By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

President Obama’s speech at the United Nations on Sep. 23 offered a rhetorically eloquent roadmap on how to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

He called on Muslim youth to reject the extremist ideology of ISIL (as ISIS is also known) and al-Qa’ida and work towards a more promising future.  President Obama repeated the mantra, which we heard from President George Bush before him, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

There is no argument but that the Islamic State must be defeated.  But is the counter-terrorism roadmap, which President Obama set out in his U.N. speech, sufficient to defeat the extremist ideology of ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qa’ida?  Despite U.S. and Western efforts to degrade, decapitate, dismember and defeat these deadly and blood-thirsty groups for almost two decades, radical groups continue to sprout in Sunni Muslim societies."As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians. It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control"

The President also urged the Arab Muslim world to reject sectarian proxy wars, promote human rights and empower their people, including women, to help move their societies forward. He again stated that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable and urged the international community to strive for the implementation of the two-state solution.

The President did not address Muslim youth in Western societies who could be susceptible to recruitment by ISIS, al-Qa’ida, or other terrorist organisations.

Arab publics will likely see glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in the President’s speech between his captivating rhetoric and actual policies. They most likely would view much of what he said, especially his global counter-terrorism strategy against the Islamic State, as another version of America’s war on Islam.  Arabs will also see much hypocrisy in the President’s speech on the issue of human rights and civil society.

Although fighting a perceived common enemy, it is a sad spectacle to see the United States, a champion of human rights, liberty and justice, cosy up to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, serial violators of human rights and infamous practitioners of repression. It is even more hypocritical when Arab citizens realise that some of these so-called partners have often spread an ideology not much different from what ISIS preaches.

These three regimes in particular have emasculated their civil society and engaged in illegal imprisonment, sham trials and groundless convictions.  They have banned political parties, both Islamic and secular, silenced civil society institutions and prohibited peaceful protests.

The President praised the role of free press, yet Al-Jazeera journalists are languishing in Egyptian jails without any justification whatsoever. The regime continues to hold thousands of political prisoners without indictments or trials.

In addressing the youth in Muslim countries, the President told them: “Where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish, then you can dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

What implications should Arab Muslim youth draw from the President’s invocation of the virtues of civil society when they see that genuine civil society is not “allowed to flourish” in their societies? Do Arab Muslim youth see real “alternatives to terror” when their regimes deny them the most basic human rights and freedoms?

The Sisi regime in Egypt has illegally destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have used the spectre of ugly sectarianism to destroy the opposition.  They openly and viciously engage in sectarian conflicts even though the President stated that religious sectarianism underpins regional instability.

In his U.N. speech, Field Marshall Sisi hoped the United States would tolerate his atrocious human rights record in the name of fighting ISIS.

Human Rights Watch and other distinguished experts sent a letter to President Obama asking him to raise the egregious human rights violations in Egypt when he met with Sisi in New York.  He should not give Sisi and other Arab autocrats a pass when it comes to their repression and human rights violations just because they joined the U.S.-engineered “coalition of the willing” against ISIS.

Regardless of how the air campaign against the Islamic State goes, U.S. policymakers will have to begin a serious review of a different Middle East than the one President Barak Obama inherited when he took office.  Many of the articles that have been written about ISIS have warned about the outcome of this war once the dust settles.

Critics correctly wondered whether opinion writers and experts could go beyond “warning” and suggest a course of policy that could be debated and possibly implemented. If the United States “breaks” the Arab world by forming an anti-ISIS ephemeral coalition of Sunni Arab autocrats, Washington will have to “own” what it had broken.

A road map is imperative if a serious conversation is to commence about the future of the Arab Middle East – but not one deeply steeped in counter-terrorism.  The Sunni coalition is a picture-perfect graphic for the evening news, especially in the West, but how should the United States deal with individual Sunni states in the coalition after the bombings stop and ISIS melts into the population?

As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians.  It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control.

Above all, ISIS represents a view of Islam that is not dissimilar to other strict Sunni interpretations of the Muslim faith that could be found across many Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. In fact, this narrow-minded, intolerant view of Islam is at the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi Hanbali doctrine, which Saudi teachers and preachers have spread across the Muslim world for decades.

Nor is this phenomenon unique in the ideological history of Sunni millenarian thinking.  From Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century to Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in the past two decades, different Sunni groups have emerged on the Islamic landscape preaching ISIS-like ideological variations on the theme of resurrecting the “Caliphate” and re-establishing “Dar al-Islam.”

Although the historical lines separating Muslim regions (“Dar al-Islam” or “Abode of Peace”) from non-Muslim regions (“Dar al-Harb” or “Abode of War”) have almost disappeared in recent decades, ISIS, much like al-Qa’ida, is calling for re-erecting those lines.  Many Salafis in Saudi Arabia are in tune with such thinking.

This is a regressive, backward view, which cannot possibly exist today.  Millions of Muslims have emigrated to non-Muslim societies and integrated into those societies.

If President Obama plans to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to fighting and defeating the Islamic State, he cannot do it by military means alone.  He should:

1.  Tell Al Saud to stop preaching its intolerant doctrine of Islam in Saudi Arabia and revise its textbooks to reflect a new thinking. Saudi and other Muslim scholars should instruct their youth that “jihad” applies to the soul, not to the battlefield.

2.  Tell Sisi to stop his massive human rights violations in Egypt and allow his youth – men and women – the freedom to pursue their economic and political future without state control.  Sisi should also empty his jails of the thousands of political prisoners and invite the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the political process.

3.  Tell Al Khalifa to end its sectarian war in Bahrain against the Shia majority and invite opposition parties – secular and Islamic – including al-Wifaq, to participate in the upcoming elections freely and without harassment.  Opposition parties should also participate in redrawing the electoral districts before the Nov. 22 elections, which King Hamad has just announced.  International observers should be invited to monitor those elections.

4.  Tell the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel that the situation in Gaza and the Occupied Territories is untenable.  Prime Minister Netanyahu should stop building new settlements and work with the Palestinian National Government for a settlement of the conflict. If President Obama concludes, like many scholars in the region, that the two-state solution is no longer workable, he should communicate his view to Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas and strongly encourage them to explore other modalities for the two peoples to live together between the River and the Sea.

If President Obama does not pursue these tangible policies and use his political capital in this endeavour, his U.N. speech will soon be forgotten.  Decapitating and degrading ISIS is possible, but unless Arab regimes move away from autocracy and invest in their peoples’ future, other terrorist groups will emerge.

Over the years, President Obama has delivered memorable speeches on Muslim world engagement, but unless he pushes for new policies in the region, the Arab Middle East will likely implode. Washington would be left holding the bag.  This is not the legacy the President would want to leave behind.

(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:

The Muslim Brotherhood has its own army of the young that will not easily be defeated. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

By Baher Kamal
CAIRO, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Unconsciously or not, most mainstream media and foreign correspondents here have been echoing Muslim Brotherhood voices by depicting Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, as the general who led the July 2013 “military coup” against the “legitimately elected” Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.
In doing so, they omit some key facts:

– that over 30 million Egyptians took to the streets exactly a year ago to press for the “impeachment” of Morsi. Morsi was elected by slightly more than 13 million voters. The Egyptian Constitution clearly states that sovereignty resides in the people.

– that Morsi’s rival in 2012 presidential elections was general Ahmad Shafik, a senior commander in the Egyptian Air Force who later served as Prime Minister from 31 January 2011 to 3 March 2011. Shafik was considered as former President Hosni Mubarak’s strong man.

– that the vast majority of political parties, including the Islamic radical Salafi Party Al Nour, and the former Vice-President responsible for International Relations, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, had held several meetings with the by then Defence Minister Al Sisi to agree on immediate action aimed at the impeachment of Morsi.“Regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated”

The call for the impeachment of Morsi was motivated by widespread popular frustration: put simply, 13 million Egyptians elected Morsi in May 2012 as the representative of “charitable men of faith” – the Muslim Brotherhood – who would rescue millions of people from poverty, but who instead transformed his position into a platform for a systematic “Islamisation” of all state institutions while neglecting the pressing needs of the Egyptian population.

Another often neglected fact is that in Egypt there is much more than generals and “troglodytes” – as a number of local political analysts often call the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned for most of the time since it was created in 1928.

Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Al Sisi won the three-day presidential elections (May 26-28) with a majority close to 97 percent. His rival, socialist Hamedin Sabbahi, obtained a mere 3 percent of the vote.

However, and regardless of who has now become the fifth top leader of Egypt in slightly more than three years, Egyptian citizens appear to have little hopes that their harsh daily living conditions will be alleviated any time soon, or even in the medium term.

The five men who have led Egypt in the last three years are: Hosni Mubarak who was ousted in February 2011; Field Marshal Mohamed Al-Tantawi, who ruled as chair of the Supreme Military Council between February 2011 and June 2012; Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who took office in June 2012 and was deposed in July 2013; provisional president Adly Mansour (July 2013-June 2014); and now the elected Al Sisi.

The widespread scepticism among Egyptian citizens is based on their own experience, which shows that none of the previous four mandatories and half a dozen of governments they have had since they launched their massive popular revolution in January 2011 has been able to deal with their urgent needs.

Moreover, the two candidates to Egyptian presidency in May this year delivered big promises that ordinary people doubted they could ever deliver. In this, both of them behaved in a “business as usual” manner, just like in most Western electoral campaigns.

Therefore, and again regardless of who won and now takes office, and independently of the outcome of the summer/autumn parliamentary elections, the daily life of most of Egypt’s 94 million people is anything but easy.

Some facts help put the situation in perspective:

– Nearly 40 percent of Egyptians live in poverty or extreme poverty.

– Unemployment has jumped to over 13 percent, according to official mid -2013 data, with more than 3.2 million Egyptians now out of the job market, compared with 2.5 million in the same period in 2010. Egypt’s economically active population amounts to 23.7 million workers.

– Domestic public debt amount to nearly 200 billion dollars, according to governmental figures for July 2013. Meanwhile, foreign public debt reached around 39 billion dollars last year.

– Egypt’s foreign currency reserves were estimated in mid-2013 at some 19 billion dollars, compared with 33 billion in January 2011, and national currency rates have fallen by about 20 percent, implying a growing devaluation of the national currency – the Egyptian pound.

– Inflation has been steadily increasing by a monthly average close to 1 percent, with an annual rate estimated at more than 11.5 percent.

– The national budget deficit now exceeds 280 billion dollars, compared with 194 billion dollars in 2013.

– Slum inhabitants are estimated at more than six million Egyptians, with garbage collection and drug trafficking among their major sources of income.

– The Sinai peninsula has become a “nerve centre” of terrorism, with militants and mercenaries, both Egyptians and foreigners, reportedly armed with weapons provided by the Hamas Islamic movement in Gaza, Libyan arms traffickers and Turkish organisations, according to the findings of the Egyptian judiciary system. Most terrorist organisations active in both Sinai and other regions are believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.

All this is compounded by a number of features of the daily lives of Egyptians – hundreds of civilians have been victims of terrorist attacks, brutal killings and explosions, university students have been abducted and young women have been raped.

Since its president Morsi was ousted on July 3 last year, the Muslim Brotherhood has launched a systematic series of attacks everywhere in Egypt, according to national security services.

Related terrorist organisations, such as Beit Al Maqdas and Ajnad Misr, have been perpetrating violent, deadly operations against both civilians and military forces.

Meanwhile, former influential figures of Mubarak’s regime (which ruled Egypt from October 1981-to February 2011) have systematically taken their fortunes abroad, and are said to have funded professional criminals to destabilise the country with the hope that major chaos will return them to power.

An estimated total of over 200 billion dollars (equivalent to the national domestic debt) is reported to be lying in bank accounts in “fiscal havens” around the world. Mubarak’s family fortune has been estimated to amount at over 70 billion dollars and Egypt has been trying to recover these funds.

The first wave of massive popular revolution in January 2011, which ousted Mubarak, paved the way for dozens and dozens of opposition newspapers and tens of national and satellite TV networks.

With the exception of just a half a dozen of them, most of them have fallen into gossip-oriented practices, often with improvised commentators, all leading to a deeper, insane public opinion confusion.

Parallel to all these national hurdles, Egypt also faces huge challenges abroad. One of these is the risk that vital water supplies will dramatically decrease due to Ethiopia’s ‘Grand Renaissance’ dam, currently under construction on the Blue Nile. Some Egyptian experts have already started warning against the risk of a “dangerous water hunger” one decade from now.

Another challenge is represented by the unlimited funds reportedly provided by Qatar to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in the freezing of relations between the two countries.

This also led three Gulf countries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – to withdraw their ambassadors in Qatar on March 5, 2014, due to what they consider as flagrant intrusion in the internal affairs of another Arab state.

To complete the picture, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has found a “safe haven” in Libya, according to both Egyptian and Libyan sources, who say that some of the weapons used by the Muslim Brotherhood for its terrorist attacks come from Libya, where there are up to 25 million weapons, according to authoritative Libyan politicians.

Excerpt:

An empty polling station in Garden City, Cairo. Credit: Amanda Mustard

By Annabell Van den Berghe
CAIRO, May 29 2014 (IPS)

With a result already known before the race started, many did not even bother heading to the polling stations and the streets in Cairo were unusually empty during the election process that ended Wednesday, just like the ballot boxes.

Egyptians had been called on to vote for their second president in two years, but the low turnout threatened to undermine the credibility of the popular candidate. former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who wanted to show the world once and for all that the overthrow of the first freely-elected president, Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, was not a coup by the military but a revolution backed by the Egyptian people.

Sisi himself had aimed for an 80 percent turnout but, after two days, this turnout seemed unachievable. Observers estimated that 20 percent of the electorate had cast votes over two days, while organisers of the campaign of Hamdeen Sabbahi, Sisi’s only opponent, said they had logged a turnout of no more than 15 percent turnout.

In a first attempt to boost these numbers, Egyptian authorities extended the voting on Tuesday by an extra hour. And shortly after that, another effort was made by granting an extension of an extra day on Wednesday.“Real change lies in the hands of the youth. We are the ones fighting for a better Egypt, but we need time. When we reach the age to rule the country, we will do it differently” – 23-year-old law student

The Presidential Election Commission defended this decision stating that it was a response to calls by citizens who were struck by the heat wave in Egypt and therefore could not go to vote. But this latter attempt was seen by many as a fraud.

“This was ridiculous,” said Omar Amin, a 28-year-old architect. “We all knew it is not about who would win these elections, but how many votes there would be. It made no sense to extend the voting by another day, just to reach the numbers they had in mind.” Amin is one of many young people who decided to stay at home instead of casting a ballot.

But the concerns about turnout were already clear long before the heat wave arrived on Tuesday. After the authorities declared the second day of voting a national holiday and several other measures were taken to improve the turnout, the worry was crystal clear. Major shopping centres had to close their doors hours before normal closing time to make sure Egyptians would not use their newly announced holiday for shopping instead of doing their duty as citizens.

Egypt’s highest Islamic state-run authority Al-Azhar preached that failure to vote was “disobeying the nation.” And the head of the Coptic church in Egypt, Pope Tawadros, gave a speech exhorting voters to head to the polls

“It is such a paradox to use religion and religious authorities to move people to voting,” a women in her thirties who did not want to give her name, told IPS. “Those who are fighting the Muslim Brotherhood by calling them terrorists because they used religion as an instrument to gain popularity, are now doing exactly the same thing.”

But not only the churches and mosques tried to convince Egyptians to vote. State television as well as national radio scolded the public for not showing up at the polls. A TV anchor said that those who were not voting “should be shot”, or “at least should shoot themselves.”

But not everybody was convinced by the propaganda of local media loyal to both the interim government and frontrunner Sisi. “I am not voting. Even if I were in Alexandria where I should be voting, I wouldn’t make the effort. I’d rather shoot myself,” Marc Dimitri joked during the elections, referring to the controversial quote of the TV anchor.

Dimitri is a 23-year-old law student from Alexandria, residing in Cairo. He doesn’t believe Egypt’s future lies in the hands of the current politicians. “Whoever will be our president, now or in the coming years, will not be able to make a change,” he believes. “Real change lies in the hands of the youth. We are the ones fighting for a better Egypt, but we need time. When we reach the age to rule the country, we will do it differently.”

Ahmed Mohamed Seif, a 24-year-old colleague of Dimitri agreed. “We have an incredibly strong judiciary system, based on the French system. The problem in Egypt isn’t the skeleton of institutions, it’s the executive part. Egypt is corrupt. That’s what needs to be changed, and only a new generation can do this.”

Young Egyptians seemed to stay far away from the polls. The women lining up at the “females only” polling station in the Garden City district of Cairo were all in their early forties or older. They believed their vote would make a difference. “Sisi will win the elections! Our hero, I love him,” chemistry professor Malak Mehdi shouted. “He understands the Egyptian people, he knows our needs. Sabbahi is nobody, Sisi will assure the stability of Egypt,” she added.

While the female crowd was chanting for Sisi, patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers just outside the polling station. Maya Husein, a 52-year-old woman next in line, chimed in: “Sisi is a strong man with a strong hand, this is what Egypt needs. He freed us from terrorism and will continue protecting us.”

Sisi’s propaganda machine seemed to have worked. The adulation of Sisi over recent months pushed many to vote for him, mostly women who adore him and see him as the saviour of the nation.

But a couple of blocks away, at a local coffee shop, some friends gathered for tea instead of casting votes. Like Dimitri and Seif, they questioned the capability of Sisi to rule their country. “His (Sisi’s) campaign was totally focussed on the war on terror, he didn’t talk about the future. But what is next? What will he do after all Islamists are jailed or killed?” wondered 31-year-old Nader Abdelrahmen.

“A year ago we were told that someone would be held accountable for the hundreds of deaths during the dispersal (of a pro-Morsi sit in at Rabaa in August 2013, ed.). Today we see all Muslim Brotherhood leaders and its members arrested or even sentenced to death – nobody talks about the massacres anymore. And we are the next to come: they have already started threatening us. Is this justice? Is this how he will rule over Egypt?” complains Ammar Abubakr, a prominent 33-year-old graffiti artist and activist.

“I am not boycotting because I agree with the Muslim Brotherhood. I am boycotting because I am against the failure of this system. At this point, there is no suitable option for this generation,” he continued.

Although the Brotherhood called for a boycott of these elections, and most of its supporters stayed away from the ballot boxes, there are apparently many other reasons why the turnout was beneath all expectations – and the extension of the voting did not substantially affect the final results.

Number one in this race for president is he who stayed at home. Sisi ended up right behind, with 90% of the votes out of the roughly 40 percent turnout, which makes him the new leader of Egypt – despite the heat.

Violent demonstrations have followed branding of the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Jan 14 2014 (IPS)

As Egyptians head for a referendum Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the fate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was swept into government in the last election, hangs in the balance.

The ruling military junta has been targeting the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) continuously since it seized power last year. Following a Dec. 23 suicide attack which targeted a police station in the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, in which 16 people were killed and dozens wounded, the Egyptian government formally designated the MB a terrorist organisation.

The government accused it of carrying out the suicide attack even though a Sinai-based militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility.“We should consider this an interim constitution because it was drafted by a non-elected committee."

“The local media are trying now to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind the terrorist attacks taking place in Egypt recently in order to disrupt the referendum, but I reject this claim unless the authorities provide real evidence to condemn them,” said Bassam al-Zarqa, vice-president of the Salafi al-Nour Party, a strongly Islamist party.

“The map of Islamist groups has not changed,” al-Zarqa, former assistant to ousted President Mohamed Morsi (2012-2013), told IPS. “Those who believe that violence is the only way to change are still involved in terrorist attacks, while other groups believe in democracy and peaceful change. The MB is in the second group, and decided decades ago to renounce violence.”

But, he added, “there is no doubt that the recent terrorist attacks undermine the popularity of the MB and make them lose a large segment of sympathisers.”

Al-Zarqa believes that the electoral process is the only solution to save Egypt from sliding into a police state. He said the key indicator will be the people’s acceptance or refusal of the next president, regardless of his background and whether or not he belongs to the military.

“I have reservations about the ways of selecting the committee that drafted the Constitution, as they dropped the will of 18 million citizens who had voted in favour of the previous Constitution. The ball is now in the court of the Egyptian people to approve or reject this Constitution.”

Amr Moussa, chairman of the 50-member committee responsible for drafting the new constitution for Egypt, has said “this constitution widens the scope of freedoms in a very impressive way, reinforces the principles of gender equality, and grants women greater rights.” He expects the constitution to pass with a 70 percent “yes” vote.

Shortly before designation of the MB as a terrorist organisation, Moussa said, “Now I invite them to participate in the referendum and prove that they are part of this nation and that they want to get out of this chaotic situation.”

Moussa, who came fifth in Egypt’s first post-revolution presidential election in June 2012, said he would not contest the next election, and expressed his support for Egypt’s military chief, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, if he runs.

“The groups which reject the new constitution are extremists and refuse to recognise the June 30 revolution as a popular revolt, and consequently its influence on the political life,” Gabber Nassar, professor of constitutional law at Cairo University, told IPS.

Nassar, who was a member of the Committee of 50, told IPS “the endeavours of the MB and its allies to mobilise against the new constitution will fail, especially since the Egyptians link them with the terrorist attacks that threaten the security of the state.”

Nassar believes that the MB, which is formally boycotting the referendum, will “secretly enjoin their followers to participate and vote against the constitution, because they are used to work in the dark.” He added: “I expect that the final result of the referendum will be overwhelmingly yes.”

There is little to compare between the two constitutions – the one drafted in the days of Morsi and the one drafted by the Committee of 50, Nassar said. The first, he said, was devoted to the dominance of one faction in power, while the second is focusing on liberties and the rights of the marginalised and religious minorities and the underprivileged who were ignored by all previous constitutions.

“We should consider this an interim constitution because it was drafted by a non-elected committee,” Adel Ramadan, legal advisor at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), told IPS.

Ramadan believes that the vote on Jan. 14 and 15 will not be only on the constitution, but on the road map and the legitimacy of the current system – and a rejection of the MB.