Small Fry

Two weeks ago, at a small dinner party, a friend of mine chided me for ignoring Lebanon in my posts. “Why the silence?”

“Small fry, it’s because we’re small fry,” was my comeback.

I am hiding the varnish in this post because I suspect that sugarcoating very embarrassing realities in the midst of swirling events would only serve to further confuse an already confusing situation.

Political earthquakes in other Arab countries have pushed us out of the limelight. But it’s the cruel contrast between entire nations finally rising to the occasion and us sinking deeper into our Lebanese morass that has exposed us for the tiny people that we are.

Watch us now squabbling over ministries, fighting over quotas and under the table deals as other people clamor for dignity and citizenship. While we twist in the wind, they’re busy unleashing it against once omnipotent systems.

If you have been wondering as of late about our civil society, the answer is literally standing there desperate for you to catch it. Legend has it—at least among those who have concocted it out of their vivid imagination—that, in 2005, Lebanon rose first and sang away Syrian domination. True, more than one third of the population did come out, some of them genuinely (if naively) on the lookout for progressive ideas, but then, as with everything Lebanese, a possibly interesting moment turned into a hoax. Quickly enough, the Sect spread its wings, lest any of its children take themselves seriously, and swept them back into the fold.

Lebanon today withers precisely because there is no civil society fighting for it. There are just civic-minded individuals, lone voices in a cold, hostile, terrible sectarian wilderness. Guess how many Lebanese heeded the call for a civil state a few days ago? 2000.

No wonder, nearly everybody is shrugging us out of the picture. Even al Akhbar, the leading local daily, has relegated us to its midsection. Siyyed Hassan Nassrallah himself huffs and puffs about occupying Galilee if—that is if--Israel dares attack, but the warning falls on Arab politics much like pennies on a carpet.

Funny thing is, right about when Tunisia happened, Lebanon itself was hit by yet another political tornado. But juxtaposed against the mighty sight of Tunisia, we looked like the spoilt crybabies of the region.

As I write, not even Lebanon’s naval gazers, including quite a few of its own occupants, can muster the strength to waste time on this one.

****

Still, as my friend pleaded, we are part of this neighborhood and, satisfying as ignoring us is, Lebanon does deserve a couple of lines on its predicament if only because it is the go-to place when powers want to make a point or pick an argument.

So, here are a few lines on the latest:

Last month, in quick sequence that is astounding for the oft slumberous pace of Lebanese politics, the Syrian-Saudi deal over the special tribunal for the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri collapses under US (and some Saudi) pressure, Hezbollah and its allies resign from Sa’ad Hariri’s cabinet and, when all were looking straight ahead, out from the other end emerges ex-Prime Minister and current parliamentarian Najib Mikati (by any measure neither a particular friend of Hezbollah’s nor a staunch ally of Syria’s) to get 69 out of 128 parliamentary endorsements and sets out to form a new government.

Sunni Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, son of the slain Rafic, head of the largest parliamentary bloc and the mightiest man in his sect is not only brought down but thrown out by the Shiite Party of God and Syria’s Bashar, with barely a growl from his Sunni clan, a peep from Riyadh and the briefest of wait-and-see-statements from the White House.

One of the thickest redlines that zigzag through every artery of this country is thus crossed and the only ones boohooing are Sa’ad and his March 14 chums. By way of coups, they really don’t come smoother than that.

Hezbollah and Syria’s arm-twisting was transparent and, it goes without saying, predictable.  The quick footwork was the surprise. When everybody thought the “coup” would be loud, rough, all-or-nothing, possibly even bayonet lead, and made their calculations accordingly, the Shiite movement and our Syrian neighbor went creative. 

Not that Mikati is close to forming a cabinet, mind you. After all, why would Syria help us pretend that we can run things by ourselves when we clearly can’t? To those cursing it, I say salute it instead. 

****

When mulling over the nonsense that goes for politics in this place, there are three conclusions you should seriously flirt with, neither one of which, by the way, signals anything remotely intriguing about its future.

Let’s start small: the Hariri House rose with Rafic and it died with him. The feather-like fall of a Sunni prime minister at the hands of a Hezbollah-led, Syrian directed coalition means that Saudi Arabia—partly because of the unnerving incompetence of Sa’ad the son—is revisiting its old Hariri-driven Lebanon policy. A 20-year tradition has thus come to an ignominious end, none more so than for the family itself. From here on, expect the Saudis to reach out to a wider circle of Sunni faces in representing its Lebanese interests.

This doesn’t in any way imply that the Hariris are retiring from politics—although one hopes they’re inching closer to that option--but it does indicate that, as of now, it is perfectly reasonable for the public to shrink this overinflated balloon back down to size.

More than this, the ease with which presumably screaming-red sectarian lines were trampled upon confirms that the ground rules of Lebanese politics are fictitious, pretty much like the country itself, and are little more than expressions of the moods and whims of foreign patrons. It sounds like I am stating the obvious, but, believe it or not, there are still many who think that the local scene and its complex web of conventions actually count. They do, until they don’t. There are no real internal guideposts for the way of things, only external ones.

And that’s only one of so many reasons why we’re such small fry.

That’s not my angry voice you’re hearing in this piece, it’s the sound of my heart breaking.

 

If Turns into When…

Listening to the effusive statements of support for the people of Egypt and the “unfolding” Islamic revolution in the land of the Nile by virtually the entire leadership of Iran, I was reminded of that wonderful Persian adage: “You say something; I believe it. You insist; I begin to wonder. You swear on it; I know you’re lying.”

The dear gentlemen could well be autocrats at their most clueless, but the look and feel is that of a clumsy brood scrambling to own a narrative that has disowned them even in their very own country. As if to make sure that the lie was not lost on any of us, their chest pounding was taking place in full view of renewed house arrests, imprisonments and clampdowns on opposition websites and news outlets.

The twin tools of oppression and appeasement, not to mention talk of foreign conspiracies, are, of course, almost identical to Mubarak’s and those of every other maestro still standing.  Different from each other as all these despots are, when push comes to shove they all become brothers in arms: same tactics, same rhetoric, same textbook, really, and a frightening (or reassuring, as the case maybe) paucity of imagination.

Perhaps Iran’s strongmen are under the firm impression that their time-tested methods will prevent a repeat of upheaval on their own streets, those that in fact were the first in the area to agitate against power in 2009. Perhaps they feel that they have already weathered past unrest and are now home free, ready to reap the windfall of a collapsing Arab order. Perhaps, like Bashar Assad, they think that Palestine and populism have placed them on the right side of history.

We soon shall see. But of the many messages that are hanging everywhere on Ben Ali and Mubarak’s exits, like post-it-notes on the clipboard of history, one reads like a thrilling dispatch from the trenches:

If has finally turned into When…All bets are off…For everybody…   

Each and every locale, however unique its features and many its complexities, deserves to be in our sight. But already, the lines that had defined the old geopolitical map don’t count. Israel, only three months ago, looked across the entire Arab landscape and, except for a bump or two, saw flatlands all the way to Turkey and Iran. In good time, it could well be the Arabs (and Palestinians) who will turn more challenging and Iran more bland.

But gone as well are the challenges of the old, familiar kind. If, indeed, dignity is the lead aspiration and grievance in Tunisia and Egypt, it is because of so much more than Palestine. Citizenship, it might help Bashar and AhmadiNejad to know, is the cause for which Tunisians and Egyptians marched. That old one-two of brute force and breadcrumbs--that’s the rule of thumb that the Tunisian and Egyptian people have just retired.

Gone, finally, is the smug certainty that the Arab person just does not have it in them; that the security state can guarantee continuity in the absence of leadership; that fear is a good enough substitute for performance; that inhuman treatment and indecency can be camouflaged by lofty rhetoric, even if the name of God himself is invoked as fan and sponsor.

If arrogance and contempt for the Arab person did Ben Ali and Mubarak in, so they shall Israel and, yes, all those lined up with or against it in the region.

****

Conjecture has become all of a sudden fun. But of all the newfound realities competing for our attention, two have grabbed for themselves seats in the front: the imperative of open dissent and the beauty of nonviolence. The rest--and there are many making their entrance--need patience and more time still.

To be sure, that decades-long debate among clean, serious and well intentioned people on the feasibility of working within repressive systems to improve them has finally been settled: the proposition is not only silly, it is downright dangerous.

So, for those who have long hoped that discreet prodding is more than enough to persuade stern men to become more gentle; or for those who have long believed that islands of excellence can swim in a sea of muck; or for those who have long compared regimes and thanked their stars that they live under this ugly one and not that merciless one; or for those who have long kept silent about unbearable humiliation because Palestine comes first, Tunisia and Egypt have rendered a clear answer.

Whispers by these good people will have to turn into open reservations, private demands into public declarations. They will have to lobby and put conditions in the glare of light, make their voice part of the conversation. There is no case anymore for acquiescence, but there is a very compelling one for change and hope, and they have to be its most passionate advocates.

Nonviolence is a thing of beauty that Tunisia and Egypt have made live again. If Palestine was becoming increasingly unlikely because of the scandalous duplicity of Abbas and the astonishing idiocy of Hamas, the nonviolence of the Tunisian and Egyptian resistance has just recast it as doable.

Now is the time for the Palestinians to commit wholesale to peaceful resistance for Palestine, as some of them have been doing in the villages and by the Wall. The task is daunting and the facts on the ground are extremely unfriendly; however, the Palestinians have the pedigree, the experience and a strong network of alliances that reaches into the heart of Israel and the West. They have a stumped, stark naked enemy in the Israeli occupation. They have the cause and the world’s attention if they want it—but only for the briefest of moments.

  

“Lesson Over…”

From an Egyptian banner, “Lesson over, stupid.” (Intaha al darss ya ghabi).

In the last post, sent out barely a few days before Egypt raged, I offered a closing insight that perhaps many felt—especially those always on the look out at for their favorite scarecrow, the Islamists--was a little too hopeful:

“So far, the 21^st century has proved anything but dull. Perhaps one of the more interesting recent developments of the past five years is the way energized civil societies have been surprising the powers that be, fundamentalists included. In these testy times, neither pseudo-secular states nor Islamism need feel entirely too comfortable should the time for change finally come.”

Well, Egypt’s civil society has risen to the occasion, and I suspect that its Islamic fundamentalists were no less surprised than Mubarak himself. For in turning out in the streets, Egyptians finally needed neither the prodding nor the guidance of the former, and feared neither the ire nor the retribution of the latter.

In figuring out the next phase in Egypt’s tumult, this fact should be reverberating in every observer’s reasoning. 

Now we have to see how the army plays along. I am betting that it will soon decide that it has very little choice but to uproot Mubarak and the top brass of his regime, if only to preserve its discretionary powers as ultimate arbiter in Egypt. To forfeit its extraordinary standing and aura within Egyptian society for the sake of a totally discredited, exposed, openly reviled and doddering ruling elite would be unfathomable even if its interests do not really clash with theirs.  

In any case, we won’t have to wait too long—days or hours--for the answer.

****

But as entrancing as it is to watch Tunisians and Egyptians drawing, in the midst of the fog and storms, the face of their future, I would like to obsess about those features of years past that made these two peoples convulse with such unanticipated relentlessness.

I will not waste time on an anatomy of chronic frustration and disappointment, because as telling as it would be, it won’t explain what made quiet anguish turn into loud fury.  

Suffice it to say that everywhere your gaze turned as of late, it looked like a pile up of pain colliding head on from every direction. Endemic poverty, appallingly bad governance, crony capitalism that embarrassed even IMF’s most ardent diehards, unvarnished repression… And since Arab youth are the stars of the moment, dire predictions about their loitering anger has long been at the heart of practically every worthy read on this region’s predicament.  

And yet, in glaring view of this mess, only the most sensitive of eyes detected restless lives. It’s as if Arab authoritarianism had unlocked the secret to permanent rule, however atrocious it gets. The joke that ran around like a fact, until Bouazizi burned himself alive and brought Tunisia to its feet, was that the more the world changes, the more Arabs want to stay the same.

So, what made a presumed deaf mute scream?  

Of all the reasons racing to the finish line, one might just make it ahead of the rest once havoc settles down: in the end, Ben Ali and Mubarak had simply gone too far. Hold the “no shit, Sherlock!”  because this rationale is not as plain and straightforward at it sounds.

Having neutered (murdered, exiled, jailed, tortured, spied on, infiltrated, scared the wits out of…) all organized political opposition, rendering it either too feeble (the left) or demonizing it out of contention (political Islam), Ben Ali and Mubarak assumed the system had become impregnable against rupture. 

Once in that frame of mind, a certain kind of cannibalism became the way of once clever, ears-to-the-ground men. They started mindlessly eating into every sector and strata of society—middle classes, intelligentsia, labor, professional associations, etc—whose tacit support or acquiescence, at a minimum, is vital for continuity.  

Contempt took over with deafening effect. Whatever stirrings the regimes registered, they deemed as the usual blather of spineless disaffection. And in fact, Egypt, for one, has been rumbling for quite some time, but the system, thinking its powers limitless, judged the movements little more than trouble whining from the far edges of the garden.

****

It is hardly surprising, then, that revolt, when it came to Tunisia and Egypt, different as they are, was anything but organized. I mean, is it not extraordinary that in both countries pervasive intelligence services failed in predicting, let alone preempting the uproar?

The truth is that while Ben Ali, Mubarak and their men kept thinking in the box, the people upped and decided to walk wholesale out of it.

As an Egyptian friend of mine just told me, “So many things came into place and the timing, unbeknownst to all of us, was right.”

Khaled Said, the blogger who was beaten to death in 2010 by the police, the years of labor action to no avail, the church bombing that warned of a community cajoled into falling apart, the rigged parliamentary elections that reaped 97% of the vote for the official party with such impunity…

And then Twitter and facebook that could not be silenced no matter how hard the bad boys tried.

These were clear signs that this rule had just gone too far.

Once Ben Ali fell, Egyptians could only ask themselves, Why not Mubarak as well?

A pollster told me recently, “fear works.”

It does, but only for a while.

There are lessons for us as we forecast who’s next.

The question is: Are the rulers still standing actually listening?

Letter from Egypt

From Yasmina in Egypt, in the very early hours of Egypt's Day(s) of Rage.

(Yasmina, forgive the impromptu and selective translation...) 

Well, happy that you went down at noon?...

I am glad you’re here tonight.

The question provoked me.

Was it a picnic that I was going to?

Is it not a must for me to be there?

Or do I have a feather in my head?

And all those young ones out there; they’re, what?

Sons of dogs?...

But I did go yesterday behind my parents’ back…

All passion…

Anguished chants. “ This situation cannot go on.”

Would you believe, all these throngs… and no bissbiss,

no hisshiss?

People, old and young, with money and without,

wanting the same thing: to bring the regime down.

And how magnificent that,

“One, two, the Egyptian people, where are you?”

But then I had to leave…

Demonstrations in the afternoon picked up speed.

With my parents at home.

Feel the pulse, I thought.

“So what if I joined?”

Are you stupid, or have you gone mad?”…

I was about to go mad…

Are these people down there defending

a country not my own?

But then I did go down today, behind their back.

Everything is different.

Violence!

Security, security, security, everywhere.

Youth running.

Tanks.

Tear gas.

Disquiet in the heart.

The “wasps” came to push the crowds…

Tear gas.

Left, right.

Up and down.

Pac-Man like.

I walk…

Ambulances

Tala’t Harb…

Mohammad Farid…

Mohammad Basioni…

This is a fearful regime pretending it is not,

A clueless government pretending it is,

A crooked employee playing honest,

A grimy human being playing clean.

Today is not yesterday.

Chaos! Brutality!

...

The Original Arabic Text

ها انبسطتى  لما روحتى الظهر؟
بس انا مبسوطة ان انت مروحتيش بالليل؟
اسئلة استفزتنى, هو انا راحة رحلة علشان انبسط ؟ ده واجب عليه
ولا انا على راسي ريشة والشباب اللى بيروح يتظاهر دول ولاد كلب؟ هو مش مهم لو حصلهم حاجة? امال لو مرحناش مين اللى حيغيير.
للاسف انا روحت امبارح الظهر من ورا اهلى روحت وكان كلى حماس وقد ايه كل حاجة كانت متحضرة بنهتف بحرقة فعلا مش عاجبنا حال البلد. تصدقوا مع كل الاعداد دي ما حد عاكس ولا بسبس ولا حسحس. كل الناس كبير اوصغير معاه فلوس او ممعاهوش كان يريد حاجه واحده "اسقاط النظام  ويا سلام علي "واحد اتنين, الشعب المصري فين" ونشاور للناس فى بيوتها اللي بتتفرج علينا ملبلكونة ونشجعها تنزل وكنت بسئل هى الناس دى مستنية ايه علشان يبقى ليها دور وتنزل فالشارع, هما مبسوطين كمتفرجين, هما مبسوطين فى حياتهم وراضين بحالهم وحال الدنيا. وبعد شوية للاسف اضطريت امشى في نصف اليوم وسيبت المظاهرة امام محكمة النقض عند الاسعاف فى تجمهر كبير متسالم.
وروحت البيت وبعد شوية ابتديت المظاهرات تشد حيلها اوي عند بيتنا وبقينا انا واهلى المتفرجين.  فقولت اجس النبض
-         فيها ايه يعنى لو نزلت؟
-         انتي عبيطة ولا اتجننتى؟ ممكن في اي وقت يقلب بضرب
-         طاب حأنزل اشوف صحابى
-         لالا مافيش نزول خالص النهاردة
وكانت كلمة لا رجعة فيها, كنت ساعتها فعلا حتجنن, ازاى مش حأنزل تانى واكمل اللى ابتديته؟ منا شايفة انها سلمية, يعنى هما اللى نزلوا فالشارع بيدفعوا على بلد غير بلدى؟ هما اهلى مش مضايقين من النظام ولا مبسوطين فيه؟ ولا هما كبار وانا لسه عيلة؟
الحقيقة انا طلعت جبانة لانى مقدرتش اقف قدام أهلى علشان اغير فكرهم, امال ازاى عايزة أغيير النظام؟؟؟؟؟
و تانى روحت النهاردة فالخفا  وبالصدفة فى نفس مكان مسيبت المظاهرة امبارح, بس كل حاجة كانت متغيرة ووحشية.
امن امن امن بالشوم في كل حتة وشباب بيجري نحيتنا وواحد واقف جوه عربية مضرعة  وبينشن فيهم قنابل الغاز.
وقلبي انقبض... والدبابير جت تمشى الحشود ومجموعة امن ماشية تهش الحشود بالبنادق المسيلة. كان منظرهم زى pac man يمين شمال فوق تحت متبرمجين ومش فاهمين.
لاقيت ان ماليش لازمة انا مش جايه اتفرج على بهدلت شعبى, انا جايه اقول اللى فى قلبى.
ومشيت وعديت عربيات الامن:
 في الاسعاف:14 عربية
طلعت حرب : 8
محمد فريد: 6
محمد بسيونى 4
شوارع كتيرة معرفش اسمها بتوٌصل للتحرير ما بين 4 الى 8 في كل شارع
مطلع الكوبري يجى 15
ميدان عابدين يجى 16
كان فيه حوالى 150عربية حوالين ميدان التحرير ده طبعا غير المضرعات اللى يا بترش ميه يا بتنش غاز.
وجنب بيتى عند مطلع كوبري اكتوبر كان فيه 12 عربية علشان يمنعوا حد يروح التحرير.
ده نظام خايف وعامل نفسه مش خايف...
ودي حكومة مش عارفة وعاملة نفسها عارفة
وده موظف مش امين وعامل نفسه امين
وده بنى ادم مش نضيف وعامل نفسه نضيف

بس المهم انهاردة الناس اللي فالشارع اتغيرت, مش كلهم زي امبارح, الهمج والعنف ابتدى, يمكن علشان فيه ناس اتشجعت تشارك فعلا جعانة ومستبيعة وطفحة الكوتة.
وقد ايه كان فيه مخبرين و امن لابسين ملكى عادي , علشان يتوهوا ويقفشوا فالشباب من غير ميبقوا باينيين قوى.
25 يناير غير 26 يناير.
حتى انهاردة اتعكست مهو 25خلص وشكرا على كده ونرجع بقى نطلع الكبت
بس ياتري 28 يناير و 4 فبراير وسبتمبر و2011 حيحصل فيها ايه؟
ياتري حسنى بيفكر في ايه وحالنا ليه بقي كده يا مصر يا مصرياللى بتاعتى بس اتنهبتى واحنا بنتفرج.
العمارة اللى قدام مدخل محكمة النقض فالاسعاف اسمها عمارة الشواربى باشا بصوا عليها, ادخلوا مداخلها الاربعة, شوفوا الفن والزخرفة وانتم تعرفوا ليه يا خسارتك يا مصرياللي بتاعتى بس اتنهبى واحنا بنتفرج
مش عارفة اقول قوم يا مصرى ولا خلاص مافيش فايدة حاجة تتصلح وتتغيير. حنتبدى من فين ولا فين.

  قوم يا مصري مصري دايما بتناديك
رجعلى نصري وامجادى وحياة عينيك

The Larger Context (Part 2)

Islamism and the Tunisian Test Case

  

When Hazem Amin was researching the life of Abu Qtadeh, the mufti of al Qaeda in North Africa, for The Orphaned Salafi, he went to Ras al Ain, in Amman, Jordan, where the mufti grew up. During the course of an interview with one of the neighborhood residents, the gentleman explained to Amin that “religion here is the stuff of life.”

This statement encapsulates the remarkable achievement of Islamism over the past four decades. For political Islam has never been only about politics, but about social transformation—and hence the catchall “Islam is the answer.” The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) might own this motto but, today, millions of Muslims, many of whom don’t belong to the party, live by it.

That the Gods were smiling upon Islamism, whatever its creed, from the 1960s until well into the 1990s is a well-known fact. Had the US not embraced the trend to fend off Soviet influence; had Saudi Arabia not pumped massive amounts of money to saturate the region with fundamentalist notions, particularly its own Wahhabist version; had the mullahs not taken over Iran in 1978; had the supposed secularism of our dictatorships, monarchies and “republics” alike, not been so self-serving, dubious and capricious…Islamism’s hard work would have turned much harder.

And you’ve got to hand it to them, they did work hard: home-to-home, school-to-school, mosque-to-mosque, law-by-law, rich and poor, one veil at a time, until whole sections of Arab society imbibed and finally internalized the social and political precepts of fundamentalist thought.

The true  measure of Islamism’s success is this magnificent reach and not the specific clout of any individual politico-religious party.

****

A public arena divvied up between Islamic fundamentalism and the pseudo-secular Arab state: this is the dynamic that came to dominate the regional scene in the last quarter of the 20th century.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that in the latest (December 2010) Pew/Gallup Poll on Muslim Attitudes, pluralities of Egyptians (85%) and Jordanians (76%) approve of Islamic influence over political life, just as they do gender segregation (Egypt/54%, Jordan/50%), the stoning of people who commit adultery (Egypt/82%, Jordan/70%) and the death penalty (Egypt/84%, Jordan/85%) for those who leave the Muslim religion. 

It’s not surprising as well that all responses cut across age and gender: men and women, older generations and younger are more or less on the same page.

Extraordinarily, this mindset sits almost oblivious next to the respondents’ favorite form of government. Yep, you guessed it! Democracy (Egypt/59%, Jordan/69%). As if to say, these tenets are givens (mussalamat), matters of belief, where democratic practice has no say and no business.

I have my quibbles with the poll,* among them the unhelpfully small number of Arab countries (Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon) covered in it. Therefore, these results, although echoed in other studies, are best appreciated as qualitative insights, although it is hard to imagine, for example, how the Arab Gulf would exhibit more liberal inclinations.

Still what is instructive about the survey is the stark contrasts it reveals between societies that espouse different systems. In Turkey, a full 31% of respondents view Islam’s role in politics negatively, as opposed to 38% who view it positively. Moreover, the Turks’ aversion to gender segregation (13%), stoning for adultery (16%) and the death penalty (5%) for those who abandon Islam becomes all the more telling when juxtaposed against Jordan and Egypt’s keen support for them.

One does not want to give in easily to the temptations of oversimplification, but, surely, Turkey’s relatively stable democracy and the longstanding secular streak of the state are relevant factors in it’s notable lack of enthusiasm for these “harsh laws,” as the poll describes them.

(I would have liked to include Lebanon in these quick juxtapositions, but I still have too many questions about the research methodology for that country).

****

All of which makes extremely annoying the exclusion of Tunisia from the survey, for this first country to walk out on the so-called Arab order also happens to be the one state that insisted on its secular character.

Part of the exceptionalism of the Tunisian revolt is that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was thrown out for bread and butter without any meddling from God and Crescent. Where other regimes were content to spar with fundamentalism all while incorporating quite a bit of what it preaches, the Tunisian one was vociferous about combating it everywhere it could catch it, along with all other forms of opposition. Which pretty much explains the near absence of any organized effort behind the recent street protests that helped flip the army and bring down the tyrant.

As Tunisians begin their baby steps into a suddenly unpredictable future, and as we watch how the wind will blow in other Arab corners, this difference between Tunisia and its Arab sisters may prove the most salient yet.

****

No one really knows if Ben Ali’s fall will turn into a contagion. If anything, Tunisia’s bad circumstance was still palpably better than that of its neighbors. Clearly, the answer lies just as much with the top echelons of intelligence services and armies as it does in the people’s readiness for serious (and necessarily fatal) action.

But since pundits are beginning to indulge again in ritual speculations about the Arab status quo, it seems necessary to remind those who are captive to stale conventional wisdoms that Islamism, over the course of the past 40 years, had in fact grown into a main fixture of it, in power (Sudan, Gaza, Saudi Arabia…) and out (Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, Algeria…).

Track records are just as available for Sudan’s Bashir and Hamas as they are for the Palestinian Authority, for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they are for Mubarak, for Jordan’s Brothers as they are for the Hashemites. There is no need for head scratching and conjecture here.

Needless to say, after September 11 and Iraq, you need not be curious about the kind of life Salafi-Jihadis propose for the Middle East.

This has been our Arab order for a long time now. If age has been unkind to it, it has been unkind all around.

Islamism, no doubt has considerable mass appeal, but these are not the 1980s, and success did bring with it extreme exposure. If walls begin to fall and the space that opens up is, in fact, allowed or forced to be capacious, Islamism, strong as it is, very likely will have to contend with competing forces, faint though they currently are.

So far, the 21^st century has proved anything but dull. Perhaps one of the more interesting recent developments of the past five years is the way energized civil societies have been surprising the powers that be, fundamentalists included. In these testy times, neither they nor the pseudo-secular states need feel entirely too comfortable should the time for change finally come.

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* Most of the questions do not have more focused follow-ups; bizarrely, the questionnaires did not include definitions to certain concepts before testing them; and, most inconceivable of all, in Lebanon the team apparently conducted the survey in Hezbollah territory without a chaperone.

The Mutating Tragedy of Salafi-Jihadism (Part I)

On the murders in Alexandria and Punjab and Hazem Amin’s new book The Orphaned Salafi

In a region riven with violence, a silencer long favored by the state before it became an article of faith for the fanatically “faithful,” what’s a Coptic church bombing in Alexandria or a murder of a defiant Punjabi governor, Salam Taseer, who dared “blaspheme”?

Rack them up, reflex urges you, for these are only the latest distress signals from a chronically troubled people. And true enough, you can actually run a line of connecting dots from Gaza to Sana’a to Darfur to Nahr al Bared to Cairo, Baghdad and Kandahar. The common denominators are a few, the shared experiences many.

Confronted by an unnerving blend of low-grade hate and full-fledged mayhem, the predictable—and dangerous—reaction by many is a contentment to let thoughts float on the surface of seemingly inexorable events, because, well, this is the Middle East, after all.

And when a hideous act demands some kind of an answer, the habit is to dump it in the lap of extremists, be they—depending, of course, on who’s making the argument--in cahoots with or the duped mercenaries of foreign masters, renegades from otherwise nonviolent fundamentalist camps, or desperate individuals simply unhinged by an abundance of poverty, humiliation and tyranny.

It’s not that Extremism is the wrong answer; it’s just a non-answer. As an Arabic proverb has it, it’s like “explaining water with water.” It takes you everywhere and nowhere. When you utter it, it’s as if you’ve said absolutely nothing at all. Worse still, it’s a wonderful escape hatch. Walk through it and all you need to do is cut and paste the standard set of band aid solutions: symbolic goodwill gestures towards the victims, branding the perpetrators as alien to society and system, an orgiastic show of national pride and unity, anti-terrorism clampdowns and, always, blaming the outsider.

But there is something very specific and very disturbing to be said about the murders in Alexandria and Punjab and much of the violence in this heaving and burning expanse. And Hazem Amin’s just published The Orphaned Salafi (Saki Books, 190 pages), a fascinating collection of vignettes that frame and explain Salafi-Jihadism and those who gave it the kiss of life, says it.

Once you have implanted religion at the center of a society’s identity and value system in an environment that is as illiberal in its parts (homes, curricula, personal status laws, politico-religious parties, mosque…) as it is in sum (authoritarian polities), it is literally a very short and easy ride between mainstream and extreme.

Islamism, made commonplace, visceral and transcendent, becomes an ecosystem, a freewheeling democracy of a sort, where laws and norms and dos and don’ts are any believer’s business.  Under it, unifying civil codes are negotiable for some, anathema for others. Morality is an exhortation or a sword. The community (umma) is uniquely Muslim. Citizenship is an exclusive club membership, with privileges and pecking orders. The Other is potentially everyone but the blessed self and its silhouette.  Sure, there are Shiite nuances and fine distinctions between one creed and the other, but these are details that accessorize the essence.

In Islamism’s orbit, differences of opinion or strategies between, say, the ever so mainstream Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and more radical Islamist elements, or tensions between the state and fundamentalist activists are real but beside the point and misleading when exploring origins and exits.

Seen from this prism, Extremism is not an oozing wound; it’s a condition. It’s not a noxious smell seeping from the basement; it’s the musty air that hangs everywhere in a long shuttered house. You can’t lock it up or chase it away, but you can lift away those pitch-black curtains, open wide those windows and let in the light.

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This is not what Hazem Amin sets out to do in his book, the overarching purpose of which is to pull the Palestinian dimension into the heart and start of Salafi-Jihadism. But this is what I walked away with.

Not that Amin’s purpose is not worth probing. The Orphaned Salafi is a whirlwind of traumas and their traumatized men, of birthplaces and early decisive encounters, of stations on the warpath and cities that became incubators for combustible converging trends, of ominous meetings bringing together fearsome duets, fiery shaykhs and brutal disciples mad about their faith and dying to shed blood in its name.

The language is Arabic, the style is smooth, the footnotes are a sprinkle and the research is devoid of any foreign input.

The elusive question is Salafi-Jihadism. Amin’s path to it is through a series of human portraits, and the names, the places, the influences and the situations that etched them.

The locales are between a lost Palestine and the shores of the Gulf, neighborhoods crowded with a people in exile and deserts swimming in oil and long immersed in an austere Salafi faith with a particularly prickly temperament.

The founding fathers are Palestinian men shorn of a home and a national identity looking for a community to embrace them as brothers in an inhospitable Arab habitat.

The destination is the Muslim umma, where rootlessness and “foreignness” melt in the all-encompassing embrace of Islam.

The nannies are mainstream politico-religious parties (MB) that offer sanctuary and span borders, and seemingly laical “revolutionary” movements (Yasser Arafat’s Fatah) eager to nurture every manner of Palestinian would be soldier. It just so happens the two are more than acquaintances; they know each other well from back when, during the days of Abu Ammar in Kuwait.

The mood is somber, the psychology latently “perturbed.” The self thirsts for an identity that transcends borders and is committed to radical change for its sake. Behind this agitation stands an inspiration: Sayyid Qutb, that most famous of Egyptian Muslim Brothers who was one of the first to call for jihad against a “heretical” Arab order.

Things are simmering. And, for Amin, as opaque and shifty as the environment that nurtures Salafi-Jihadism is, in the “Palestinian case,” three factors give it anchor: a “weakness in the original [Palestinian] identity and the others that followed it…a turmoil of values, and the Diaspora’s exposure to a wind coming from the desert and another from the river’s western shores.” (p.143).

It is worth serious consideration, then, that the first act on the road to global jihad was Palestinian Islamist Saleh Sarriya’s failed takeover of the Egyptian Technical Military Academy in 1974, in an attempt to overthrow Anwar Sadat. That the all-time rallying cause, when it finally comes, would be Afghanistan, thousands of miles away from Palestine, led by Palestinian Islamist Abdullah Azzam, “the first Shaykh of the Saudi Jihadi” (p.50) and of Osama himself. That Palestinian Islamist Abu Muhammad al-Maqdissi and Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death dance would play itself out in Iraq. That Palestinian Islamist Abu Qtadeh presides now as the Mufti of al-Qaeda in North Africa.

Although there is very little room for larger contexts in Amin’s narrative, certainly one of the most compelling implications of his argument concerns the Palestinian problem itself. For those in the West who are still wondering about its true impact on our politics and its weight in one of this region’s most confounding dilemmas—global jihad--Amin’s is a very persuasive and original angle. 

But it is also in the way that he disentangles the skein of forces that give shape to these men and their mission that the reader begins to understand the real depth and breadth of the presumably fringe phenomenon that is Salafi-Jihadism.

It is therefore nothing short of illuminating to meet Mohammad Ibn Sourour, a Syrian Muslim Brother who brought Salafism into the Ahkwani (MB) house, and Nasser al Din al Albani, the father of Salafism in the Levant, both of whom helped nudge into one two technically separate faiths--Jihadism and Salafism. Equally, to know that it is to Mohammad Rifai, the head of the MB branch in Zarqa, Jordan, and Muslim Brothers like him that Azzam turned when recruiting Afghan Arab fighters for Afghanistan.

The Orphaned Salafi is bound together with such like threads. Amin, a Lebanese journalist with quite a few years on the trail of global jihad behind him, is surefooted in his insights but is a skeptical storyteller wrestling with a subject that refuses to keep still. Mine is not a review, though, and I am not a jihad expert. It is ultimately for those to argue with Amin over emphases and omissions, many of them not altogether inconsequential to the debate itself. Such as, for example, the degree to which Iran can take credit for the rise of Islamism within the Sunni Lebanese scene (of all ironies!) and specifically the Palestinian refugee camps--a major argument in Roger Bernier’s Everyday Jihad, and a total exclusion from The Orphaned Salafi. It’s intriguing as well that Amin does not feel the need to follow the money, an essential piece in any investigation of the spread of Salafi-Jihadism, even if his attention was focused on other dimensions.

Suffice it to say that Amin’s material is sure to make the field of Salafi-Jihadism even lusher than it already is.

Larger contexts next in Part Two.

WikiLeaks, Pew and Hezbollah

Not one leak from Wiki about the Middle East, not even a single cable, qualifies as a shocker.

Beyond the gratification of catching rabbits in the headlights that has brought a big, toothy smile to the grumpiest of faces, we are today exactly where we were before Julian Assange hung, for all to see, our dirty Arab laundry.

That Elias (nicknamed Lulu) al Murr, the Lebanese (Christian) Defense Minister, felt free to advise our Israeli neighbors to hit, in the next war, only Shiite areas and spare “sympathetic” Christian ones, that he so kindly informed the American Ambassador to Lebanon that Shiites join the army to eat, while Christians do it for country, frankly, came as no surprise to most Lebanese. It was not so long ago that some of us were harrumphing openly about the odor of Shiite piss in the center of Beirut, when Hezbollah set up and manned much of the tent city in 2006 and 2007.

In effect, what Murr had downloaded to American ears, he and his ilk—and there’s plenty of them—were burping over dinner tables and expelling in drawings rooms for more years than one dares count. Which explains why Murr is still Defense Minister, why President Michel Suleiman, who chose him as part of his quota in the cabinet, did not feel compelled to issue a this-has-nothing-to-do-with-me statement, why Hezbollah has yet to pillory Lulu (must not be the optimal time to play this chip) and why life just goes on in this “prototype” of a country. It’s also why a smirk, and never shock, claims us for keeps when we’re done reading the day’s batch of disclosures.

Still, how could information so passé and predictable be so delicious? Well, first off, there is that Gotcha! moment that never fails to satisfy, especially us Arabs, precisely because it’s only the people high up who are always having all the fun.

Tell the truth, how lucky was John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, to be privy to the advice of Saudi Arabia’s king Abdullah on Guantanamo’s released detainees?

His Majesty: “You should put an electronic chip in the legs of those detainees. It really works. We do it to eagles and horses.”

Brennan: Humm... Nifty idea. Except that horses don’t have good lawyers.”

Besides, it’s one thing to know that hypocrisy (not to mention sheer idiocy) is alive and well in politics, it’s quite another to see it live, in action, and not to have to wait for the rare slip up or the history books.

****

But now that things might come to a head, once more, in Lebanon, WikiLeaks’ exposures do serve as a useful reminder of the very thorny terrain that meets the many-turbaned Hezbollah beyond its own diehard Shiite expanse. A terrain which the last, and just published, Pew Research Center Survey of Muslim Attitudes (April-May 2010) has rendered in telling numbers.

Of these results, three summarize succinctly the delicate realities that the Shiite movement has to work with as it erects different shields to protect it against various indictments that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is almost sure to issue against it for the murder of Rafiq Hariri: an extraordinary 94% of Lebanese Shiites have a “favorable opinion” of Hezbollah, while an equally potent 84% of Sunnis and 79% of Christians do not.

Adding a coat thick with meaning to these three brass tacks is the survey’s gauge of passions for and against the group: whereas 31% of surveyed Lebanese have “a very favorable” opinion of it, a heftier 51% have a “very unfavorable” one.  

And although the available report does not isolate the percentage of those Shiites who have a “very favorable” opinion as opposed to those who are “somewhat favorable,” which would give us an idea about how that 94% divides up between the real enthusiasts and the tepid ones, it is reasonable to conclude from the above data that much of the fervor that holds up the 31% comes from the Shiite community itself.

In simpler language: at home, Hezbollah is pretty much on its own. While it clearly can snuggle up content in the embrace of its folks, the rest of the country is lined up against it.

Not particularly irrelevant sentiments for the resistance as it revs up to deal with an anticipated offensive of the legal kind by the Special Tribunal and possibly of the opportunistic variety by an Israeli foe with one eye cast on its northern borders and the other gazing far at the Persian horizon.  

To those who have puzzled over the Party of God’s insistence, up to barely a minute ago, on aggressively upping the ante against Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri (reject the court or else!) at a time when it supposedly needs to be searching for a happy middle ground in a hostile climate, therein lies their answer: Hezbollah knows that, in Lebanon, it has already lost much of the non-Shiite audience, and whatever mediums there are, none looks remotely happy. With its back very close to the wall, the movement thought it might as well try some relatively high stakes tactics.

Moreover, Hezbollah also figured that, iffy as the situation clearly is, it’s still not doing too badly. Enveloped by the love of its “people,” stacked up to its teeth in arms, protected by devoted worriers, surrounded by foolish Lebanese adversaries and backed by crafty Syrian and Iranian allies, the party felt that it could afford to rattle the other side with some very intimidating maneuvers.

And so, as the Syrians and Saudis huddled to hammer out a solution, forefingers wagged, eyebrows locked lips, tenors rose, warnings were issued, “cell phone” evidence was bashed, false witnesses were displayed as proof of foul play, the cabinet was brought into a veritable standstill and red lines were drawn. Hezbollah was signaling that it is indeed agitated, pumped up and ready for action.   

****

This is where WikiLeaks and Pew’s survey reenter the scene and make a stronger stand.

Serious as the court challenge might be to Hezbollah--and, judging by its behavior, the evidence looks like it might well be packing a punch--its options are, in fact, very limited and chancy.

Although the movement has, as of late, retreated into quieter rhetoric, the gossip is that it would not hesitate, and is even planning, to take over Lebanon to “cut off the hands of the conspiracy.” But the truth is, if Hezbollah actually pursues this path, it would fire up rather than snuff out the plot against it.

Hezbollah’s juggling of its many intertwined identities is not easy in the best of times; in bad ones it can be downright perilous. This, after all, is a force that is at once a social movement, a single-sect political party, a member of parliament and the cabinet, a resistance against Israel and a strategic bridgehead for Syria and Iran.

By turns, and by choice, it is Shiite, Lebanese, Persian and Arab, depending on the day and the argument. It holds serious political sway but is very happy not to reign except over its own dominions. In many ways, it supersedes the Lebanese state but, for insulation, still craves its political cover. It likes to parade as if in no need of legitimacy but fights tooth and nail for every supportive parliamentary decree and cabinet edict.

It is feared but not liked, even by the followers of Maronite Michel Aoun, its most critical local ally. The Sunnis hate it, and those few who side with it for love of the resistance or dislike of the Hariris will decline—as they did during the violence of May 2008—to side with it if it directs its weapons against their sect.

Ponder the advice given only two days ago by ex Prime Minister Selim Hoss, a traditional Sunni friend of Hezbollah’s and perhaps one of Lebanon’s mildest and most decent politicians: “We believe that the resistance is one of the necessities of life…for the Arab people so long as Israel is bent on a policy of aggression, confrontation and unbridled greed. So let the resistors beware that they have no business in the internal affairs of Lebanon and that their main focus should be on the southern borders.” (Al Hayat newspaper, December 20, 2010).

Pointing its guns inside a very divided Lebanese house would dangerously expose and overburden Hezbollah at a time when it should be at its most lithe and lightest, not only for its sake but for those of Syria and Iran.

This leaves the Party of God with action of the strictly civil and political type: massive peaceful street demonstrations, collective resignations from the cabinet, parliamentary votes of no confidence.

No more and perhaps much less, depending on what Syria And Saudi Arabia work out on Sa’ad’s and its behalf.