all very well to believe idealistically that even if Egyptians are longing to be free, one has to define what “free” means to them. Also, the ruler who emerges is likely to be from the best organized, disciplined group. People in Russia in 1917 were yearning to be free also and they got the Bolsheviks. In Iran where people are yearning to be free, the Obama Administration did nothing.
No matter what the United States says or does at this point, it is not going to reap the gratitude of millions of Egyptians as a liberator. For the new anti-regime leaders will blame America for its past support of Mubarak, opposition to Islamism, backing of Israel, cultural influence, incidents of alleged imperialism, and for not being Muslim. If anyone thinks the only problem is Israel they understand nothing.
This is not the first time this kind of problem has come up and it is revealing and amazing that the precedents are not being fully explained. The most obvious is Iran in 1978-1979. At that time, as I wrote in my book Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran, the U.S. strategy was to do precisely what Obama is doing now: announce support for the government but press it to make reforms. The shah did not go to repression partly because he didn’t have U.S. support. The revolution built up and the regime fell. The result wasn’t too good.
There is a second part of this story also. Experts on television and consulting with the government assured everyone that the revolution would be moderate, the Islamists couldn’t win, and even if they did this new leadership could be dealt with. So either Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini couldn’t triumph—Islamists running a country, what a laugh!—or he couldn’t really mean what he said. That didn’t turn out too well either.
Even more forgotten is that, regarding Egypt, that’s how the whole thing started! Back in 1952, as I wrote in my book, The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, U.S. policymakers supported—don’t exaggerate this, it was not a U.S. engineered coup but they were favorable—to an army takeover. The idea was that the officers would be friendly to the United States, hostile to the USSR and Communism, and more likely to enjoy mass support.
In other words, policymakers and experts are endorsing a strategy today that has led to two of the biggest disasters in the history of U.S. Middle East policy. And now it is even worse, since we have these precedents and particularly the point about what happens when Islamists take power.
There is no organized moderate group in Egypt. Even the most important past such organization, the Kifaya movement, has already been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Since 2007 its leader has been Abdel Wahhab al-Messiri, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a virulent antisemite.
Muhammad el-Baradei, leader of the reformist movement, makes the following argument against my analysis:
“Mubarak has convinced the United States and Europe that they only have a choice between two options — either they accept this authoritarian regime, or Egypt will fall into the hands of the likes of bin Laden’s al-Qaida. Of course that is not exactly true. Mubarak uses the specter of Islamist terror to prevent a third way: the country’s democratization. But Washington needs to know that the support of a repressive leadership only creates the appearance of stability. In truth, it promotes the radicalization of the people.”
This is a reasonable formulation. But one might also say that nothing would promote the radicalization of the people more than having a radical regime. Even el-Baradei says that if he were to be president he would recognize Hamas as ruler of the Gaza Strip and end all sanctions against it.
That is not to say that there aren’t good, moderate, pro-democratic people in Egypt but they have little power, money, or organization. Indeed, Egypt is the only Arab country where many of the reformers went over to the Islamists believing—I think quite wrongly—that they could control the Islamists and dominate them once the alliance got into power.
Nothing would make me happier than to say that the United States should give full support for reform, to cheer on the insurgents without reservation. But unfortunately that is neither the most honest analysis nor the one required by U.S. interests. In my book, The Long War for Freedom, I expressed my strong sympathy for the liberal reformers but also the many reasons why they are unlikely to win and cannot compete very well with the Islamists.
I have pointed out that the Brotherhood’s new leader sounds quite like al-Qaida and has called for war on both Israel and America.
And here is Rajab Hilal Hamida, a member of the Brotherhood in Egypt’s parliament, who proves that you don’t have to be moderate to run in elections:
“From my point of view, bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri and al-Zarqawi are not terrorists in the sense accepted by some. I support all their activities, since they are a thorn in the side of the Americans and the Zionists.…[On the other hand,] he who kills Muslim citizens is neither a jihad fighter nor a terrorist, but a criminal murderer. We must call things by their proper names!”
A study of the Brotherhood members of Egypt’s parliament shows how radical they have been in their speeches and proposals. They want an Islamist radical state, ruled by Sharia and at war with Israel and the United States.
Then it is also being said that the Brotherhood is not so popular in Egypt. Then why did they get 20 percent of the vote in an election when they were repressed and cheated? This was not just some protest vote because voters had the option of voting for secular reformers and very few of them did.
The mass media is full of “experts” who also argue that the Brotherhood is not involved in terrorism. Well, partly true. It supports terrorism against Americans in Iraq and against Israelis, especially backing Hamas. In major cases of terrorism in Egypt—for example the assassination of Farag Fouda and the attempting killing of Naguib Mahfouz—Brotherhood clerics were involved in inciting the violence beforehand and applauding it afterward.
The deeper question is: why does the Brotherhood not engage in violence in Egypt? The answer is not that it is moderate but that it has felt the time was not ripe. Knowing that it would be crushed by the government, and its leaders sent to concentration camps and tortured or even executed, as happened under Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s, is a deterrent. It is no accident that Hamas and Hizballah—unrestrained by weak governments—engaged in violent terrorism while the Muslim Brotherhood facing strong and determined regimes in Egypt and Jordan did not.
Having said all of this, U.S. influence on these events, already rejected by Egypt’s government, is minimal. It is morally good to speak about freedom and seem to support the protestors but also quite dangerous and will not reap the gratitude of the Egyptian masses in the future. After all, aside from the likely radicalism of their leaders, a revolutionary regime would be hostile toward the United States since America would be blamed for supporting the Egyptian dictatorship for decades. President Obama will not charm them into moderation.
The Egyptian elite wants to save itself and if they have to dump Mubarak to do so—as we saw in Tunisia—the armed forces and the rest will do so. But if the regime itself falls creating a vacuum, that is going to be a very bad outcome. If I believed that something better could emerge that would be stable and greatly benefit Egyptians, I’d be for that. Yet is that really the case?
Consider this point. Egypt’s resources and capital are limited. There aren’t enough jobs or land or wealth. How would a new regime deal with these problems and mobilize popular support? One route would be to embark on a decades-long development program to make the desert green, etc. Yet with so much competition where would the money come from? How could Egypt try to gain markets already held by China, for example?
More likely is that a government would win support through demagoguery: blame America, blame the West, blame Israel, and proclaim that Islam is the answer. That’s how it has been in the Middle East in too many places. In two cases—Lebanon and the Gaza Strip—democracy (though other factors were also involved) has produced anti-democratic Islamist regimes that endorse terrorism and are allied to Iran and Syria.
Is America ready to bet that Egypt will be different? And on what evidentiary basis would that be done?
The emphasis for U.S. policy, then, should be put on supporting the Egyptian regime generally, whatever rhetoric is made about reforms. The rulers in Cairo should have no doubt that the United States is behind them. If it is necessary to change leadership or make concessions that is something the U.S. government can encourage behind the scenes.
But Obama’s rhetoric—the exact opposite of what it was during the upheavals in Iran which he should have supported—seems dangerously reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter in 1978 regarding Iran. He has made it sound—by wording and nuance if not by intention—that Washington no longer backs the Egyptian government. And that government has even said so publicly.
Without the confidence to resist this upheaval, the Egyptian system could collapse, leaving a vacuum that is not going to be filled by friendly leaders.
That is potentially disastrous for the United States and the Middle East. There will be many who will say that an anti-American Islamist government allied with Iran and ready to restart war with Israel “cannot” emerge. That’s a pretty big risk to take on the word of those who have been so often wrong in the past.
Suggested Readings
Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Politics, Second Revised Edition Palgrave Press (2002, 2008).
Barry Rubin, The Muslim Brotherhood: A Global Islamist Movement (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010)
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
We need your contribution. Tax-deductible donation by PayPal or credit card: click Donate button: http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com. Checks: “American Friends of IDC.” “For GLORIA Center” on memo line. Mail: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th St., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10003.
By Barry Rubin
1) How do you judge the Egyptian protests?
It is tempting to see this as a revolution that will bring down the regime. But Egypt is not Tunisia. And while the demonstrations are passionate it is not clear that the numbers of participants are huge. If the elite and the army hold together they could well prevail, perhaps by removing Mubarak to save the regime. We should be cautious in drawing conclusions.
2) Do you see the threat of an Islamist takeover by the Ikhwan?
So far the uprising has not been led by the Muslim Brotherhood. But it is the only large organized opposition group. It is hard to see how it would not be the leading force after a while. The leadership would have to decide that it is facing a revolutionary situation and that this is the moment for an all-out effort. But if it does so and fails there will be a terrible repression and the group will be crushed. It appears that the Brotherhood is joining the protests but has not made its basic decision yet. In the longer term if the regime is completely overthrown I do believe the Brotherhood will emerge as the leader and perhaps the ruler of the country.
3) Do you see any chances that Egypt will witness the same model of Iran of 1979, the democratic protests followed by an Islamist rule?
Absolutely yes. On one hand, so far they lack a charismatic leader. On the other hand, alternative non-Islamist leadership is probably weaker than it was in Iran. Remember also that the Iranian revolution went on for almost a year, with the Islamists emerging as leaders only after five or six months. Many experts predicted that moderate democrats would emerge as rulers and said an Islamist regime was impossible but that isn’t what happened. I very much hope I am wrong.
4) How the Arab status quo can be reformed and changed without letting the Jihadist fanatics take power? Is it possible to have democracy and liberalism?
One would need strong leaders, strong organizations, an ability to repress opposition, a clear program, and unity, among other things. None of this is present on the moderate democratic side. Again, I wish it was otherwise. More than any other country, reformers–though not all of them–have believed they can work with and then manipulate the Islamists. That seems like a mistake.
The chances for democracy and liberalism are different in every country. Tunisia has a good chance because there is a strong middle class and a weak Islamist movement. But in Egypt look at the numbers in the latest Pew poll.
In Egypt, 30 percent like Hizballah (66 percent don’t). 49 percent are favorable toward Hamas (48 percent are negative); and 20 percent smile (72 percent frown) at al-Qaida. Roughly speaking, one-fifth of Egyptians applaud the most extreme Islamist terrorist group, while around one-third back revolutionary Islamists abroad. This doesn’t tell us what proportion of Egyptians want an Islamist government at home, but it is an indicator.
In Egypt, 82 percent want stoning for those who commit adultery; 77 percent would like to see whippings and hands cut off for robbery; and 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.
Asked if they supported “modernizers” or “Islamists” only 27 percent said modernizers while 59 percent said Islamists:
Is this meaningless? Last December 20 I wrote that these “horrifying figures in Egypt…one day might be cited to explain an Islamist revolution there….What this analysis also shows is that a future Islamist revolution in Egypt and Jordan is quite possible.
5) What kind of threat the Muslim Brotherhood network pose to Israel and the Western democracies?
In power? A huge threat: renewed warfare, overwhelming anti-Americanism, efforts to spread revolution to other moderate states, a potential alignment with Iran and Syria (though that might not happen), incredible damage to Western interests. In short, a real disaster. What shocks me is that Western media and experts seem so carried away by this movement they are only considering a best-case outcome. As I suggested, I would prefer things were otherwise but I am deeply worried and one of the things I’m worried about is that others don’t seem to be worried.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
The New York Times has an editorial that says this:
“Lebanon’s next prime minister, Najib Mikati, owes his job to Hezbollah. That is regrettable and dangerous. It will heighten Lebanon’s divisions, antagonize Western donors (including the United States) and complicate the work of the international tribunal set up to try the killers of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister. …We hope he can still find ways to put Lebanon’s interests first and dare Hezbollah to challenge him.”
Where has the Times been for the last three years as this crisis has been building?
Why did its correspondent say a few days earlier that this wasn’t going to happen?
As for the newspaper’s hope that a prime minister handpicked by Hizballah, in power at their pleasure, facing the country’s strongest militia, and knowing that this group kills people who “dare” it “to challenge him,” this is the very definition of wishful thinking.
At least the Times calls Hizballah an Iranian-backed terrorist group, or rather it began that way, leaving the door open that it might have changed. It also says that if the new government doesn’t pursue the investigation of assassinations in Lebanon the United States should cut off military aid.
When it comes to pressuring Israel, the Times wants the U.S. government to act decisively. When it comes to revolutionary Islamist terrorists who are clients of Iran and Syria it just mainly hopes things will turn out ok.
After all, the issue is not just the investigation, but the fact that a long-time U.S. ally is now ruled by revolutionary Islamist terrorists in the Iran-Syria orbit.
Might that be a serious strategic challenge?
Might it call for reevaluating past failed policies?
Might it suggest that the United States should support Israel more to defend itself from this new challenge?
Could there be some admission that five years after the United States and UN promised Israel to keep Hizballah out of southern Lebanon, block arms smuggling to it from Syria, and even help disarm it that all of these promises to Israel have been broken?
Might the Times call for a new U.S. strategy to block the spread of Islamist revolution?
No answer; no serious consideration is given.
Is this what the once-superpower United States is reduced to being? Waiting until everything is lost and then hoping that its enemies will act directly contrary to their own interests and views?
The U.S. government doesn’t play favorites, even when it should. Israel came out with a report under international auspices on the Mavi Marmara/Gaza flotilla incident that corresponds to the evidence. The Turkish government had a report for which there is no evidence, accusing Israel of massacring Turkish citizens even though there is videotape showing that it isn’t true.
So how did Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley respond, obviously reading from guidance produced by the State Department?
As a journalist asked, “How do you view Turkish report on the flotilla crisis, which basically [is] contrary to Israeli report right now?
Crowley responds that both countries have “worked seriously and responsibly to get at the facts, and both have made important contributions to the work of the [UN] Secretary General’s panel.” He seems to give the UN inquiry the main role giving “the international community the opportunity to fully review the circumstances surrounding this incident.” Aside from abrogating any U.S. stand, that “international community” isn’t too trustworthy in matters concerned with Israel.
A reporter follows up, “But it seems like the relationship between these two allies of the U.S. in the region, two of the most important allies in the region, are getting worse, not for better.”
And Crowley answers: “What is of equal importance to us is the longstanding ties that we have to both Israel and Turkey….And we hope that both countries will continue to seek opportunities to move beyond the recent strains in their own bilateral relations….Turkey has been a significant player in helping to resolve issues in the region related to the pursuit of Middle East peace. And we would hope that in the future that effort can continue.”
Now of course both countries are important to the United States and the diplomatic language here is understandable. On the other hand, the Turkish government has not been too helpful lately, including its support for Iran against the United States. While obviously the U.S. government does not want to antagonize the Turkish regime unnecessarily it might be appropriate to give it a bit of a nudge.
It is also significant that that government has accused Israel of carrying out a massacre. A bit of support for Israel would be welcome in clearing its name and beginning to put a stop to the anti-Israel and often anti-Jewish hysteria sweeping the globe.
But the Obama Administration doesn’t do that and this kind of response is all too typical:
1. Acting as if the most important goal is not to offend hostile regimes.
2. Failing to take the side of an ally in a dispute. Yes, both countries are U.S. allies but the current Turkish government isn’t.
3. A refusal to show leadership.
4. Putting decisionmaking into the hands of international organizations, not only abrogating the U.S. role but also giving power to groups that are often at odds with both truth and U.S. interests.
5. Predictably, the radicals then take the first four points as a sign of American appesement. The pro-regime Turkish media is crowing about how the United States supports their version of the issue, which will stir up more anti-Israel hatred and hysteria in Turkey. Even if this is not precisely what the U.S. government said, the bottom line becomes: Even the Americans admit that we are right.
True, the report in Hurriyet is quite fair but highlighted the statement to make it seem like an endorsement of the Turkish report. The Islamist Today’s Zamansays that the U.S. government was forced to admit that the Turkish report was accurate, thus vindicating the blood libel charges against Israel.
The clearest manifestation of that right now is the opening of a Turkish film, “Valley of the Wolves,” in which Israel is depicted as doing what the Turkish report claimed. In the end, the Turkish agents kill Israelis. So, in Turkey will the U.S. statement be taken as endorsing that version and thus justifying the murder of Israelis?
This is the kind of stuff you need to think about before taking an official State Department position.
Incidentally and equally predictably, the Egyptian government is now saying that the United States has endorsed the revolt there though the uprising seems to be anti-American, at least in large part.
And by the way, the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey to be the worst offender on this issue.
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By Barry Rubin
We now know what actually happened in the negotiations mischaracterized by the “Palestine Papers,” but before I tell you the true story, let me say some words about how it has been distorted.
Maybe it’s just me out of step with the rest of the world, but someone tell me where the following paragraph is wrong:
The world is judging and condemning Israel on the basis of incomplete notes taken by people many of whom are not fluent English-speakers (of statements made by people who are not native-speakers of English) and who are passionate partisans of the Palestinian cause and who hate Israel; documents that have not been authenticated by anyone and whose translation has not been checked; documents that leave out much of what the Israelis said and leave out the concessions they made; then are filtered through the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian Authority (PA) al-Jazira (whose record of reportage is marked by some amazing lies) and the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, anti-PA Guardian (which is more radical sect than newspaper); which then misinterpret them in ways that seem deliberate to make Israel and the PA look bad; and then are quoted by journalists around the world who know little or nothing about the issues, haven’t read the documents, have never seriously considered the possibility that they aren’t 100 percent accurate, and ignore every other previous negotiation and public statement by Israel and the PA that contradict the claims being made; and who then add on even more claims that are neither in the documents nor in al-Jazira and the Guardian!
Sorry that paragraph was so long but it had to be to cover everything. Now have I missed something here?
The reaction to all of this in an age supposedly fixated on tolerance is more like that of a lynch mob than anything else. And have no doubt that before this is over there will be people who are lynched.
And now what actually did happen? The story is told here from interviews with then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the papers came out. Briefly, Israel offered concessions; the Palestinian side talked about concessions. Olmert suggested they make a deal. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas hesitated and said he needed a few days, and then never responded, making public statements rejecting Israel’s position.
And then read a brilliant piece by Benny Morris. He points out that there are only two concessions offered in the documents: Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem plus the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City go to Israel. This was Clinton’s proposal in 2000. But the concessions don’t deal with end of conflict and security guarantees (or recognition of Israel as a Jewish state despite misreporting in some newspapers). He also points out that there is no explicit offer of dropping the demand that all Palestinians who wished to do so (1948 refugees or their descendants) could come to live in Israel. In other words, these were real Palestinian concessions but far more limited than has been implied.
So this does not prove that the PA made a generous offer of peace and Israel rejected it, the spin put on it by the media and by selective release of badly flawed documents. The PA rejected peace, as usual. Of course, a big reason for doing so was the fact that they knew they could not sell it to their people (who would denounce it as a sell-out), or Hamas, or even the Fatah Central Committee.
Note the new spin will be that if only Olmert remained in office and Netanyahu had not been elected there would have been a two-state solution. In other words, it will still be portrayed as Israel’s fault. But this is ridiculous since the PA did not, and could not, agree on the conditions it had discussed. This is the structural problem with the peace process and it has not changed. The latest affair has made it worse.
No Israeli prime minister could make peace with the Palestinians when the Palestinian leadership isn’t ready to make peace.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
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