Somalis deported from Kenya are greeted by Minister for Transport and Air Travel Said Jama Qorshel (blue shirt), State Minister for Foreign Affairs Buri Mohamed Hamza (shaking hands with deportee) and the director of Somali Immigration Department, General Abdullahi Gafow Mohamud (black shirt). It is estimated that some 500 Somalis have been deported, while a further 4,000 are detained in Kenya. Credit: Abdirahman Omar Abdi/IPS

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble
NAIROBI, May 27 2014 (IPS)

Somalia’s State Minister for Interior and Federalism Affairs Mohamud Moalim Yahye has told IPS that the hasty repatriation and mass deportation of its citizens by Kenya could compromise recent, critical security improvements made by regional governments against the Islamic extremist group, Al-Shabaab.

“The unplanned and uncoordinated deportation of people, especially the youth, will create chaos and anarchy as there are no resources to support and create jobs for them,” Yahye told IPS by phone from Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

The Somali government has asked that Kenya suspend the current mass deportation of its citizens, which began early April, until the Tripartite agreement for repatriation of Somali refugees is implemented.

The agreement, which was signed last year by the two governments and the United Nations Refugees Agency, aims to send refugees back to Somalia over the next three years. However, the agreement only outlines the voluntary and organised repatriation of refugees to Somalia.

Yahye said that Somalia, where the unemployment rate for youth aged 14 to 29 is one of the highest in the world at 67 percent, did not have the capacity to receive and integrate large numbers of returning refugees and deportees.

As a result, security experts, government officials and politicians in Mogadishu and Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, have raised concerns that deportees and returnees could be vulnerable to recruitment by Al-Shabaab, which desperately needs new blood.

“These young men, if they join the militants, will be an asset that could help the group wreak havoc not only Somalia and Kenya, but the greater region of East Africa,” Zakariye Yusuf, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told IPS.

Kenya is home to more than one million Somali refugees, half of whom are unregistered migrants, according to Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Kenya’s Usalama Watch — which resulted in over 4,000 people, all most of all of them Somali refugees and migrants, being taken into custody — has resulted in the repatriation of about 500 people to Somalia.

Hundreds are awaiting deportation, according to the Somali Embassy in Kenya. Airline and travel agencies officials say a further 7,000 people — half of them youth — fled Nairobi to Mogadishu after the operation was launched.

Thousands of others are believed to have crossed the Kenyan border and returned to Somalia.

Because of their knowledge of the Swahili language and the culture of the region, Yusuf said these Somali youth could be assigned by Al-Shabaab to return to Kenya, and possibly other East Africa countries, to carry out terrorist activities.

“It will be easy for them to hide, infiltrate the society and run safe houses while coordinating operations than other members who haven’t lived in Kenya,” he added.

Al-Shabaab has been suffering from a lack of financial constrains after losing its foothold on Mogadishu and the port town of Kismayo. The group has also experienced a shortage of foot soldiers over the past three years. Hundreds of its fighters have either been killed, sneaked out of the country, or deserted over to the government, which is promised them amnesty, protection and a better future.

“These young men used to run small scale business or work as shop-sellers in Nairobi, but their life is being interrupted by the crackdown and the deportation,” Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a Horn of Africa specialist at Kenyatta University in Kenya, told IPS.

“They are now hopeless back in their country and desperate for doing whatever could help them to make a living. That’s the type of recruits Al-Shabaab is looking for,” he said.

He added that the group, which claimed responsibility for September’s four-day terror siege on Kenya’s Westgate Shopping Mall that resulted in the death of about 67 people, was a dying horse.

“Sending or deporting people, especially young men back to Somalia, is simply giving a lifeline to Al-Shabaab, which has a history of forced recruitment of youth, at crucial moment,” said Abdisamad.

He explained that the deportees and returnees could join the militants either to earn a wage to support their families or for revenge because they feel humiliated and abused by Kenya.

He said the deportations created a situation where Al-Shabaab had an opportunity to recruit energetic and cheap foot soldiers.

“When you mishandle the issue of terrorism, it has a lot of repercussions and that’s what the militants wanted and waited for years for. As a result, nothing has improved in terms of security since the operation was launched,” Abdisamad noted.

Indeed, a senior Al-Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf said last week that his group would be shifting its war to neighbouring Kenya, and threatened to send teenage suicide bombers to Nairobi.

Khalaf urged Muslims in Kenya to fight against their government for the retaliation of their “Muslim brothers” killed in Kenya and Somalia.

Abdisamad pointed out that the operation, which has been marred by lack of clear counter-terrorism strategy,  abuses and harassment, has been counter-productive and serves as a perfect conduit for the Al-Qaeda-linked group’s recruitment.

Women protest on the streets of Rabat to demand equal rights. Credit: Abderrahim El Ouali/IPS.

By Abderrahim El Ouali
CASABLANCA, Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

Morocco stands divided over a proposal for equal inheritance rights for men and women: modernists see this as application of equality arising from the new constitution, and Islamists see in this a violation of Sharia law.

There have been calls from extremists to kill those who seek equality rights.The trial is over, but the debate on equal sharing of inheritance between women and men is only beginning.

The penal court of Casablanca sentenced Islamist Sheikh Abou Naim to a month of deferred imprisonment and a 500-dirham fine (50 euros) in February for issuing a fatwa to kill Driss Lachgar, general secretary of the Socialist Union of the Popular Forces (USFP), and other leftist activists.

Lachgar had chaired a meeting of party women on Dec. 20 where he called for a revision of inheritance laws so as to establish equality between men and women.

Sheikh Abou Naim accused Lachgar in a video posted on YouTube of “godlessness” and “apostasy”, and made a public call to kill him. The Sheikh called women from the USFP “whores”.

Activists say the sentence passed by the court was overly lenient. Salah El Wadie, leader of the movement Damir (Consciousness), said Abou Naim was sentenced for defamation and not for incitement to murder.

Modernist writer Ahmed Assid, described as a “pig” in Abou Naim’s video, told media the trial had been “a farce”.

The trial is over, but the debate on equal sharing of inheritance between women and men is only beginning.

Fatima Ait Ouassi, member of the ‘February 20^th’ movement to campaign for equal rights, tells IPS that “equal sharing of inheritance between men and women is now a necessity.”

The February 20^th movement arose in 2011 within the Arab Spring. It campaigned successfully to bring in a new constitution approved by referendum in July of the same year. This new constitution stipulates equal sharing between men and women.

However, the Islamist cabinet that was formed after the general election in November 2011 included only two women. A reshuffle in October 2013 included six women among 39 ministers.

Morocco is still far from gender equality in the political world, but nothing stops the government implementing the constitution in inheritance rights, says Ait Ouassi.

“We do not live any more in the old Arabic society where Islam appeared and where women lived under the supervision of men,” she tells IPS. “Now, women work and contribute fully to family assets just like men, and it is inconceivable to apply inequitable laws when it comes to sharing family inheritance.”

Lachgar says 19.3 percent of Moroccan women in cities and 12.3 percent in villages have prime responsibility in taking care of their families.

Strict application of Muslim law grants to a woman only half of what a man inherits in case of the death of one of the parents. In a case of death of the husband, the wife has only one-eighth of the inheritance “while women work even more than the men,” Samir El Harrouf, a member of the United Socialist Party (PSU), tells IPS.

The religious conservatives see this as a literal application of “divine law”.

“Nobody can modify the sacred texts in relation to inheritance and polygamy,” well-known advocate of Muslim jurisprudence Redouane Benchekroune told journalists.

But there are other interpretations of the religious text. “According to the studies that I have made in Muslim jurisprudence, this is simply a false interpretation of texts,” El Harrouf tells IPS.

He says that what the Quran grants to women in inheritance is only the minimum that must be respected – nothing forbids that women be granted more. New studies in jurisprudence show that it is necessary “to distinguish in religious texts between what is constant and what is varying,” El Harrouf says.

“What is constant is matters of faith and worship. On the other hand, other requirements vary according to the social and historical context, and depend on the specific conditions of every society and on a particular phase of its historical development.”

Ait Ouassi agrees. “As we were able to amend the family code, we have to revise the laws on inheritance which are contradictory to international agreements on human rights. We must stop immediately all forms of discrimination against women.”

Morocco ratified the agreement on elimination of discrimination against women on Jun. 21, 1993. A new family code providing for equality came into law in 2005.

According to the new family code, polygamy is forbidden except on authorisation by a court of competence.

Under this family code, polygamy requires the consent of the first wife and authorisation by a judge. But people manage to bypass the law by getting married without official papers. Once the new woman is pregnant, the court is forced to ratify the marriage because the civil rights of the child come into play.

Modernists are therefore asking for outright outlawing of polygamy.

The Islamists who now lead the government, and who were then in the opposition, had opposed the new law and called it “an incitement to prostitution.”

In the current debate, Islamists too are divided. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) which leads the government, calls the push to equality foreign pressure to alter “the identity of the nation”. On the other hand, Mostafa El Moutassim, leader of the Islamist party Civilisational Alternative, published an article on his Facebook page saying he is willing to open up the question of revision of laws governing the distribution of inheritance.

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

In a radio broadcast in October 1939, Winston Churchill described communist Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Many people in the West today have the same feeling about Iran under the ayatollahs. One hears many pundits refer to Iranian politics as mysterious, inscrutable, baffling and unpredictable.

Churchill continued his sentence by adding, “But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” I believe that if we apply the same key to Iran it becomes much easier to understand Iranian policies and actions.

Although the Islamic revolution of 1978-79 brought about many political changes, many facts about Iran have remained the same. They include the main elements of Iranian culture, an attachment to Iran’s long history, and a desire for a better life.

The main slogans chanted by the people on the eve of the revolution were freedom, independence and social justice. The first referred to freedom from domestic tyranny, the second to independence from foreign meddling, and the third to a fairer distribution of wealth.

In order to understand the motives that gave rise to the revolution, as well as what has happened since, it is essential to cast a quick glance at Iranian history in the 20th century.

Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to stage a democratic revolution. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-06) put an end to millennia-old absolutist monarchy and replaced it with a constitutional monarchy and a parliament (Majlis), and paved the way for modern Iran. However, Iran was not allowed to enjoy the fruits of that revolution for long.

Shortly afterwards, Russia and Britain divided Iran into zones of influence under the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 as part of the The Great Game. The discovery of oil in Iran in 1908 led to the formation in 1909 of the London-based Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which not only dominated the Iranian economy but also meddled in Iranian politics.

During the First World War, despite her declared neutrality, Russian and British forces invaded Iran in order to safeguard British India and keep Iran out of the hands of the Central Powers.

During the Second World War, Soviet, British and American forces invaded Iran, deposed Reza Shah who early in the war had declared Iran’s neutrality, and placed his young son Mohammad Reza Shah on the throne. The Trans-Iranian Railway was used to send millions of tons of desperately needed supplies to the Soviet Union.

In 1951 Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq nationalised the oil industry to end the unfair exploitation of Iran’s most valuable asset, but in 1953 he was toppled in a coup orchestrated by Britain and the United States.

It is important to remember this long history of foreign meddling in Iran’s internal affairs in order to understand the fury of the revolutionaries against Mohammad Reza Shah and the West.

What is remarkable is that despite all those catastrophes, the Iranian parliament that was first convened on November 6, 1906 continued to function, at least in name, right up to the 1979 revolution.

The Islamic revolution inherited a democratic legacy with universal male and female suffrage. The first Women’s Journal was published in 1910, and on January 7, 1936, Iran became the first Muslim country to ban the veil in public. Women were given the right to vote and to stand for public office in 1963. By the time of the revolution there were many Iranian female ministers, judges, doctors, university professors, pilots, etc.

The people who took part in the revolution were demanding more, not less civil and political freedoms. Therefore, the Islamic regime that came into being under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had no option but to continue the traditions of parliamentary democracy, with universal suffrage for both men and women.

Consequently, the constitution that was approved in a referendum was quite progressive on paper, with the big exception of the inclusion of Velayat-e Faqih (the rule of the religious guardian) and clerical boards, such as the Guardians Council that supervises the selection of presidential and parliamentary candidates.

These powers have certainly compromised and restricted Iranian democracy, but they have not diminished the thirst of the Iranians for democracy and freedom. The elections have also been far from rubber stamps for official candidates, but have often produced many surprises.

Up to a week before the 1997 election, a senior conservative cleric Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri who was the establishment candidate was expected to win. However, Mohammad Khatami’s reformist campaign attracted the biggest turnout in the history of Iranian presidential elections and he won with over 20 million to Nateq-Nouri’s seven million votes.

President Khatami initiated a period of major social reforms at home and a policy of rapprochement with the West. He called for a dialogue of civilisations and even proposed a grand bargain to the U.S. in 2003 covering Iran’s nuclear programme, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Persian Gulf security.

However, in return, he was rewarded with President George W. Bush’s inclusion of Iran in the Axis of Evil. The rejection of Iran’s outstretched hand strengthened the hardliners and led to the victory of the right-wing candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election. In 2009 again the majority of people voted for the reformist candidate Mir-Hoseyn Mousavi, but Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in what many people regarded as a rigged election.

Millions of Green Movement supporters demonstrated in the streets, but they were put down by force, and Iran and the world had to endure four more years of Ahmadinejad’s rule.

“When Hassan Rouhani declared his candidacy for the June 2013 presidential election, opinion polls put his popularity at only five percent, but an energetic campaign with promises of greater freedoms at home and a policy of engagement with the West brought more than 72 percent of the electorate to the polling stations, and he won in the first round with about 51 percent of the vote.

The main candidate of the hardliners, Saeed Jalili, only received just over 11 percent of the vote and the other conservative candidate, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati who has been the Supreme Leader’s foreign policy advisor for many years received just over six percent of the vote.

While the president has to balance his powers with a number of other influential players, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the conservative clerics and the Revolution Guards, nevertheless, he is the chief executive and his policies can make a huge difference in both domestic and foreign policies.

Within the first 100 days of his tenure, Rouhani reversed 34 years of mutual hostility with the U.S. and reached a landmark agreement in
face-to-face negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif and the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

The agreement limits Iranian nuclear activities and virtually makes it impossible for Iran to move towards a breakout without being detected in plenty of time by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors who have been given the power of daily inspection of Iranian sites. A rapprochement with Iran helps calm the situation in a turbulent Middle East, reduces hostility towards Israel, helps America with her withdrawal from Afghanistan and fighting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

A country of 80 million youthful and educated people, with the world’s largest gas and the second largest oil deposits can provide a huge market for the West. If Iran’s outstretched hand is once again rejected, it would send a message to Iranians that the West is not sincere in her dealings with Iran. It will strengthen the hardliners, reversing the gains of the past few months, and will make the situation even more dangerous than before.

It will also harm the cause of reform and greater democracy in Iran, as well as making the Middle East a much more dangerous place, ultimately leading to a devastating war.

It is time for the U.S. to turn over a new leaf in her relations with Iran and start a period of collaboration, which will help both countries.

Excerpt:

With the administration of Philippines President Benigno Aquino III devoting much of its political capital to resolving the conflict in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, which has claimed around 150,000 lives over decades, many came to believe in the genuine possibility of a new era of stability and economic prosperity in the region.

Since 2011, the Philippine government has engaged in intensive negotiations with the country’s largest insurgency group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Committed to bringing about peace to Muslim Mindanao, Aquino went as far as holding secret talks with the MILF chairman Murad Ebrahim in Japan (Aug. 4, 2011) to reinvigorate the long-stalled peace negotiations, with Malaysia serving as a key mediator.

Peace negotiations with the MILF culminated in the late-2012 Framework Agreement, which laid down the foundation of a ‘Bangsamoro’ Islamic sub-state in the near future, allowing the Muslim minority to enjoy a measure of political, cultural and economic autonomy in the South. This represented the strongest attempt at a political settlement of the conflict in Mindanao.

But in the absence of a more inclusive peace process involving all key stakeholders, Aquino’s pitch for a decisive resolution of the conflict was inherently shaky. Things came to head when hundreds of rebel fighters belonging to the MILF’s parent organisation, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), launched a coordinated attack on the Christian-majority Zamboanga City in Mindanao in early-September.The Zamboanga crisis has laid bare the inherent vulnerabilities of the Philippine government.

What followed was a national crisis, which led to the displacement of up to 82,000 residents, the destruction of almost 1,000 buildings, and the death of 90 individuals within two weeks of intermittent fighting between rebels and government forces.

The Zamboanga crisis has laid bare the inherent vulnerabilities of the Philippine government in providing security to its citizens as well as instituting durable peace in Mindanao.

Shortly before the events, as the government and the MILF reached a crucial agreement on the issue of revenue-generation and wealth sharing, there were growing indications of renewed tensions in the area.

In mid-August, MNLF members, led by the doyen of Moro nationalism Nur Misuari, decided to protest their exclusion from the ongoing peace process by declaring “independence” from the Philippines. They argued that the government-MILF negotiations unjustly superseded the 1996 peace deal, which marked the (a) cessation of MNLF’s two-decade-long guerrilla war against the government and (b) the establishment of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) shortly after.

The ARMM, composed of the impoverished provinces Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and Sulu, has fallen way short of MNLF’s hopes for a viable Moro-Islamic state in Mindanao, which is composed of 26 provinces.

Misuari himself, the first governor of ARMM, has been increasingly marginalised within his own ranks for his perceived fruitless compromises with the Philippine government.

“We have achieved something tremendous in our quest for peace in our homeland… [But] we had to fight for it and in fact we have lost hundreds of thousands of lives just to be able to reach this point,” said Misuari earlier this year, criticising the Philippine government for failing to fulfill its age-old promise of genuine autonomy to Muslim Mindanao and sidetracking the MNLF in the ongoing negotiations.

Repeatedly ignored by the government, MNLF members raised the stakes by laying siege on Zamboanga and taking up to 180 residents as hostages. Intent on quelling the insurgency, the Philippine government responded with the deployment of around 3,000 government troops, composed of both the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (SAF) as well as the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

A dangerous standoff between the rebels and government troops ensured, with the entire city forced to shut down immediately. Meanwhile, a “no fly zone” was declared by the government, with authorities imposing a curfew.

As clashes turned increasingly violent with government troops seeking desperately to free hostages and end the standoff, a national crisis was born. At this point, top government officials, namely AFP chief-of-staff Emmanuel Bautista, Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas III, and Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, were dispatched to Zamboanga City to directly manage the crisis and end the siege as peacefully as possible.

Matters got worse when other radical rebel groups, especially Abu Sayyaf and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom fighters, joined the fray and spread the crisis to neighbouring Basilan, which also saw flare-ups in terror attacks and violent skirmishes.

Due to confusion over the leadership of the perpetrators, with Misuari denying direct responsibility in the siege, authorities repeatedly failed at establishing communication channels and negotiating a ceasefire with the rebel groups.

“They refuse to listen to anybody locally,” said Zamboanga City mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar. “They say that it’s an international problem, and no less than the international community, the UN, should come in.”

On Sep. 13, President Aquino, sensing the urgency of arresting the deepening humanitarian crisis in the area, arrived at Zamboanga to directly manage the crisis.

“There’s a thin line that can’t be crossed, putting civilians’ lives at risk,” Aquino said in a stern warning to the rebel groups. “When that line is crossed, I will be forced to not only show, but use the full force of the state.”

But rebels continued to dig in and refuse to surrender, prompting the government to employ all its military instruments, with the Philippine Air Force (PAF) beginning to bomb rebel strongholds and ground troops denying exit routes to the rebels.

So far, government troops have killed up to 200 rebels, while rescuing 170 hostages. Overall, the government seems to have gained the upper hand, and the end to the siege is in sight, but the rebels have managed to expose the fragility of the security situation in the South, with the government struggling to cope with a renewed humanitarian crisis and a major blow to its peace initiatives in the region.