The Guardian has an interactive and updated timeline on the events labeled the “Arab Spring,” with links to articles in The Guardian. You can choose the time period and the country and the type of event or issue. It is current through September 26, 2011.
Al Jazeera has collected a gallery of street graffiti on the overthrow of Libya’s still-on-the-run Qaddafi. Check out the site for all the images.
Photograph by Murad Sezer/Reuters
A Man of God and Technology, Trying to Steady Libya
By ANNE BARNARD, The New York Times, September 16, 2011
Tripoli, Libya
AREF NAYED was sipping cappuccino in the soaring marble lobby of the Corinthia Hotel near Tripoli’s seafront, quoting Montesquieu on law and Augustine on forgiveness in a conversation that had begun with earthier subjects, like the challenges of restoring Libya’s water supply and counting its dead.
He held forth on how Bedouin poetry shaped a moderate Islam in Libya, and he was just starting to explain the relevance to Libyan politics of the mathematical theory of complexity — it had to do with something called “flocking phenomena†— when his cellphone rang.
“I have to take this,†he said, glancing at the number. “Somebody wants to surrender.â€
An associate of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan leader, wanted safety guarantees before turning himself in. Mr. Nayed wanted to make it happen, and not just because fostering reconciliation is one of his many jobs for Libya’s de facto government.
He is also a Muslim theologian who, in addition to running a technology business, spent his time before the Libyan rebellion writing erudite papers arguing that compassion is the paramount value in Islam, that pious Muslims can thrive within a liberal secular state and that even the most righteous ones should adopt a “humble recognition†of their own fallibility.
Now, as the Transitional National Council’s coordinator of a Libyan stabilization team being asked to solve problems like fuel shortages and human rights abuses, he suddenly finds himself in an ideal laboratory to test his signature theological propositions — and to try to make them government policy.
“I don’t think there should be a witch hunt, purges or cleansings,†he said Monday at the hotel cafe, adding that those who committed crimes under Colonel Qaddafi should be tried. “Any time you deal with human beings with that kind of terminology, you end up with unfairness and persecution.†Continue reading Montesquieu, St. Augustine and Libya
Consider the opening line of the lead story in yesterday’s New York Times:
BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.
In the long durée, as Napoleon might say if he were alive today, politics makes strange embedded fellows of nation states. There are three nations at play here in the field of lording over by the world’s reigning super power. Iraq and Libya had European imposed (and later revolution-deposed) monarchs at mid-stream in the 20th century. At the same time Saudi Arabia’s royal line evolved an iconclastic religiously mandated kingship that has withstood toppling and seems likely to do so far into the security based future. All three states are where they are today largely because of the world’s thirst for crude oil. The same three states, should Iraq survive de facto federation, face a future defined by a mega-politicized war on terrorism, a war with no state-like enemies being fought by a coalition of nation states willing to arm themselves to the teeth with conventional weapons and make airline passengers take their shoes off each and every time they fly. Two centuries from now a future Napoleon, whatever his or her nationality, may look back on the current political climate and have a hindsight sense of déjà vu, or will it be more of the voodoo politics mass mediated today? Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Déjà Voodoo
“After a short naval bombardment, Tripoli fell to 1500 Italian sailors on October 3, 1911”
Watching the media coverage of the “rebel” pick-up entry into the outskirts of Tripoli is a chilling reminder that we continue to be a culture of spectator pornography. I can imagine my ancient Roman ancestors quaffing goblets of wine as they reveled in the blood flowing from indentured swordsmen and Christian martyrs fed to the lions. How little is changed when fans break out in fights at a pre-season American football game and soccer hooliganism remains a curse on civility in Britain. On our screens we see the sanitized version of war, of course, not the sun-scorched corpses, the unrecognizable twisted body parts, the agony at the receiving end of grenade blast. The number of casualties, invariably inflated by some and deflated by others, is duly noted as though it could be the up and down daily tick of the stock market. Ah yes, the “mad dog” of Libya, ruthless dictator as he clearly has been, is about to disappear from the scene. Hooray for the good guys…
One can celebrate the overturn of a dictatorial regime, but is it ever worth celebrating individual deaths? Martyrs are always those who die on your own side; the other bodies might as well be animal dung. This was the fate of Mussolini at the end of World War II. History will be rewritten by those who assume power, but the memories of widespread destruction will continue to haunt a generation or two or three or more. The pain continues because old wounds are continually reopened and the scars never really go away. If you live through a war, that war will not die with you as an individual; often, not even with a generation.
There is nothing new going on in Libya; it is the age-old toppling of one regime and ascendancy of another. The Phoenicians had their turn; then the Romans; then the barbarians that swept through Rome, the Ottomans and then again the Italians in 1911. There is always this sense that this time around it may be permanent, a road to future progress. Clearly, almost any kind of regime in Libya after Qaddafi will be better for most people, but in the broad historical perspective it may only be one pendulum swing in the sad history of humanity’s intolerance. No, the problem is not Islam, not the West, not the monetary policies of the World Bank, not even fascism, communism or any specific ideology. We have evolved as a species dependent on cooperation because we also have the propensity of a will to power over others. Those who fight for peace, often by refusing to fight in the mode of a Gandhi, only highlight the fact that peace is not the normal state of affairs for our species over the long haul. The hope that one day a Messiah, a Jesus, or any dreamed up deliverer, will come and set things straight is as old as the need for such a hope.
There is an old Arabic proverb, ba’d kharab Basra (after the destruction of Basra), one that gained new resonance during the regime of Saddam Hussein in his disastrous war with Iran and then the two Gulf Wars that eventually brought about his end. So now is it to be ba’d kharab Tripoli? Continue reading Ba’d kharab Tripoli
Yesterday the news out of Libya indicated a sudden reversal of fortune for the forces opposed to Qaddafi. Two of his sons are now in custody, many parts of Libya are no longer under his control and the residents of the city are finally free to join the revolution. The Arab Spring has weathered a hot summer in Libya. It seems only a matter of time before Qaddafi is captured, killed or escapes to a safe haven. The pundits are spinning away, but predicting the actions of a megalomaniac who has exercised total power for some 42 years is a difficult task.
The future of Libya is uncertain, as is the case for Yemen and Syria, where protests continue despite the reluctance of a dictatorial leader to yield power. But the fact that Qaddafi could be in power for such a long time, be so ruthless to his own people and sponsor terrorism abroad is a chilling reminder that morality as a human right inevitably takes back seat to the Machiavellian bent of politics. The irony is that the Qaddafis of this world did not rise out of a desert vacuum, but are products of European intrusion into the region. In the case of Libya, Italy vexed its power under Mussolini over its southern neighbor, attempting to make it a fascist enclave and succeeding to a certain extent. After Italy’s defeat in World War II, King Idris (who had fled to Egypt in 1922) was reinstalled by the Allies. The king was deposed when Colonel Qaddafi assumed power in a coup in September of 1969. Idris was the one and only “king” of Libya, and survived after his expulsion until death in Cairo in 1983.
Today all eyes are on Tripoli and the ragtag collection of Libyans who rode the back of NATO airstrikes and direct foreign assistance to finally break Qaddafi’s grip. Continue reading All eyes on Tripoli
It seems as though Qaddafi is about to be defeated in Libya. No one knows what kind of government will replace him. But we do know that a long time ago this was a bastion of the Roman Empire. Above is one of the mosaics from Sabratha.
BY Karim Sadjapour, Foreign Policy, June 15, 2011
How a couple of cows explain a changing region: equal opportunity offender edition.
In the early years of the Cold War, in an effort to simplify — and parody — various political ideologies and philosophies, irreverent wits, in the spirit of George Orwell, went back to the farm. No one really knows how the two-cow joke known as “Parable of the Isms” came about, but most students of Political Science 101 have likely come across some variation of the following definitions:
Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of them and gives it to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes the cows.
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Over the years, the parables gradually expanded, using the two-cow joke to explain everything from French unions (You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.) to the Republican Party (You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what?). While in its original iteration the cows were a metaphor for currency, capital, and property, they later began to take on different meanings.
Today, the Middle East has replaced the Cold War as America’s primary foreign-policy preoccupation. As opposed to the seemingly ideologically homogenous communist bloc, however, the 22 diverse countries that compose the modern Middle East are still confusing to most Americans. Why can’t the Israeli and Palestinians stop fighting already? What’s the difference between Libya and Lebanon again?
Herewith then is a satirical effort to simplify the essence of Middle Eastern governments so that, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, “the boys in Lubbock” can read it. And, rather than symbolizing property, the cows here symbolize people, which — funny enough — is how most Middle Eastern regimes have traditionally viewed their populations.
Saudi Arabia
You have two cows with endless reserves of milk. Gorge them with grass, prevent them from interacting with bulls, and import South Asians to milk them.
Iran
You have two cows. You interrogate them until they concede they are Zionist agents. You send their milk to southern Lebanon and Gaza, or render it into highly enriched cream. International sanctions prevent your milk from being bought on the open market.
Syria
You have five cows, one of whom is an Alawite. Feed the Alawite cow well; beat the non-Alawite cows. Use the milk to finance your wife’s shopping sprees in London.
Lebanon
You have two cows. Syria claims ownership over them. You take them abroad and start successful cattle farms in Africa, Australia, and Latin America. You send the proceeds back home so your relatives can afford cosmetic surgery and Mercedes-Benzes.
Hezbollah
You have no cows. During breaks from milking on the teat of the Iranian cow you call for Israel’s annihilation. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: The Cynical Dairy Farmer’s Guide to the New Middle East