International Crisis Group

Egyptian Leader Adds Rivals of West to Syria Plan | New York Times

By David D. Kirkpatrick

Staking out a new leadership role for Egypt in the shaken landscape of the Arab uprisings, President Mohamed Morsi is reaching out to Iran and other regional powers in an initiative to halt the escalating violence in Syria.

FULL ARTICLE (NYT)

Photo: Jonathan Rashad/flickr

Can Iraq find its way out of its current political stalemate? An interview with Joost Hiltermann | Ekurd.net

By Joel Wing

The International Crisis Group (IGC) is one of the best sources on Iraq. Its reports contain some of the most in-depth analysis of the situation within that country. Joost Hiltermann is the Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the IGC, and is responsible for much of that coverage. Below is a short interview with Hiltermann about whether Iraq can solve its on going political problems. 

FULL ARTICLE (Ekurd.net)

Photo: DoD photo by Sgt. Curt/Wikiemedia Commons

U.N. Security Council condemns Syria army attack in Houla | The Los Angeles Times

By Patrick J. McDonnell

The U.N. Security Council on Sunday condemned Syrian army artillery and tank barrages on a civilian neighborhood where 108 people, most of them women and children, were killed, suggesting in a carefully worded statement that government forces were largely responsible.

As international outrage escalated, some viewed the carnage as a possible turning point in the conflict. The government and opposition groups exchanged blame for the massacre Friday in the township of Houla in western Homs province.

The Security Council, meeting in an emergency session, said the “outrageous use of force against [the] civilian population” is a violation of a U.N. peace plan. It called on the government and its opponents to end violence, the U.N. said.

The statement was approved after a lengthy discussion withRussia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Russia, which holds a veto and has thwarted any U.N.-backed international intervention in Syria, gave its assent to a statement that distanced the Syrian government from the killings of those in Houla who died from shooting at close range or as a result of “severe physical abuse.”

The U.N. said a new count indicated that 108 people were killed in Houla, including 49 children and 34 women. How many died from government shelling and how many perished from other causes was not clear.

FULL ARTICLE (The Los Angeles Times)

Photo: Bulent Kilic/ Getty Images

International Pressure on Syria Grows After Killings | The New York Times

By Neil MacFarquhar

International efforts to pressure Syria intensified on Monday, as the United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan began negotiations in the capital, Damascus, and the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that continued atrocities could make military intervention more likely.

Mr. Annan traveled to Syria seeking to salvage his peace plan, which appeared more precarious than ever after the massacre of at least 108 villagers in the Houla area of central Syria. He urged the government to hold to its commitment in March to honor the six-point plan, which included not only a cease-fire, but also political dialogue with the opposition and freedom for Syrians to demonstrate.

“I urge the government to take bold steps to signal that it is serious in its intention to resolve this crisis peacefully, and for everyone involved to help create the right context for a credible political process,” Mr. Annan said. Creating the right climate for progress was the responsibility of not only the government but “everyone with a gun,” he added.

Questions about the viability of the plan were thrown into sharp relief by the massacre in the villages that constitute Houla, near Homs, on Friday, whose victims included 49 children and 34 women by United Nations count. The Security Council on Sunday unanimously condemned the massacre and, while not assigning blame, censured the Syrian government for using heavy artillery against civilians.

FULL ARTICLE (The New York Times) 

Photo: Shaam News Network/ Reuters

Foreign Policy | Our Man in Baghdad

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, has a remarkable ability to make enemies. As Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group puts it, “Personal relations between everyone and Maliki are terrible.” This gift was vividly displayed in March, when the annual meeting of the Arab League was held in Baghdad. Although the event was meant to signal Iraq’s re-emergence as a respectable country after decades of tyranny and bloodshed, leaders of 10 of the 22 states, including virtually the entire Gulf, refused to attend out of pique at Maliki’s perceived hostility to Sunnis both at home and abroad, turning the summit into a vapid ritual. The only friend Iraq has left in the neighborhood is Shiite Iran, which seems intent on reducing its neighbor to a state of subservience.

It’s true that Iraq is no longer a threat to its neighbors, as it was under Saddam Hussein. In that narrow respect, the U.S. invasion has made the Middle East a safer place, though at an unspeakable cost in Iraqi and American lives. But the hopes that Bush administration officials once entertained — that a post-Saddam Iraq, perhaps guided by a secular figure like the émigré opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi, would serve as a stabilizing, pro-American force for the region — now look patently absurd. Maliki never had much interest in being a friend of the United States, and the departure of U.S. troops has allowed him to forget about it altogether.

What Iraq looks like today is an Iranian cat’s paw. At the Arab League meeting, Iraqi diplomats blocked any effort to take robust action against Syria or even use tough language, thus advancing Iran’s agenda at the expense of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which advocate arming the rebels seeking to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Immediately after the meeting ended, Maliki dashed to Tehran to confer with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Almost every Iraq expert I’ve ever talked to agrees that Maliki is an Iraqi nationalist who squirms under the Iranian thumb. But that’s where he finds himself today. The question is why.

FULL ARTICLE (Foreign Policy) 

(Source: foreignpolicy.com)

Lost in Transition: The World According to Egypt’s SCAF

Middle East/North Africa Report N°12124 Apr 2012

Since it assumed power after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, the performance of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has been, at times, head-scratching. Extolled in the wake of the uprising as the revolution’s protector, many have come to view it as an agent of the counter-revo­lu­tion. It often has been obstinate, before abruptly yielding to pressure. It values its long ties with Washington, from which it receives much assistance, but seemed willing to jeopardise them by targeting U.S.-funded NGOs. Suspected by Islamists of seeking to deprive them of opportunity to govern and by non-Islamists of entering a secret pact with the Muslim Brotherhood, it finds itself in the worst of both worlds: an angry tug-of-war with liberal protesters and a high-wire contest with Islamists. It displays little interest in governing, wishing instead to protect privileges, but erratic behaviour threatens even that. On the eve of presidential elections that have become a high-stakes free-for-all, the SCAF should take a step back and, with the full range of political actors, agree on principles for a genuine and safe political transition.

What has the SCAF been thinking? Understanding the Egyptian military’s mindset is difficult and requires modesty in reaching conclusions. At the core of the SCAF’s outlook is the conviction that its principal complaints against the Mubarak regime – the slide toward hereditary government; the excesses of neoliberal policies; ostentatious corruption by networks associated with the president’s family – faithfully reflected the public’s. Once it had ousted the president, it follows, it felt it had accomplished the revolution’s goals. As a corollary, the SCAF was and is inclined to view any who continued to protest after Mubarak’s fall as serving either their own narrow self-interests or, worse, those of foreign powers (read: the U.S.) aiming to weaken and fragment a proud Arab nation. No doubt, the latter notion has been a tool used by the SCAF to discredit its critics; but it would be a mistake to see it as that alone, for it is also a deeply-held belief within the military.

As a corollary to the corollary, the SCAF considers itself the sole actor possessing the experience, maturity and wisdom necessary to protect the country from domestic and external threats. In contrast, virtually all political parties are regarded with scorn, self-centred in their demands, narrow-minded in their behaviour. The Muslim Brotherhood stands as an exception of sorts, treated by the military with guarded respect. But it is a respect born of the long-term, hard-fought battle waged against an outlawed organisation that faced decades of persecution. Because the Brotherhood represents the only organised political force with which it must contend, the SCAF has treated it seriously – which does not mean sympathetically.

The interests the SCAF wishes to defend are a mix of the national and more parochial, but insofar as the military is persuaded it alone can protect Egypt, it has a tendency to conflate its well-being with that of the country. With the spread of internal insecurity, volatility in the Sinai and uncertainty in Libya and Sudan, it hardly sees this as a time to trust untested civilians. But it also hardly sees this as a time for others to challenge its privileged status – such as a secret budget sheltered from civilian oversight; de facto immunity from prosecution; and vast business ventures that affect key sectors of the economy. It almost certainly has no wish to remain in the political spotlight, governing the nation and thus blamed for what inevitably will be a taxing period of social and economic distress. But nor does it intend to be sidelined, lose its self-ascribed role as guarantor of constitutional legitimacy, be stripped of its economic privileges or see political institutions in the hands of a single (Islamist) party. Its objective is to stay in the background yet remain an arbitrator; and shun the limelight even as it retains decisive influence.

The trouble is that virtually all the SCAF has been doing and that has occurred since it took power has placed that objective further out of reach. Playing secularists against Islamists and Islamists against secularists alienated both. After a period of at least implicit understanding, the two leading forces – the SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood – appear locked in a zero-sum game. The degree of uncertainty is striking. Egyptians elected a parliament and are scheduled to choose a president without enjoying either well-defined or commonly accepted powers. The committee due to oversee the drafting of a new constitution, which already had lost much of its credibility, has been suspended by court order. The issue of civil-military relations, at the centre of controversy both before and after the uprising, remains open. Of greatest concern, perhaps, is the risk the transitional process, despite having checked all the boxes (parliamentary and presidential elections and a new constitution), will end up doing so in ways that undermine the new institutions’ legitimacy, yield an unstable political system and fail to resolve any of Egypt’s many questions.

From the SCAF’s perspective, this cannot be welcome news. Its goal, from the outset, was to preserve what it could from the previous system for the sake of continuity, restore normalcy, marginalise a protest movement it viewed with considerable suspicion as well as both work with and contain the Islamists. Not only are the odds for success declining by the day; in the process, it also increasingly is alienating a range of political forces while diminishing its leverage and capacity to pursue its goals.

Given growing political polarisation, the presidential election has become pivotal. Fearing that the military would impose a strong presidential system, void parliament of real influence and thus rob it of its historical opportunity to govern, the Muslim Brotherhood has thrown its weight into this race, reneging on its repeated pledge not to do so. Remnants of the old regime sought to respond in kind. The presidential electoral commission has thrown out some of the highest-profile candidates – from the former regime; from the Brotherhood; and from the Salafi movement – but that has done little to mollify passions, as both Islamists and non-Islamists, suspecting a regime attempt to shape the electoral outcome, are renewing their protests.

The election may well be the SCAF’s last chance to peacefully produce a “balanced” political system, reflecting the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary supremacy, yet also protecting interests critical to the military. Should Egyptians elect an Islamist without a prior understanding between the political forces and the military, the SCAF could well find itself at once powerful and helpless, unable to influence the process save by unconstitutional – and highly risky – moves. The prospect of renewed, widespread confrontation and an abrupt halt to the transitional process, once remote, no longer is unthinkable. The end result could be a presidential election that further inflames the situation, gives rise to institutional and extra-insti­tu­tional challenges, jeopardises the transition and settles nothing.

Neither the SCAF nor the Muslim Brotherhood wanted it to come to this. For the two, the clash is premature. Both would have benefited from a compromise agreement, safeguarding essential military prerogatives while setting the country on a clear path toward full civilian rule, allowing the Islamists to govern but ensuring it happens gradually and inclusively, consistent with the Brotherhood’s own fear of grabbing too much too soon. But, because the transition increasingly has taken on a winner-take-all quality, neither appears to feel it has a choice.

It is not too late. What is urgently needed is what the SCAF was either unwilling or unable to do from the outset: consult broadly and seriously with representatives from the entire political class and reach agreement on key parameters of a future political system – the powers of the presidency, the constitutional committee’s make-up and the basis of civil-military relations. By clarifying what precisely is at stake in the presidential elections, defining checks and balances and ensuring that fundamental guarantees can protect various interests at play, such a deal would de-dramatise the contest. It would make it less of an uncontrollable existential exercise – and more of a manageable political one.

CRISIS GROUP

The New York Times | Militants and Politics Bedevil Yemen’s New Leaders

Two months after a new president took office, Yemen’s fledgling interim government has found itself overwhelmed by a set of dangerous new challenges to the country’s stability, including a series of a bold attacks by a resurgent militant movement in the south and a festering political standoff in the capital.

n the last few weeks, the new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has faced open defiance after he tried to dismiss or reassign officials loyal to his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen for 33 years. In the south, hundreds of people have been killed in clashes that intensified after insurgents attacked an army base and seized heavy weapons, including tanks.

A military officer in Lawdar, one of the centers of the fighting, said that soldiers had not been able to recapture an army base that they were forced to abandon after an attack by the militants in early April. “The situation is now out of control,” said the officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

FULL ARTICLE (The New York Times)