Egypt said staring down the barrel of a gun

Two Egyptians – one a media superstar, the other a seasoned diplomat – believe their country is trending towards disaster.

Egyptian media superstar and talk show host Imad Adeeb, writing for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, gives his reasons as follows:

This time, the rules of play in Egypt will be totally different than in the past.

This time, the president is duly elected, civilian and legitimate.

This time, if the army is called upon, it will answer the call only if it receives written guarantees that it won’t be ordered back to barracks.

This time, police won’t have rules of engagement and police chiefs don’t wish to stand trial again for killing protesters.

This time, not all the “street” is against the regime. There is a sharp divide between a street of loyalist demonstrators and a street of opposition protesters.

This time, political funding from abroad is a sign of frightening external links.

This time, there are 15 million firearms smuggled in from Libya and Sudan. More are turned out by local workshops.

This time, the stockpiling of firearms by numerous political groups is mushrooming.

This time, the Copts genuinely fear for their personal safety.

This time, there is a lack of interest among the protagonists in dialogue, negotiation or a settlement.

This time, the Judiciary is not an independent branch of power. It is party to the dispute.

This time, the president feels through his inner circle that many forces target him. He thus senses a conspiratorial and menacing atmosphere.

This time, the youths won’t hurl stones in the streets, but Molotov cocktails instead. They might even resort to primitive or automatic firearms.

This time, the famished, the paupers and the slum dwellers will come out, not to protest in Tahrir Square, but to appropriate anything or everything on Egyptian soil.

This time, American or regional intervention won’t ward off the disaster.

This time, only prayer will help.

Talking anonymously, the seasoned diplomat tells political analyst Sarkis Naoum, writing for the independent Beirut daily an-Nahar:

1. Egypt has a president, but he is inexperienced.

2. Egypt has innumerable problems that need to be addressed. They include the remnants of the Mubarak regime’s now-defunct National Party. They are the enforcers the party created and used before mutating into a quasi-independent force-for-hire.

3. Egypt has tens of millions of its citizens living either on the poverty threshold or under the poverty line.

4. Egypt has Islamists, chiefly Muslim Brothers, and Salafists.

5. Egypt is in transition. Apart from issues like Sharia jurisprudence and religion being the sole source for legislation, Arabs outside Egypt know little about Egypt’s constitutional impasse. What they don’t know is alarming, such as reducing the marriageable age for girls down to nine years.

6. The problem of sexual harassment on Egyptian streets is getting out of control. Females wearing a headscarf, veil or full hijab are being targeted now.

7. President Mohamed Morsi got rid of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its tutelage. Who gave him internal or external cover for the move, the United States?

8. Morsi sent troops to Sinai to confront extremist Jihadists and Salafis after they attacked Egyptian security forces there. Israel helped him secure Sinai with intelligence aid, but he never said so publicly.

9. Did the election of Muslim Brother Morsi give the nod to the entire Muslim Brotherhood to rule Egypt, its people and its resources?

10. Whether Morsi reached the helm alone or with all the Muslim Brothers, they have to address Egypt’s problems and build the state, its economy, its security and its tourism, considering that tourism without “sex” does not exist in the world. They have to tackle the problems of terrorists, Salafists, democrats and thugs.

Mideast playmakers waiting for a reelected Obama

Obama and Turkey's Erdogan (top) and Iran's Ahmadinejad greeting Egypt's Morsi in Tehran

Like many other regional leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Mohamed Morsi are biding their time, waiting on news of Barack Obama’s most likely re-election.

The Turkish premier and Egyptian president realize that before the United States president wins a second term on November 6, he won’t let any foreign policy issue interfere with his reelection campaign.

Frida Ghitis, a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, wrote in a special comment for CNN last month: “If Barack Obama could make three wishes, he would probably ask for the crisis in Syria to go away…

“Unfortunately for Obama, and tragically for the people in Syria, history has brought the American presidential campaign and the Syrian revolution to the same pages of the calendar. That means Obama will do whatever he can, for as long as he can, to keep the carnage in Syria from interfering with his reelection plan.

“That means the killings in Syria could go on longer than if the uprising had erupted during a nonelection year…

“The Obama administration has put other major foreign policy issues on the back burner in order to avoid giving Republicans fodder for criticism, to prevent new risks to the economy, or simply to avoid stepping on a landmine while moving along a dangerous global landscape.

“A report in Britain's Sunday Times claims that the White House asked Israel to delay an attack on Iran until after November. Many fear that a war with Iran would send oil prices skyrocketing and hurt Obama's reelection prospects. Sometimes history has lousy timing. And presidents don't get to make three wishes…”

Erdogan

Turkish columnist Gökhan Bacik, writing for Today’s Zaman, says some six weeks before the U.S. presidential elections “Middle East politics has fallen perfectly silent.” It’s the sort of quiet you would expect in a waiting room.

Comparing the political lull in the region to an interval between the death of a pope and the election of his successor, Bacik notes that “all actors are waiting for the results” of the U.S. presidential vote. And “Turkey is no exception.”

Erdogan, he says, wants to retrace five issues with a reelected Obama: Syria, Turkish-Israeli relations, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Islamism in the region, and Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki.

On Syria, some suggest a reelected Obama could take a strong leadership role to bring about regime change there. Others believe he could “at least help Turkey create some sort of security zone in northern Syria. Expectations vary, but there is one clear point: Ankara's first demand from Obama in his second term is to revisit the American position on Syria.”

On relations with Israel, says Bacik, Ankara expects the new Obama administration to prod the Jewish state to apologize to Ankara “for the deadly Mavi Marmara flotilla raid.”

Concerning the PKK, the anticipation relates to military matters. “In this area,” Bacik explains, “it is vital for Turkey to obtain more sophisticated technical support from the U.S. Ankara’s particular demand is for U.S.-made Predators that would help Turkey overcome its intelligence deficit in its struggle with the PKK. Similarly, serious military reform is needed, as there has been no substantive technological purchase in the last 10 years. Turkey is without even the necessary number of Cobra helicopters. Ankara knows very well that its military arsenal is far more limited than is ideal...”

Fourthly, “Ankara hopes Obama would help Turkey oust Nouri al-Maliki from office in Baghdad. For Ankara, Maliki has become the biggest structural threat to Turkey's regional position… Purging Maliki from politics is a main goal of Turkish foreign policy...”

Finally, according to Bacik, Ankara hopes a new Obama administration would continue supporting the legitimate participation of Islamists in the region’s political power play, “as in Egypt.”

Morsi

While it seems fair to say no world leader has a greater stake in Obama’s reelection than the Turkish prime minister, can the same be said of Egypt’s Islamist president?

Leading Lebanese political analyst Sarkis Naoum, writing for Beirut’s independent daily an-Nahar, detects signs of a disconnect developing between Obama and Egypt’s Islamist President Morsi.  

Asked if he considered Egypt an ally of the United States, Obama balked earlier this month. “You know, I don’t think that we would consider them an ally but we don’t consider them an enemy,” he said in an interview after protests outside the American Embassy in Cairo.

The State Department later reaffirmed somewhat awkwardly that Egypt is an ally. Egypt was designated by Congress in 1989 to be a Major Non-NATO ally along with Australia, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand.

Naoum sees Morsi perhaps seeking to establish a foreign policy that is independent of Washington. “He has taken important steps that have already raised eyebrows in Washington.”

Among such steps, says Naoum, “were his visits, first to China and then Iran, and his participation in the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Tehran… when the U.S. is on a sharp collision course with the Islamic Republic” over its nuclear ambitions.

Wondering if Morsi would normalize relations and restore diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic broken in 1980, Naoum writes:

“No one knows for sure. He might, especially if he felt Iran was prepared to abandon ambitions of becoming the region’s national, religious and economic hegemon and disown Syria’s Bashar al-Assad…

“But before taking such a step, Morsi has to take the following into account: (1) Iran won’t be feeding his country’s poor, or about 20-to-30 percent of his people, now living on average per capita income of two U.S. dollars per day (2) Iran won’t return tourism to Egypt (3) Iran won’t solve Egypt’s internal problem of sectarianism (4) Iran won’t settle mounting differences between Egypt’s moderate Islamist and Salafists (5) While Obama did not believe Egypt was an ally, Washington might end up designating it an enemy.

“Can Morsi bear such enmity?”

Afghan ills in the Syrian revolution

By Jamal Khashoggi

The author is a leading Saudi media figure who served as media aide to Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud while he was ambassador to the United Kingdom and to the United States. He was named by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud to head his upcoming AlArab TV news channel. Khashoggi wrote this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition of pan-Arab al-Hayat.

By Syrian artist Wissam Al Jazairy

Gloom regarding the Syria crisis is justified. Preparing for the worse is also warranted.

When international troubleshooter for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi chooses to forsake his main peacemaking task to visit refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, it means he has no idea what to do.

He wants to seem active until God wills the predestined.

Likewise, when Saudi Arabia stays away from the foreign ministers’ meeting of the regional quartet (composed of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran) that was proposed by Egypt to solve the Syria crisis, it means the kingdom has lost hope.

If the quartet’s objective is to change Iran’s stance, chances of this happening are nil.

Iran is in Bashar’s boat, even at the price of sinking with him.

If the quartet’s purpose is to find a solution to the Syria crisis, how can Iran deliver a humdinger that escaped the 100-nation Friends of Syria, the Arab League and the United Nations?

The mere existence of this quartet is cause for pessimism.

The Egyptians and Turks now know the quartet is doomed, not because Saudi Arabia opted out but because of Iran’s shenanigans.

For instance, the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said members of his elite force are in Syria to provide non-military assistance. He also said Iran won’t intervene militarily in Syria to help the regime.

An official Iranian spokesperson later denied the remarks, saying Tehran would not allow the so-called “axis of resistance” – of which Syria is an essential pillar – to fall.

Basically, you don’t know what the Iranians are denying or confirming.

They insolently announced in Cairo a Syria ceasefire. They made it conditional on cutting off assistance to the opposition and launching a dialogue leading to “reform and consolidation of democracy” in Syria.

So long as we are unto a long-lasting battle, it is worthwhile to draw some parallels between the situation in Syria and the Afghan jihad.

The situation in Syria and the Afghan jihad are becoming ever more comparable by the day.

The Syrians hate such a comparison for obvious reasons.

They dread the “Afghanization” of their country and their struggle.

Counting the 10 years of Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation, another two years of fighting against the Kabul government left in place by the Soviets and the subsequent years of civil war until this day, you arrive at a total of 33 years of hardships.

The Syrian revolution is only one-and-a-half years old and there seems little hope of it ending soon.

Conflicts among militias can last years. We had a precedent in Lebanon.

We see the Free Syrian Army gaining control of the Salahuddin neighborhood in Aleppo, then losing it, then recapturing it.

That’s how militia wars go.

At the same time, the weight of militia numbers alarms backers, making them deny the militias indispensable weapons.  

For instance, the militias need man-portable air-defense systems or MANPADS to challenge the regime’s air power, which is killing far more civilians than rebels.

U.S. fears of weapons falling into the wrong hands, for instance, hampered delivery to the rebels of some 100 MANPADS contributed by Gulf countries.

The Americans want to see specific controls in place before the weapons get forwarded to the insurgents.

But putting such controls in place is impossible in a country where security has totally collapsed, which is the trademark of all armed revolutions.

Strategists turn naïve or dreamers on occasion. They overlook the merit of past experience. A look at their old files would show the Afghan jihad tribulations that are now manifest in Syria:

### Every attempt to unify the rebels will give rise to a new organization. Some members of the old Free Syrian Army would refuse to integrate with the new Syrian National Army, consequently undermining both organizations and their respective brigades. International backers would then be at a loss as to which of the two is a safe bet.

### Unlike the French, the Syrians can’t agree on a Charles de Gaulle. They are more like the Afghans if not worse. They all think they are leaders.

### Information from inside Syria is consistently contradictor and mostly exaggerated, especially on matters of money and the apportionment of arms.

### A media savvy group is not necessarily the more active on the ground. A group with more video footage on You Tube does not mean it is the strongest.

### Middlemen claiming to know the playing field well do know their contacts thoroughly. But they are totally ignorant of the rest. As a result, they would channel assistance to their contacts, bypassing those they don’t know. The donor country using the middleman is immediately accused of bias and of dividing rebel ranks, if not of conspiring against the revolution.

### The revolution is for honorable men and women and freedom lovers. But it is also an arena for opportunists, dealers, turncoats and even criminals.

### The idea of unifying rebel ranks inside Syria, though overly utopian, should be pursued, since opening a door halfway is better than keeping it shut. At a minimum, coordination would suffice and is achievable thanks to the (non-lethal) equipment (such as encrypted radios and satellite imagery) provided by the Americans and the French. The difficulty in unifying the rebels lies in their variegated provenance. Army defectors come from diverse units at various times. Civilians come from all walks of life and include students, laborers and farmers. Some are religious, others not. Some are politicized, others are not interested in politics, their sole aim being to get rid of the regime. It will always be difficult to group everyone under a single command and control center.

### Don’t believe whoever says the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest faction inside Syria. Don’t believe either whoever says the opposite. The Brotherhood’s political weight can only be known after free and transparent elections are held in Syria. But no state should withhold assistance to the Syrian revolution pending an answer to this $64,000 question.

### “One Address” (with which to coordinate with the Syrian revolution) won’t attract cash and assistance to all sides. Previous experience shows that creation of “One Address” is impossible.

The Syrian revolution has succeeded so far in shutting out al-Qaeda. Even the hard line Salafist groups funded by non-government Gulfites refused to be lured into expressing empathy for al-Qaeda.

At the same time, prolongation of the crisis is exasperating Syrians, as evidenced by their pelting of Brahimi’s motorcade with stones during his visit to a Syrian refugee camp.

After mulling over the regime’s brutality and the free world’s indifference, the Syrian people have come to equate diplomacy with procrastination.

The Syrian people are increasingly convinced that the world has let them down.

Their anger and the aforementioned Afghan ills could open the door to the sort of extremism that outside intelligence and military agencies are trying to forestall.

But their quest has made them reluctant to take action and supply weapons that would settle the battle. In a way, they are shunning something they created by their own hesitation and deferment.

Syria seen lighting the Lebanon fuse

World Atlas map of the Syria-Lebanon borders

Syria is now depicting Lebanon as a Taliban-infested Afghanistan, its eastern and northern regions as the hills and caves of Tora Bora and its seaport city of Tripoli as Kandahar.

The innuendos, Lebanese political analyst Rosanna Boumounsef writes in her daily column for Beirut’s an-Nahar, portend three menaces:

1.     Cross-border Syrian Army raids on Lebanese regions abutting Syria

2.     Pressure on Beirut to emulate Damascus in pouncing on its own people

3.     Dragging vast swaths of eastern and northern Lebanon into the Syria cauldron.

Boumounsef, among several other analysts, was commenting on Syria’s letter to the United Nations accusing some Lebanese areas of helping al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists set up home along the Syrian border.

"Some Lebanese areas next to the Syrian border are harboring terrorist elements from al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are jeopardizing the security of Syria and its citizens and striving to undermine the UN Special Envoy's six-point plan," Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari wrote in a letter marked “Urgent” and dated May 17.

The seven-page letter (six of them in Arabic) was addressed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and copied to the current UN Security Council president, Agshin Mehdiyev of Azerbaijan.

"In some Lebanese areas bordering Syria, several warehouses have been set up to stockpile weapons and ammunition that are reaching Lebanon illegally, either by sea, or at times via the airplanes of specific countries that are used to transport weapons to Lebanon before smuggling them to Syria, under the pretext they (the aircraft) are carrying humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees in Lebanon," Ja'afari said in the letter.

He said, “On March 13, an unidentified warship anchored off (the Lebanese coastal city) Jounieh as small boats went about moving its arms cargo to shore so it could then be moved to Syria. Weapons-laden vessels also docked at the Aquamarina near Jounieh. Their weapons shiploads were moved first to Akkar, then to Wadi Khaled, ahead of their smuggling into Syria.”

Ja’afari said, “Premises of charities run by Salafists and the Future Movement in Lebanese areas bordering Syria are being used to provide safe havens to al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists to launch hit-and-run criminal operations inside Syria. The injured among them are treated under fake names in hospitals and clinics affiliated to those (Salafist and Future Movement) groups and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”

In the Tripoli governorate town of Kalamoun, he said, “there are about 50 terrorists led by Khaled el-Tanak, Khaled Hamza and Zakaria Ghaleb el-Kholi” who carry IDs rubberstamped by the UN allowing them to travel unhindered first to Danniyeh, on to Akkar and then to Wadi Khaled, where they would infiltrate into Syrian territory to mount terrorist operations.

Ja’afari added in his letter that Colonel Riad al-Asaad, head of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), “recently arrived in Lebanon to prepare for creating a Syrian buffer zone commencing in Lebanese territory.”

Lebanese Premier Najib Miqati Friday picked holes in the Ja’afari letter and said his government “is fully performing its duty in combating all terror operations, in monitoring the Lebanese borders, in controlling the security situation and in addressing any security gaps.”

Miqati said, “Violations are also occurring from the Syrian side of the border, as everyone knows the crisscrossing nature of the frontier between the two countries and how difficult it is to control the extensive border area between them.

“Therefore, we consider the remarks voiced by the Syrian envoy as exacerbating the disputes, at a time when we are seeking, through the relevant diplomatic and security channels, to bridge differences and tackle problems calmly, carefully and in such a way as to safeguard the good relations between the two countries and peoples.”

Rosanna Boumounsef

Rosanna Boumounsef, in her news analysis for an-Nahar, says Lebanon is “immensely and deeply troubled” by the Syrian charges. The account by Ja’afari is “extremely dangerous” as it engrosses Lebanon “forcibly and publicly” in the Syrian quagmire.

The likely fallouts, she says, are at least three:

1.   There is the prospect of more frequent thrusts by the Syrian army into Lebanese border area under the pretext of the “hot pursuit” of so-called terrorists. The Ja’afari letter effectively delineates all the targeted Lebanese Christian and Sunnite area, including Jounieh, Danniyeh and Akkar. The letter also came hot on the heels of Lebanese Alawite warlord Rifaat Eid’s remark welcoming the Syrian army’s return to Tripoli to restore law and order in the troubled city. (See my earlier post, “How Syria fire is creeping up on Lebanon”).

2.    The second possibility is to pressure Lebanon’s political and security authorities to emulate the Syrian regime’s crackdown on what its dubs Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.

3.    A third likelihood is to stir up internecine strife in Lebanon. Syria’s Lebanese allies have long been describing Tripoli as an “outlaw city.”

Boumounsef notes the Syrian regime’s modus operandi is to try and take advantage of the situation in Lebanon to pressure its Arab and foreign detractors by threatening to sow chaos in neighboring countries. Only this week, she says, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a Russian broadcaster, “If you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself, and (Syria’s detractors) know this very well.”

Saudi evolution from underneath the surface

AP photo of female student protestors in Abha

Fahmi Howeidi is a leading Egyptian political and social scholar and author, Islamist intellectual and one of the Arab world’s most prominent columnists. This think piece on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia appears online in Arabic on Aljazeera news network. I chose to phrase it in English:

***

I hadn’t been to Saudi Arabia for 10 years.

When I returned there last week, I was bowled over wherever I went. I realized we discern Saudi Arabia’s surface, but know nothing about what is taking place underneath.

(1)

My first surprise was on the plane, when I could go through the day’s Saudi newspapers of March 12.

I discovered they all tackled an incident unknown to us, which happened at King Khalid University, in the kingdom’s southern province of ‘Asir.

The dailies carried minutes of a three-hour meeting held by the Governor of ‘Asir Province with 500 male and female students to discuss problems they are facing at the university. At the meeting, the students summed up their demands in 23 points, the first of which was dismissal of Abha city’s university management.

The Governor of ‘Asir Province, Prince Faisal Bin Khalid, told the students, “It’s your legitimate right to solicit. You are only asking to improve and advance the level of university education.” The prince then welcomed formation of a student committee to follow up the resolution of grievances and an academic committee to revise the curriculum. The understanding was that both committees would meet monthly to complete their respective tasks.

This was not my sole surprise.

I read and heard later the female students of the College of Arts and Education instigated the defiant protest. The root cause of their complaint was a slump in student administrative services. Social media apparently played a key role in mobilizing male and female students by urging the lot to spell out their complaints and relay them to the authorities concerned.

Al-Watan daily commented on the incident saying: as soon as word got out of grumbles at the College of Arts and Education, King Khalid University officials hastened to raise the specter of a so-called hidden agenda to sow dissent and undermine security. They ignored the fact students of both sexes were denied their rights.

The subject matter raised and the language used to present the case as well as the authorities’ reaction to it were all new to me.

I had to carefully read and assimilate before recognizing:

-- An overt outrage was reported – instead of suppressed as before – by the press.

-- Female students now have their say in a country where hardliners believe females are vulnerable and should not be exposed.

-- The Governor of ‘Asir met in person with 500 male and female students for three hours.

-- The two sides agreed on electing one student committee and another academic committee that would combine forces to address the grievances raised.

I promptly wondered: Since when does this take place in the Kingdom?

(2)

Maram Meccawy

Events involving the male and female students of King Khalid University in Abha became the dominant theme of daily Saudi press comments. And the fact female students were the prime movers of the outcry opened the door to a full-blown debate on women conditions and rights in the Kingdom. Journalist and blogger Ms Maram Meccawy wrote for al-Watan’s March 14 edition: “Women are men’s doubles. They are one half of society and the nation’s co-citizens. They have -- exactly like men -- full rights across the board, including state institutions, resources and plans for the future in this era of openness, reform and digital freedom. They won’t settle for anything less than securing their total, unabridged rights.”

A few days after the ruckus in Abha, another defiance erupted at the College of Education for Girls in Belgarn. The newspapers of Thursday, March 15, said girl students there “tried to emulate those at King Khalid University.” They demonstrated to complain of ill treatment by their supervisors and demand better services and the dismissal of the college principal.

Al-Watan quoted the college’s PR officer as saying the girl students tampered with fire extinguishers in the main college building and the cafeteria’s hallway.

A bust-up must have erupted on campus because the newspaper said 13 girl students were treated in-house, six others were hospitalized and a teacher was hurt. Some newspapers said many of the victims had simply passed out and others spoke of police cars rushing to the scene to restore order.

Three remarks in Wednesday’s March 14 press caught my attention:

1. A statement by the Deputy Minister of Higher Education Dr. Ahmad al-Saif announcing the female college students won’t be searched anymore and would henceforth be allowed to use their mobile phones on campus, except that “deterrent measures” would be taken against abusers of the authorization. Al-Watan carried Saif’s statement on its front-page, saying, “The step comes in the wake of the latest disturbance at King Khalid University.”

2. A recommendation to academic principals at all Saudi universities to let students share in formulating student affairs decisions and to accommodate student aspirations.

3. A statement made by Minister of State Mitib Bin Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, King Abdullah’s son and head of the Saudi National Guard. He said redressing mistakes and demanding solutions couldn’t be by way of disrupting peace and stability. He said, “Foreign elements are striving to destabilize our country.” He also referred to what he called “disturbances” destabilizing several Arab countries.

I also took stock of a comment by Issam al-Zamel in Asharq of March 13 saying a student dismissed by the head of Taibah University threatened to challenge the dismissal on Twitter. Other students I met later confirmed this to me. They told me social media is replete with all sorts of comments on similar incidents.

In this context, they recounted the case revealed on Twitter of a brawl two months ago at King Saud University between freshmen students and their dean, who was insulted but subsequently replaced.

(3)

I traveled to Saudi Arabia on the invitation of organizers of the Riyadh International Book Fair 2012. I didn’t anticipate surprises at the exhibition, which was intended to be a harbinger of openness. Publishing houses were able to display thousands of books without restriction or censorship. I came across many books I wouldn’t have found in libraries anywhere.

Also, the Book Fair remained open throughout for both men and women. The custom in the past was to alternate opening days between men and women visitors. Three university graduates – two of them Saudi and the third Moroccan -- shared in a panel discussion on the “Rights Culture.”

Such atmosphere did not sit well with Salafists. One evening, five of them broke into the fair’s main conference room to disrupt a panel discussion where men and women participants shared a round table. Organizers and security men evicted them from the conference room. When they later sought to examine books on display, they were hauled to a police station and to put down their complaints in writing. A group of them, however, had succeeded the day before in preventing women from attending a seminar on e-books on grounds they should not be mixing with men.

The impression I got from what I read and heard is that a tug-of-war between hardliners and moderates is underway at every level in the kingdom. I consider this a step forward. It shows the hardliners’ clout eroding and the number of moderates who support openness and public liberties gradually rising. The change is perhaps slow, but it depicts movement in the right direction. Another positive signal is the presence in public spheres of such cultural figures as Dr. Salman al-Odah and Mohammad Said Tayeb, who are still under a travel ban elsewhere.

(4)

My lecture at one of the Book Fair evening functions was about the Arab Muslim discourse in a fast changing world.

I dwelt on the communications revolution being the most important factor impacting the Arab world. The communications revolution tore down all borders and surmounted innumerable obstacles to turn the world into a global village and an open book accessible to everyone. The momentous change loosened government grips on citizens and gave peoples a powerful weapon to challenge authoritarian regimes. The regimes lost the power they claimed to have over citizens and citizens realized they were not as weak as they imagined.  

I said the Arab world’s foremost problem is that while the “body” size amplified and aspirations multiplied, the “head” remained static. I gave the example of Syria, where people revolted in 2011 and the regime reacted in the mentality of the 1980s, when Assad Sr. chose to crush the uprising in Hama, destroying the city and killing 15,000 of its people in the process. This was soon forgotten.

Today, the world is alerted to any reprisal as soon as it starts, which is why the (Syria) crime was exposed and the yearlong revolution continues unabated.

In the Arab world, I suggested, “body” and “head” should come together instead of remaining disjoined. Such fence mending can only come though a mutual espousal of public freedoms and democracy rule.

I said what I needed to say in 20 minutes, but discussion of the liaison between “body” and “head” resumed until well past midnight at the hotel. There, I had to answer innocent and hypocritical questions from a defiant younger generation eager to fulfill the dreams of its virtual world.

Middle East change for the better or worse?

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of AlArabiya TV, penned this analysis in Arabic for today’s edition of Saudi Asharq Alawsat.

 When one regime was toppled – namely, Saddam Hussein’s -- analysts parroted, “New Middle East.”

We’re now without the regimes of Hosni Mubarak, Moammar Gadhafi and Zinedine Ben Ali. Ali Saleh’s regime will most probably fade away, followed by Bashar al-Assad’s. Regimes governing more than 100 million Arabs have evaporated. The map of today’s Middle East is full of holes waiting to see who fills them and how.

Winds continue shifting the region’s sands. Turkey and Iran, yesterday’s allies, have now fallen out like never before. Syria, Libya, Hamas and Qatar used to present an active and united front at the region’s conferences and journeys. Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the region’s primary address. No summits, negotiations or alliances got a green light without Mubarak’s Egypt.

The region swings like a clock’s pendulum. It’s always hard to escape its magnet. We face a newly emerging situation. Foreign alliances, regional blocs and diplomatic, or at times military, clashes were the hallmark of the “Old Middle East.”

“We have to forget about Egypt, probably for another five years,” an Arab official told me in a conversation on how to coalesce against mounting Iranian bullying. “We have to try approaching the (Ottoman) Sublime Porte in Ankara.’

When gauging the speed of a year’s change in the Middle East, I remembered the bid in 2010 to build a four-way alliance involving Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. It was akin to the (1955) Baghdad Pact but aimed against the GCC-Egypt-Jordan camp. That’s why Turkey was invited to the Arab summit in Libya. There, a proposed Arab Neighborhood Policy took aback the GCC-Egypt-Jordan group. ANP was meant to co-opt Tehran and Ankara into the Arab club, chiefly to weaken Riyadh and Cairo and boost the Iran-Syria line.

The proposal was aborted for breaching Arab League bylaws and soliciting outside parties against the Cairo-Riyadh tandem.

With the “New Middle East” still taking shape, it’s too early to determine its directions. But some sound bombs have shuffled the cards already.

The Muslim Brothers, who will set policy in Cairo for the next four years, are traditional allies of the Iranian regime, hostile to the West and opposed to peace with Israel. They signaled their readiness to change their positions. So how will the “New Cairo” deal with the three sides, i.e. Iran, the West and Israel?

In numerous statements, the Muslim Brothers and Salafists expressed their commitment to the peace treaty with Israel and a special relationship with the West. Which leaves Iran. But looming crises -- such as war with Iran, continued conflict with Israel and Iraq’s explosive situation – will unveil the true colors of the Muslim Brothers and Salafists in due time.

As for Turkey, her options to build new game plans are wide open. She has two dangerous front lines, one with Syria, the other with Iraq. She has to reconsider her old policy.

The Middle East thus looks set for a makeover – perhaps for the better or maybe not.