By Roberto Savio
ROME, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The results of a survey of what 3,500 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 – in all Arab countries except Syria – feel about the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa have just been released.

The report of the survey, which was carried out by international polling firm Penn Schoen Berland (PBS), is not a minority report given that 60 percent of the population of the Arab population is under the age of 25, which means 200 million people. Well, the outcome of the survey is that the large majority of them have no trust in democracy.

Roberto Savio

The word democracy does not exist in Arabic, being a concept totally alien to the era in which Muhammad created Islam. However, it is worth noting that the concept of democracy as it is known today is also relatively recent in the West, and we have to wait from its origins in the Greek era for it to make a comeback at the time of the French Revolution.

It became an accepted value just after the end of the Second World War, and the end of the Soviet, Nazi and Japanese regimes.

As a matter of fact, it is still not a reality in large parts of Asia (just think of China and North Korea) and Africa.

Then we have governments, as in Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is openly preaching a style of governance à la Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by several of his esteemers, including the National Front party in France, and the Northern League in Italy. But few have such a negative view of democracy as young Arabs.After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent

After the Arab Spring revolutions in 2012, a massive 72 percent of young Arabs believed that the Arab world had improved. The figure dropped to 70 percent in 2013, then 54 percent in 2014, and now it stands at just 38 percent.

According to the survey, 39 percent of young Arabs agreed with the statement “democracy will never work in the region”, 36 percent thought it would work, while the remaining 25 percent expressed many doubts.

It is clear that the Arab Spring has been betrayed by the return of the army to power as in Egypt, or by the clinging of the old guard to power regardless of the costs, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

If you add to this the fact that 41 percent of young Arabs are unemployed (out of a total unemployment figure of 25 percent), and of those 31 percent have completed higher education and 17 percent have graduated from university, it is not difficult to understand that frustration and pessimism are running high among Arab youth.

It also contributes to explaining why so many young people feel attracted to the Islamic State (ISIS) which wants to topple all Arab governments, defined as corrupt and allied to the decadent West, and create a Caliphate as in Muhammad’s times, where wealth will be distributed among all, the dignity of Islam will be enhanced, and a world of purity and vision will substitute the materialistic one of today.

This is why ISIS is attracting youth from all over. Besides, according to experts, for the terrorist to have a geographical space and run it  as a state, where hospitals and schools function and there is a daily life to prove that the dream is possible, represents a great difference with previous terrorist movements like Al-Qaeda, which could only destroy, not really build.

But the survey also reveals something extremely important. To the question “which is the biggest obstacle for the Arab world?”, 37 percent indicated the expansion of ISIS and 32 percent the threat of terrorism. The problem of unemployment was mentioned by 29 percent and that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 23 percent.

It is worth noting that the threat of a nuclear Iran was mentioned by only 8 percent (contrary to the declarations of Arab governments), while 17 percent consider that the real problem is the lack of political leaders, while only 15 percent denounce the lack of democracy.

It is important to note that no interviews were carried out in Iran, which is not an Arab country but is a Muslim country. However Iranian Muslims are Shiites and not Sunnis, as in all Arab countries, except for Iraq and Bahrein, and perhaps Yemen, where Shiites are a majority. Of the world’s total Islamic population of 1.6 billion people, Shiites make up only 10 percent.

It is within Sunnite Islam that a dramatic conflict is going on, where Wahabism, a Sunni school born in Saudi Arabia and the official religion of the Saudi reigning house, has now split into those who want to return to the purity of the early times and those are considered “petrowahabists” because they have been corrupted by the wealth created by petrol (they are also called sheikh wahabists because they accept government by sheikhs).

Saudi Arabia has been spending an average of 3 billion dollars a year to promote Wahabism. It has built over 1,500 mosques throughout the world, where radical preachers have been asking the faithful to go back to the real and uncorrupted Islam.

It was with Osama Bin Laden that the Wahabist movement escaped from the control of Saudi Arabia, very much like the radical Hamas movement, originally supported by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Yasser Arafat, turned against the Israeli state. It is not possible to ride radicalism.

The survey also reveals that young Sunnis see ISIS and terrorism as their main threat, but we are talking here of a poll which should represent 200 million people between the ages of 18 and 25. Even if just one percent of them were to succumb to the call of the jihad, we are talking of a potential two million people … and this is now being felt acutely.

The polarisation inside Sunni society (Shiites are not part of that – there are no Shiite terrorists) is felt as the most important problem for the future.

In Europe and the United States, this should be the clearest of examples that ISIS and terrorism are first and foremost an internal problem of Islam and that to intervene in that problem will only unify the Arab world against the invader. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Ayesha Gullalai (left) from the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf is campaigning for an end to military operations. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 17 2014 (IPS)

Disturbed by civilian casualties and moved by the plight of people living like refugees in their own country, students from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are demanding an end to army operations against militants on their native soil.

“We are sick of military action in FATA as it has not eliminated the Taliban but killed, injured and displaced innocent people,” Khan Bahadar, president of the FATA Students Federation (FSF), tells IPS.

“The tribal population has been facing a hard time since the Pakistan army took control of FATA in 2004. The army, primarily sent to fight Taliban militants, has caused a mass exodus from the conflict area. The insurgents stay unharmed.”"Of late, the youth have become a voice for FATA people.” -- Ayesha Gullalai, a member of the National Assembly

The Taliban took refuge in FATA near the 2,400-km porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan after their government in Kabul was toppled by U.S.-led forces in 2001. As a frontline state in the U.S.-led war on terror, Pakistan began military action against the Taliban in FATA in 2004, triggering mass displacement.

“About 2.1 million people from FATA are now living in the nearby Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They are in deep distress as they have had to give up their jobs, businesses and farming activity,” says Bahadar, 19, a student at the University of Peshawar.

Many students from FATA were studying in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

FSF was formed last year to build pressure on the government to end military operations in all seven agencies of FATA and facilitate an early return of displaced people to their homes.

Bahadar says the campaign by students from FATA is gathering momentum.

FSF vice-president Burhanuddin Chamkani says, “We have been holding demonstrations in Peshawar and Islamabad to spotlight the problems of our people. Military operations are no solution to prolonged terrorism.”

Chamkani is from the North Waziristan Agency in FATA. He too says civilians have been killed or maimed in military action but the militants remain unscathed.

“At least five people, including women and children, were killed in an army air strike in North Waziristan Jan. 21 in retaliation for a suicide attack on an army convoy that had killed 22 soldiers a day before,” he says.

Another organisation, the Waziristan Students Federation (WSF), is planning to step up its campaign.

Muhammad Irfan Wazir, an office-bearer of the WSF, says around 20,000 youths from FATA are studying in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Most have not been able to visit their families due to terrorism, he says.

“One has to pass through several army checkpoints before reaching their homes in FATA. They are homesick.”

WSF has planned protests, walks and seminars to sensitise the public, army and government.

“We are demonstrating at the University of Peshawar on weekends,” Wazir says. “We are also holding charity events and musical shows to raise money for displaced people living in camps in Peshawar and other areas.”

The responsibility to stop military operations lies with the federal government which directly controls FATA, he says.

“We have staged at least one dozen demonstrations near the Governor’s House to halt military action, but to no avail.”

Muhammad Javid, a teacher at Gomal University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa says the continuing military offensive has angered students, who are actively campaigning against it.

“Students are justified in demanding an end to army action as it has not brought peace to these areas,” he tells IPS.

They are campaigning to ask the government to start talks with the Taliban.

The Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI) party, which is in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also believes that dialogue with militants can end the suffering of people in FATA.

“We have been a staunch supporter of peace talks with militants,” PTI’s Ayesha Gullalai, a member of the National Assembly, tells IPS.

She says the federal government is oblivious to the woes of people in her native Waziristan.

“It’s the government’s responsibility to evacuate the civilian population before any action. It is in contravention of the United Nations charter of human rights to kill and injure non-combatants,” she tells IPS. The military doesn’t target civilians deliberately but there are incidents of civilian casualties, she says.

“The campaign by tribal students is welcome. Of late, the youth have become a voice for FATA people.”

Sagheerullah Khan, 20, who lives in a local hostel in Peshawar, is a native of Waziristan. “Unnecessary military operations in FATA coupled with U.S. drone attacks in which mostly innocent people are killed have caused the local population to turn against the government,” he says. This only produces more militants, he says.

“The indiscriminate army shelling poses a constant threat to people.”

Youths from FATA who are studying in Peshawar say they have been raising the issue of civilian deaths with their representatives in the National Assembly and Senate.

The fight to end army operations on their native soil, they say, will go on.

Christian youth watch an Israeli military exercise ahead of joining the Israeli army. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
QATSRIN, Occupied Golan Heights, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

In the municipal sports hall with an army officer to his side, Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox Arab priest in full regalia, briefs Arab Christian twelfth-graders on the merits of serving in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). “It’s only natural that the country which protects us deserves that we contribute to its defence,” he tells them.

A Christian teenager calls on the officer to reckon on the Christian conscripts’ cultural needs. The officer’s proclamation is unassuming: “The IDF is a melting pot.”

One in five Israelis is an Arab of Palestinian descent. Muslims constitute the overwhelming majority of this sizeable minority.

The 130,000-strong Arab Christian community is a tiny minority within the minority. They’re the original Christians of the Holy Land, the living stones on which the bi-millennial faith was built.“Jews call us ‘Arabs’. For Muslims, we’re ‘Christians,’ not Arabs. We’re Israeli Christians, nothing short of that.”

Encouraged by Nadaf to take advantage of Sunday rest, some 250 youth have preferred to show up at an event organised by the IDF Social Branch than to attend mass.

Entitled ‘In the fighters’ footsteps’, the week-long event brings twelfth-graders from around the country to the nearby Ahmadiyah training ground where, in order to boost their motivation before conscription, military prowess is demonstrated in front of them with the pyrotechnics of live ammunition exercises.

“Deep in the heart a Jewish soul…” the lyrics of the HaTiqva national anthem might have sounded awkwardly discordant to Arab Christians’ ears, yet these boy and girls throw in their lot wholeheartedly in this country.

Anan Nitanes is determined to join those who must join the army. “Israel gives me a lot. So I must give her back,” he tells IPS.

Father Nadaf’s endeavour is beginning to bear fruit – according to the IDF, some 100 Arab Christians are currently serving in the army, up from 35 in 2012, whilst an additional 500 are performing civil service, up from 200 during the same period.

Last year, as he was officiating in the Church of the Annunciation, Nadaf was called up by Bishara Shlayan, a boat captain who resides in Nazareth – Israel’s largest Arab city once dominated by Christian churches, now two-third Muslim.

Shlayan required the priest’s religious imprimatur to his local Forum for the Enlistment of Christian Youth.

Originated in his difficulty to get his son Amir into the army, the initiative exposes conflicting identity dilemmas.

“Jews call us ‘Arabs’. For Muslims, we’re ‘Christians,’ not Arabs. We’re Israeli Christians, nothing short of that,” Shlayan tells IPS.

“We’re Palestinian Christians, an integral part of the Palestinian people,” retorts Azmi Hakim, chairman of the Greek Orthodox community in this Galilee town. “No schizophrenia here.”

Shlayan’s project has also thrown Israel’s Arab Christians into the national “one people, one draft” debate over sharing the national burden more equitably.

Israel is a Jewish state in the sense that its defence is above all the duty of its six million Jewish citizens. Military service is compulsory for 18-year-olds – or should be.

In effect, some 40 percent potential draftees – mostly ultra-orthodox Jews, roughly 12 percent of age-draft youth – are traditionally exempt from it.

The other segment of the population exempt from the draft is the Arab citizens of Palestinian descent. They’re branded by fellow Jewish citizens a “fifth column” suspected of “double allegiance”.

Most Muslims don’t serve in the army. Exceptions to the sweeping exemption, Bedouin, who are Muslim, enlist in the army on a voluntary basis; for Druze, an offshoot of Islam, military service is mandatory.

Shlayan’s forum has now expanded into the Sons of the Alliance Christian party which preaches greater loyalty to the State of Israel.

“Arab citizens enjoy security, but many in their heart dream of Israel’s destruction. Whatever happens to the Jews will happen to us as well,” Shlayan charges.

Hakim reproves Shlayan’s accusation: “This army occupies Palestine. My state fights against my people. This forum for enlisting Christians is a Zionist conspiracy to separate the Christians from the rest of the Palestinians.”

“Besides, ultra-orthodox Jews don’t serve and yet their rights are respected,” Hakim protests.

Arab citizens are made to feel second-class citizens. An endemic dearth of building permits affects their towns and villages. Higher unemployment, inferior municipal services, unequal allocation of resources in education and housing are their common lot.

Banned from the Church of the Annunciation for promoting the draft, Nadaf was embraced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the sports hall, it is Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon who has come to pledge his support.

“I salute your willingness to integrate into the society,” Danon tells the assembly of age-draft Christians.

“We’re citizens who aspire to become full citizens,” Nadaf tells Danon.

Inducements in the form of cheaper loans, job opportunities, government allowances and tax breaks often lure non-Jewish military service aspirants.

“The government plans to advance land re-zoning plans and allocations of plots for Christian ex-servicemen and women,” Danon promises. “The State of Israel is opening its doors to you. We want you ‘equal amongst equals’.”

A question flies from the hall. “When will housing projects break ground?” asks a teenager determined to give the government’s preacher a hard time.

“Our objective isn’t to build houses but to issue tenders for the allocation of plots for those who served in the army,” cautions Danon. “You mustn’t join because you may get a plot of land. Don’t be afraid. Be strong. Do the right thing.”

Samir Jozen encourages his daughter Jennifer to join the army next summer. “So what if we don’t get 100 percent of our rights. What we have, Syria’s or Egypt’s Christians don’t have,” is his declaration of faith.

For now, Arab Christian youth seem to see in the military service a communion of sort with Israel, a conversion from being Arab to being Israeli, a rite of passage from being rejected to hoping to be accepted, and the core of a stronger Christian identity in a precarious area.

A protest in Peshawar against the killing of civilians by the army. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 2 2013 (IPS)

–“We demand an immediate end to the military operation in Khyber Agency because it has not brought any results during the past three years,” says Iqbal Afridi from the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf party. “The military operations are killing the local population while the militants remained unharmed.”

Afridi from the Khyber Agency unit of the party led by former cricketer Imran Khan spoke with IPS near the Governor’s House in Peshawar, the northern Pakistani city adjacent to the Khyber Agency region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Party members had brought bodies of 18 local people reported killed by Pakistani security forces in nearby Alamgudar village.

Thousands of local tribal people, including students, civil society members and leaders of political parties joined the bereaved families in the protest against the army.

“The military operations have brought lives of the eight million population in FATA to a standstill,” Afridi said. “The seven tribal agencies have remained under curfew and the population has become completely idle.”

Juma Khan Afridi from the family of some of those killed told IPS what happened. “We were asleep when security forces scaled the walls of our home. They asked the women to get aside,” Khan Afridi, a student of the same family told IPS. He said he survived because he put on a veil and stood with women.

This is not the first time the army has killed innocent people in Khyber Agency, he said. “It is because of the growing anger that bereaved families brought the coffins of their dead relatives to protest.”

Wazir Muhammad, political analyst at the University of Peshawar, said people of FATA had been bearing the brunt of the U.S.-led war on terror for the past four years, but had remained silent due to fear of reprisals by the army.

The protest by Hazara communities in Quetta in Balochistan over their dead had given strength to local tribal people in FATA, he said. More than 100 people, including 83 Shias were killed in two bomb explosions in Quetta Jan. 11. The relatives there had refuse to bury their dead immediately in protest.

Only after braving three nights in Quetta’s freezing temperatures next to their slain loved ones did the families of the bombing victims end their protest and bury the bodies amid strict security measures in a Hazara graveyard. They did so after the government imposed governor’s rule in Balochistan.

“Anger is growing over the acts of terrorism everywhere in the country. The people are rightly protesting over the army’s killing of the innocent,” Muhammad said.

The Khyber Agency incident has opened a new chapter of protests against the army. “It is for the first time that people have chanted slogans against law enforcement agencies for their failure to provide protection. It will continue in the future if the army doesn’t mend its ways,” Umar Farooq, whose younger brother was among the dead, told IPS.

“It was not just the brutal killing – the army took away the slain bodies from the site of the protests and buried them on their own. Being Muslims, we wanted to give bath and have funerals before lowering them to the graves.”

The killings come after a dubious army record. In 2009 the Pakistan army, he said, was shown in a video to be shooting from close range at seven boys in Swat. The army had argued that they were Taliban but they looked innocent and juvenile, he said.

“The incident caused international outrage and the U.S. – the main sponsor of the Swat Operation – briefly withheld aid,” Farooq said.

In October 2010 the U.S. sanctioned six units of the Pakistani military operating in the Swat valley under the Leahy Law – which requires the U.S. State Department to certify that no military unit receiving U.S. aid is involved in gross human rights abuses. The law requires that when such abuses are found, they must be thoroughly investigated.

Despite pledges, Pakistan did not take any action to hold the perpetrators accountable as required under the law.

In several instances in Swat, Balochistan and the tribal areas, U.S. aid to Pakistan has continued in apparent contravention of the Leahy Law.

Human Right Watch said in its 2012 report that conditions had deteriorated markedly in the mineral-rich Balochistan, with disappearances of civilians, and an upsurge in killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military, intelligence agencies and the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

“The government appeared powerless to rein in the military’s abuses,” it said. Human Rights Watch recorded the killing of at least 200 Baloch nationalist activists in 2012.

In April 2010, the Pakistan army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, apologised for the deaths of dozens of civilians during air raids near the Afghan border. The civilians were members of a pro-government tribe which had resisted Taliban influence.

On Jan. 17, shortly after the last killings, the army was severely criticised in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly. Lawmaker Saqibullah Khan said such incidents were bound to create anger against the army among the people, and should immediately be stopped.

“The federal government should immediately stop military operations against militants as these have failed to establish peace. They have become the main source of creating problems for the civilians.”

Member of the National Assembly from the Awami National Party Bushra Gohar told IPS that the military campaigns have displaced 1.2 million people in FATA and had adversely affected the lives of tribal people. “Since 2005, we have started military operations in most of the seven tribal agencies of FATA, but militants are gaining strength while the poor people are suffering.

“We demand an end to the military operation in FATA,” she said. (End)