Category Archives: “Arab Spring”

Against the Drones

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

YEMENIS AFFECTED BY U.S. DRONE STRIKES TO LAUNCH VICTIMS’ UNION

by Amel Ahmed, Al Jazeera, March 31, 2014

Friends and family members of victims of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen are launching a national drone victims’ organization Tuesday to support affected communities and lobby for a change in Yemeni government policy regarding the covert program.

The National Organization for Drone Victims (NODV), with the assistance of UK-based legal charity Reprieve, will conduct investigations of drone strikes and highlight the civilian impact of the U.S.’ controversial drone program in Yemen.

Baraa Shiban, the project coordinator for Reprieve, told Al Jazeera that the constant presence of drones in Yemen is devastating communities. “We are talking almost 50 percent of the country — ten provinces in total — who suffer from the constant hovering of drones.”

Shiban said that NODV will assist affected communities in the aftermath of drone strikes by focusing on the economic impact of the loss of families’ primary bread-winners, psychological trauma and physical injuries. Continue reading Against the Drones →

فيديو للقاعدة في اليمن يكشف معلومات جديدة عن اقتحام «مركزي صنعاء» واستقبال الفارين

"Arab Spring", Terrorism Issue, Yemen

المصدر أونلاين – خاص
الأحد 30 مارس 2014 03:47:10 صباحًا

بث تنظيم القاعدة في جزيرة العرب في ساعة متأخرة من مساء يوم السبت مقطعاً فيديو لحفل استقبال السجناء الفارين في الهجوم على السجن المركزي بصنعاء منتصف شهر فبراير الماضي.

وأظهر المقطع المتجزأ لأكثر من تسجيل عشرات من عناصر التنظيم وعدد من القادة في بلدة جبلية وعرة باليمن، بعد أيام من بث صور للحفل، وكشفت تسجيلات للسجناء الفارين معلومات عن دخول مواد لتصنيع القنابل اليدوية.

وأظهرت لقطات من المقطع رجالاً ملثمين مصطفين بأسلحتهم في طريق ضيق أمام سيارات تحمل السجناء الفارين ويطلق عدد منهم الرصاص في الهواء مع صرخات التكبير بالتزامن مع ترديد المسلحين للزوامل والهتافات الترحيبية.

ويعكس إطلاق النار والصراخ حالة من الاطمئنان والتحصن في المنطقة التي أقام بها تنظيم القاعدة لحفل الاستقبال فضلاً عن تواجد عدد من القادة المطلوبين للحكومة اليمنية ولواشنطن.

Continue reading فيديو للقاعدة في اليمن يكشف معلومات جديدة عن اقتحام «مركزي صنعاء» واستقبال الفارين →

Yemen’s child brides and beggars fend for themselves

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Yemen

by Abdullah Hamidaddin, Alarabiya.net, March 28, 2014

Maha is a 10 year old girl. She is the youngest of twelve and is now getting ready for her big day. She is to be married to a man who is thirty seven years old. Her mother is packing her bag. It’s a small bag. The family is so poor that Maha barely has ten pieces of clothes all together. Before she closes the bag, the mother puts in two plastic dolls. Maha found them while foraging for toys with her friends in the trash of an upscale neighborhood in Sanaa. I wonder what the mother is thinking now. She must be happy that Maha will have three meals a day. Before her engagement, Maha would only eat one meal daily and sometimes she had to sleep hungry. Now things seem brighter than before. The father spent part of her dowry on some food to fatten Maha up. Her fiancé remarked that she was getting too thin, and her parents were worried that he would call off the engagement started so they started feeding her more. Maha of course didn’t understand why she was eating alone. Why her mother wouldn’t share her oat meal and fresh cow’s milk. Meat was too expensive; but they would make soup from the fat which butchers usually throw away or feed the stray cats with.

I can’t imagine what Maha is thinking right now. I can’t imagine what she will be thinking when she is in a bedroom with her husband. Continue reading Yemen’s child brides and beggars fend for themselves →

Ba’d Kharab Halab

"Arab Spring", Architecture, Syria, Terrorism Issue


January 2013: Syrian government troops take position in a heavily damaged area in the old city of Aleppo; AFP/GETTY

There is a well-known, and after 2003 quite apt, proverb in Arabic: “After the destruction of Basra” (Ba’d kharab Basra). It originally referred to a slave revolt in Basra, the southern Iraqi port, in the 9th century. But it still resonates a millennium later. The savage violence that has left Syria in turmoil not seen since the days of the Mongols has now reduced major parts of one of the splendid cities of the Middle East to rubble. Now we see the destruction of Aleppo (Halab in Arabic), once Syria’s second largest city, with little evidence of a resolution of the fighting. Even the old suq has been destroyed beyond recognition. UNESCO designated Aleppo a World Heritage site, but this status has not saved it from massive destruction.


The Aleppo of the recent past

For the last three months the government of Bashir al-Asad has been dropping barrels — more than a thousand — of barrel bombs, making much of the city a ghost town. Some estimates indicate that 90% of Aleppo’s population has been forced out.

Sad pictures are readily available on the internet and on Youtube. But the horror of kharab continues. It appears that al-Asad is content to be the dictator of Damascus and let the rest of Syria be damned. Of course, he has his accomplices, the fanatic jihadists who are as vicious as the regime they are intent on toppling. Meanwhile the Syrian people suffer and the rest of the world either ignores this or makes things worse by supporting one side or the other with arms. If only we had a new proverb: ba’d kharab this insanity!

The future of Egyptian democracy: Political Islam becomes less political

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Terrorism Issue

by Nathan J. Brown, The Immanent Frame, March 11, 2014

For the past few years, much of the scholarly literature on Islamist movements has danced around the “participation/moderation” idea: that participation in democratic politics tends to moderate the ideology and positions of Islamists. I choose my term deliberately. When I say “danced around” I do not mean that scholars have endorsed its automatic applicability; far from it. Most have eschewed the vague term “moderation,” but even those who have used it have tried to give it specificity. And they have noted that the “participation” in question has generally been in non-democratic systems, so that a generalization culled from scholarship on political party behavior in democratic electoral systems (one that has plenty of qualifications and exceptions attached) is unlikely to be transferable to elections in which the existing regime will not allow itself to lose.

But while avoiding any simple “participation/moderation” argument, scholars were drawn to the idea that the ideology and behavior of Islamist movements could shift in response to changes in the political environment in which they operated. In short, they directed their attention away from how Islamists changed politics and instead focused on how politics changes Islamists. Continue reading The future of Egyptian democracy: Political Islam becomes less political →

Remembering 1920 in Iraq

"Arab Spring", Iraq, Iraq War, Islamic History, Shi'a


An Iraqi looks at a statue during his visit to the Najaf Heritage and 1920 Revolution Museum in the Khan al-Shilan building on February 27, 2014 in the holy city of Najaf, central Iraq © Haidar Hamdani – AFP

Iraq commemorates 1920 revolt against Britain in new museum

Your Middle East, February 27, 2014

Iraq opened a museum in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf on Thursday commemorating a 1920 uprising against British occupation in a building that once housed captured soldiers.

Iraq opened a museum in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf on Thursday commemorating a 1920 uprising against British occupation in a building that once housed captured soldiers.

The opening of the Najaf Heritage and 1920 Revolution Museum in the Khan al-Shilan building was attended by Tourism and Antiquities Minister Liwaa Smaisim, as well as tribal leaders and politicians.

“This is the first museum dedicated to the heritage and history of Najaf, and represents a symbol of the rejection of slavery and foreign occupation,” Smaisim told AFP. Continue reading Remembering 1920 in Iraq →

#WithSyria and Banksy: Saving Syria through Orientalism

"Arab Spring", Contemporary Art, Gender and Sexuality, Orientalism, Syria


Banksy’s two girls: #WithSyria campaign (L) and “There is always hope” (R)

by Hisham Ashkar, on/off..but mostly off, March 7, 2014

Ahead of the third anniversary of the Syrian uprising, a coalition of international organizations was formed, #WithSyria, urging people around the world to hold vigils on 15 March, with the aim to “show our leaders that we will not give up on the people of Syria, that they must act to bring an end to the bloodshed and to get aid to all those who need it.”

Among the organizations, we can find Amnesty International, Save the Children, Reporters Sans Frontières and the Church of England.

In their mobilization effort, they recruited Banksy, and indeed the famous anonymous British graffiti artist didn’t fail to impress us once again. He produced an original Banksy for the campaign, that Amnesty proudly twitted it.

This new Banksy reminds us of an old Banksy: A young girl losing a heart-shaped balloon to the wind. Behind her on the staircase is written “There is always hope.” The graffiti was made in 2007.

For #WithSyria campaign, the little girl was given a veil. Well yes, it’s very logical! Syria is a Muslim country. Muslim women are dotted with veils. So to be politically correct , and to take in consideration and not to offend the feeling of Muslims, the little girl wears a veil.

Maybe Banksy didn’t thought much of that while drawing his work. But this reveals an unbearable amount of ignorance, stereotyping and orientalism, not only from Banksy, but also from the organizations in #WithSyria camapign. Continue reading #WithSyria and Banksy: Saving Syria through Orientalism →

Saladin Days in Oslo

"Arab Spring", Conferences and Talks, Islam in Europe, Terrorism Issue


Anouar Majid, far right; Olivier Roy to the left

by Anouar Majid, Tingitana, March 6, 2014

Olivier Roy gave a spirited and light-hearted lecture at Oslo’s Litteraturhuset on secularism Islam and the West, followed by comments from a Norwegian expert on terrorism and myself. As happens to me nowadays, I chose not to comment on, or highlight, the finer points of his critical analysis of the terms “secular” and “religious,” but to express my barely disguised exasperation with the tropes that have blocked the Muslims’ mind for more than two centuries. The question, in the end, is not whether religion is misread, or whether it is good or not, but whether we are condemned to define ourselves in terms penned down for us by scribes from antiquity and the early medieval period. I don’t care much about secularism, but I do lament the waste of our mental faculties and our entrapment in mythologies that are totally dissociated from our current experiences. The prophets of Scripture spoke the languages of their people; who will speak for us today? –