Bahrain Is Trying To Drown The Protests In Shia Blood

World View: Claiming that the opposition is being orchestrated by Iran, the al-Khalifa regime has unleashed a vicious sectarian clampdown

By Patrick Cockburn 
This commentary was published in The Independent On Sunday on 15/05/2011

"Let us drown the revolution in Jewish blood" was the slogan of the tsars when they orchestrated pogroms against Jews across Russia in the years before the First World War. The battle-cry of the al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain ever since they started to crush the pro-democracy protests in the island kingdom two months ago might well be "to drown the revolution in Shia blood". Just as the tsars once used Cossacks to kill and torture Jews and burn their synagogues, so Bahrain's minority Sunni regime sends out its black-masked security forces night after night to terrorise the majority Shia population for demanding equal political and civil rights.

Usually troops and police make their raids on Shia districts between 1am and 4am, dragging people from their beds and beating them in front of their families. Those detained face mistreatment and torture in prison. One pro-democracy activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, brought before a military court last week with severe facial injuries, said he had suffered four fractures to the left side of his face, including a broken jaw that needed four hours' surgery.

The suppression of the protests came after Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Co-operation Council – also known as the "kings' club" of six Gulf monarchs – sent 1,500 troops to Bahrain to aid the crackdown, which began on 15 March. It soon became clear that the government is engaged in a savage onslaught on the entire Shia community – some 70 per cent of the population – in Bahrain.

First came a wave of arrests with about 1,000 people detained, of whom the government claims some 300 have been released, though it will not give figures for those still under arrest. Many say they were tortured and, where photographs of those who died under interrogation are available, they show clear marks of beating and whipping. There is no sign yet that King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa's declaration that martial law will end on 1 June is anything more than a propaganda exercise to convince the outside world, and foreign business in particular, that Bahrain is returning to normal.

The repression is across the board. Sometimes the masked security men who raid Shia villages at night also bulldoze Shia mosques and religious meeting places. At least 27 of these have so far been wrecked or destroyed, while anti-Shia and pro-government graffiti is often sprayed on any walls that survive.

The government is scarcely seeking to conceal the sectarian nature of its repression. Defending the destruction of Shia mosques and husseiniyahs (religious meeting houses), it claims that they were constructed without building permission. Critics point out that one of them was 400 years old. Nor is it likely that the government has been seized with a sudden enthusiasm for enforcing building regulations since the middle of March.

The government is determined to destroy all physical rallying points for the protesters. One of the first such places to be destroyed was the Pearl Square monument, an elegant structure commemorating the pearl fishers of the Gulf, which was bulldozed soon after the square had been cleared of demonstrators. A measure of the government's paranoia is that it has now withdrawn its own half-dinar coins showing the iconic Pearl Square monument.

Facing little criticism from the United States, so concerned about human rights abuses in Libya, the al-Khalifa family is ruthlessly crushing opposition at every level. Nurses and doctors in a health system largely run by Shias have been beaten and arrested for treating protesters. Teachers and students are being detained. Some 1,000 professional people have been sacked and have lost their pensions. The one opposition newspaper has been closed. Bahraini students who joined protests abroad have had their funding withdrawn.

The original 14 February protest movement was moderate, contained Sunni as well as Shia activists, and went out of its way to be non-sectarian. Its slogans included demands that Bahrain's powerful prime minister for the past 40 years, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, step down and for fair elections. It also wanted equal rights for all, including an end to anti-Shia discrimination under which the majority were excluded from joining the 60,000-strong army, police and security forces. Security jobs went instead to Sunni recruits from Pakistan, Jordan, Syria and other Sunni states who were immediately given Bahraini citizenship.

Sometimes the anti-Shia bias is explicit. One pro-government newspaper prominently published a letter that compared the protesters to "termites", which are intelligent but multiply at alarming speed, and "are very similar to the 14 February group that tried to destroy our beautiful, precious country." The writer recommends exterminating the "white ants so they don't come back".

The purpose of the systematic torture and mistreatment inflicted on the detainees is first to create a feeling of terror in the civilian population. It is not only protesters or pro-democracy activists that are being targeted. Al-Jazeera satellite television, based in and funded by neighbouring Qatar, which played such a role in publicising protests and their attempted repression in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Libya, was initially much more reticent about reporting events in Bahrain. But al-Jazeera revealed this week that the Bahraini police have been raiding girls' schools, detaining and beating schoolgirls, and are accused of threatening to rape them.

One 16-year-old called "Heba" was taken with three of her schoolfriends and held for three days, during which they were beaten. She said an officer "hit me on the head and I started to bleed" and she was thrown against a wall. Although the girls were beaten severely, she said, they scarcely felt the pain because they were so frightened of being raped. The Bahraini opposition party Al Wefaq says that 15 girls' schools have been raided by the police and girls as young as 12 threatened with rape.

Aside from intimidation there is a further motive for the beatings and torture: namely, to extract evidence that, against all appearances, the opposition is planning armed revolt and is manipulated by foreign powers, notably Iran. The aim, in the case of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, was evidently to beat out of him a confession that he was attempting to "topple the regime forcibly in collaboration with a terrorist organisation working for a foreign country".

The al-Khalifas are aware that their strongest card in trying to discredit the opposition is to claim it has Iranian links. US embassy cables revealed by Wikileaks show that the Bahrain government was continually making this claim to a sceptical US embassy over the years, but has never provided any evidence. This propaganda claiming Iranian plots is crude, but plays successfully in Sunni Gulf states that see an Iranian hand behind every Shia demand for equal rights and an end to discrimination. It also gets an audience in Washington, conscious that its Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and fearful of anything that could strengthen Iran.

The Bahraini monarchy, having effectively declared war on the majority of its own people, is likely to win in the short term because its opponents are not armed. The cost will be that Bahrain, once deemed more liberal than its neighbours, is turning into the Gulf's version of Belfast or Beirut when they were convulsed by sectarian hatred.

Barack, Arab Freedom Is Indivisible

By Rami G. Khouri
This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 14/05/2011

What is it about free Arabs that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other leading Western officials still do not fully understand or embrace?

I am troubled that every few months, we hear a drum roll of anticipation building up to a moment when we are told to expect a defining speech, or a new statement, or another initiative, or just a really heartfelt television interview in which the United States will clearly define its policy toward, well, toward many things – in fact, toward an entire, ever-changing constellation of moving targets in the Middle East that seem to deeply confound the United States government at the historic moment when Arabs en mass are agitating for their own liberty and rights. It is troubling to see those who claim to ring the bell of freedom for all humankind prove hesitant to apply a freedom-promoting foreign policy across the entire Arab world.

This is not purely an American issue, to be fair, as Europeans, Turks and other freedom-loving democrats have also supported the Arab revolts for freedom and citizenship rights with selectivity and serial hesitancy. So what should we make of the fact that we now hear that President Barack Obama will give a major speech next week outlining his country’s approach to the Middle East and the wider Islamic world in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden?

We will listen to a fine speech once again, one ear cocked toward his speech, the other toward what Arab men and women are doing throughout the Middle East as they fight, suffer and die in the thousands now to achieve the liberty and democracy that Obama and others keep telling us comprise the shared values that unite us all.

Yet Washington’s attitude to the Arab Spring reflects a wider problem across much of the Western world that I personally experience daily in my assorted discussions with journalists, officials, diplomats and researchers. It is the same old and ugly problem of double standards in many Western governments’ treatment of Arab issues.

In this case, the problem is simply that the epic Arab struggle for liberty, rights and dignity is perceived by many abroad as a television drama that is captivating, even thrilling – but one that remains peculiarly detached from the world of Western powers and, more importantly, remains beyond that realm of people, political movements and social forces that the West can embrace with the same clarity and force with which, for example, it embraced the Soviet dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. The Arab citizen’s right to liberty is neither clear nor consistent in Western eyes. When it touches on the realms of Israel or oil, especially, Arab liberty becomes the victim and ward of greater Western interests.

I believe that Western powers and other global democracies should grasp, and act on the basis of, two cardinal points now that the Arab Spring has reached a critical turning point. Tunisia and Egypt are transitioning to democracy; Libya and Yemen will do so within months; and struggles with undetermined outcomes are under way in Syria, Bahrain and, to a lesser degree, in Jordan, Morocco and Oman.

The first point, then, is to appreciate the Arab Spring as a long-term process, and not to recoil and then retrench in the company of known dictators and ruling thugs once the momentum for democratic change slows down. The Arab Spring should be seen like its namesake, the Prague Spring of 1968: a historic outburst of long pent-up demands for citizen rights that finally breaks through in places but get repressed by a gun-wielding hard state in other places.

The Arab world is like the old Soviet empire: the Hungarian revolt in the mid-1950s, the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, the 1980 Solidarity movement in Poland, and the Russian dissidents throughout those decades ultimately peaked and broke through in 1989-1990 to engineer the collapse of Soviet authoritarianism. That was a gradual but cumulative process, with several springs followed by terrible winters of repression, just as we are witnessing across the Arab world today.

The second point is simply that, of all the alluring attributes of liberty, the most important one is that liberty is indivisible. That should form the foundation of American policy toward the Arabs who fight and die for their rights. Obama in his speech should not bore or insult us with what we all know and believe in. We don’t need lectures on the glory of Islam or the proud history of Arabs or the shared benefits of quality education and liberal trade regimes. We don’t need lessons on the utility of free elections, accountability or constitutionalism. We don’t need diversions into the crazed world of frenzied terrorist cults. We don’t need more pussy-footing baby steps by bewildered secretaries of state who ask Arab autocrats to please use a bit less force against their own people.

All we need from powerful Western democracies is a new level of courage, honesty and logical self-interest that allows them to declare openly and unequivocally: Liberty is the birthright of all human beings, and the United States supports the absolute and undifferentiated right of all those who struggle for their rights to achieve and enjoy those rights, including Arabs, Iranians, as was the case with the Soviet dissidents back then.

Obama should proclaim that Washington will actively assist those who fight for their freedoms, and oppose those who deny such freedoms. He will find that the Arabs and others will then achieve their own liberty, just as the subjugated Soviet victims did.  

There is a magic key waiting to be grasped here, for the joy and wellbeing of all, and it is the simple proposition that freedom is indivisible. Why is that so hard for the self-proclaimed purveyors of freedom to grasp, and to make the core of their foreign policy in the Arab world at a time when millions of Arabs are prepared to fight and die for this simple truth?

Jordan Pivotal To Palestinians

By Musa Keilani 
This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 15/05/2011 

Tens of thousands of Jordanians celebrated Nakba day by walking from Karama village towards the Jordan River in an expression of support for the Palestinians’ rights of return. The demonstration stressed loyalty for King Abdullah and rejection of Zionist plans to have Jordan as a compensation for lost Palestine. Paper kites with the Palestinian flag were flown to the occupied territories.

In many other Arab countries, the Palestinians marked this year’s Nakba, the anniversary of the day, on May 15, 1948, of the founding of Israel in Palestine, that brought a catastrophe upon them, with a newfound sense of purpose in the wake of the reconciliation agreement that was signed in Cairo in April.

A Palestinian unity government is expected to be announced this week under the reconciliation accord. The process should be smooth sailing, since it is clear that the various Palestinian groups have realised that their cause for liberation stands to suffer if they do not put their house in order and come up with a united platform.

The Cairo accord effectively brings Hamas back into the mainstream Palestinian liberation movement and will hopefully end the existence of two Palestinian entities - the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the Fateh-dominated West Bank under the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The agreement calls for the formation of a caretaker government of independents until legislative elections are held in a year’s time. That should set the Palestinian house in order.

Israel sees the unity deal as a major threat to its design to impose its version of a “peace” agreement on the Palestinians. In public, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to include Hamas in the proposed unity government. In private, however, the message is: don’t ever reconcile with Hamas, unity government or no unity government.

Many argue that if no Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is reached by September, all prospects for peace will be lost. That need not be the case.

The Palestinians should go ahead with their quest for international recognition of their statehood within the 1967 borders, and deal with the resulting situation. Their best bet would be on European and Third World support for their cause, and for pressure that Israel would find difficult to resist despite backing from the US.

Netanyahu and company continue to ignore the signals from Hamas that it has indeed changed and that it has accepted the inevitability of having to deal with Israel.

There have been many Hamas messages, starting with statements by its leader in exile, Khaled Mishaal, that the group was ready to accept Israel as a reality if the Palestinians are granted their right to set up an independent state within the 1967 borders, with Arab East Jerusalem as capital, and if an equitable solution is found to the problem of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war.

That is effectively the political platform that was adopted by the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat. Israel had accepted that platform (although not the solutions that the Palestinians sought) and negotiated with the PLO.

In recent media comments, Mishaal also stated that Hamas gave Abbas the final say in armed resistance and made Hamas’ recognition of Israel contingent on Israel’s recognition of an independent Palestinian state. No doubt, Hamas has learnt its lessons in the four years since it got control of Gaza Strip and realised that the wave of Arab unrest might not be in its favour. The same goes for all other Palestinian groups and leaders, including Abbas himself, who lost one of his staunchest allies when Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in Egypt.

The Hamas leaders have also realised that their perceived alliance with Iran would not be of much realistic use to the effort to realise the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of the Hamas government in Gaza Strip, said last week: “The world should realise that we have made many changes. The international community should not run away from these changes.”

Notwithstanding Israel’s and its US-led allies’ statements, the onus is on the mainstream Palestinian leadership to confirm the “changes” in Hamas and to deprive Israel of the argument that it does not have a Palestinian negotiating partner who represents the entire Palestinian people.

It is a tough mission. Israel and its supporters say that the price for the acceptance of Hamas as a part of the diplomatic scenario of the Middle East is the group’s renunciation of armed resistance, recognition of the state of Israel and acceptance of past agreements signed by the PLO and Israel.

Well, it is a calculated stand. Israel knows well that Hamas would never meet the demands before it is assured of a fair and just settlement of the Palestinian problem. As long as Israel maintains its rejection of the Palestinian people’s rights, there is no chance of Hamas agreeing to the demands. Therefore, goes a part of Israel’s thinking, all it needs to do to ward off the prospects for a realistic negotiating process is to insist on its own terms for peace.

More than anyone else, Hamas should see this catch-22 situation as damaging the Palestinian cause. Right now, international sympathy and support for the Palestinians is continuing to grow and Hamas could contribute to it significantly by making it known that it is not dedicated to destroying Israel and is willing to accept coexistence in Palestine as the basis for peace with Israel.

It is this enigma that requires Jordan to resume its historical role which was snatched away by Mubarak of Egypt and Omar Suleiman a few years ago. Cairo does not have the same strong political cards that Amman enjoys. Only Jordan, which has the main means to put leverage on Hamas, can induce Mishaal to accept the new terms of the game and to secure the release of Gilad Shalit from captivity, as a strong signal to Netanyahu that all Palestinian factions are for peace.

Business Leadership, Saudi Style

Tariq A. Al Maeena writes: Bosses may not be qualified for their posts and vary dramatically in their approach to dealing with their staff 
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 15/05/2011 

Forget all that you've been taught in those management books about management and leadership. The reality is that for the most part leadership is an inborn trait, and along the way a variety of skills are honed to fine tune the art of governing within defined parameters. In the GCC, and Saudi Arabia to be more specific, the spectrum that governs rules of management is often vast, wide and uncertain.

Be they Saudis or expatriates, bosses here may not be necessarily qualified for their posts and vary dramatically in their approach to problem-solving or dealing with their staff. In the next few paragraphs, I will endeavour to describe some real-life bad bosses that have been reported to me, and chances are that if you are a boss, you may fall into one such category. Or you could be one of the unfortunate souls who work for them!

Taha, the barbarian: His is a violent and intimidating style of management. Through his belligerency in getting his point across, he sows fear into his subordinates. He thinks nothing of publicly vilifying his staff to cover up for his own failures, and can resort to violence if necessary. His goal is not only to lead, but to mentally torment his subordinates into submission. He occasionally carries this streak of violence into his home.

Andrew Jackson, the achiever: He thinks he can do it all, and wants to be the company's ‘golden boy.' If something needs to be done right, why he is there. His staff picks up on this compulsion and feed his ego. They hold back from acting on their own. They remain muted while he wrestles the limelight. After all, his is the right way, the only way. Their personal loyalty to him overshadows the needs of the corporation, and soon enough Jackson believes that the only wisdom is the one that flows through him. In that it could be nothing more than a pile of manure totally escapes him.

Retaining his power

Chakoo Khan, the devious one: Divide and rule is what drives this person. He can smile and offer his staff words of encouragement as they sit across from him... But once their backs are turned, he springs into action. Turning one subordinate against the other is his means of retaining his powers. After all, with everybody else in a state of turmoil and conflict, his is the only concept that will remain. His real goal is to hold on to his seat for as long as he can.
Durrani, the nice guy: He comes off as a sympathiser. He reassures his staff that he doesn't agree with all those rules and regulations so unpleasant or unreasonable to them. He conveniently passes the buck to those up in headquarters.

Maintaining camaraderie among his crew is far more important to him than solving their problems, and he may even offer them a cup of coffee as they enter into a tirade about some wrong-doing or injustice. He will appease his staff, but in reality solves nothing. After all, why rock the boat?

George, the bureaucrat: This one loves his job. He is most likely a civil servant, and loves all those company manuals on rules and regulations that he constantly refers to, yet invariably interprets incorrectly. In dealing with his staff, he utilises only those corporate guidelines that happen not to favour them. His principal aim is to acquire a larger office, a bigger desk and an additional telephone.

A stack of newspapers lies on his desk that he takes home with him at the end of the day. The demands on him are few. After all, he can always tell a hopeful subordinate to come back the next day or the next week for that matter.

Rahul, the brown nose: His type as a rule is by far the most prevalent. A boot- licker, he thinks nothing of sacrificing his subordinates in his efforts to please his own boss. He will throw his staff to the sharks right or wrong, just to please his superiors. He thanks his existence on the generosity of his bosses and expects his subordinates to do the same. His urgency and level of activity feverishly increases in the presence of his superior, where he can be spotted preparing a cup of tea or arranging a seat for his boss.

Ali, the schizophrenic: Everybody is out to get him. He is in a constant state of paranoia, perceives his staff and others around him as threats. A simple ‘hello' to him may be taken as the seeds of a conspiratorial act. He usually keeps a box of medication in his desk drawer, something he constantly indulges in. The curtains and door to his office are usually shut for fear of drawing unnecessary attention. His staff rarely gets to know him or gets anything done through him. He could be the owner's son.

Pity the person who upon reading this column comes to the realisation that his superior falls under one of the categories mentioned.

Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Can Hamas Leopard Change Its Spots?

By Crispian Balmer    

This commentary was published in The Kuwait Times on 15/05/2011

 

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has felt the political winds shift across the Middle East and is bending with them, making peace with its secular rival Fatah and trying to cool its conflict with Israel. Israel has ridiculed the idea that the Hamas leopard can ever change its spots, but analysts poring over a recent slew of interviews from the movement's senior leaders believe change is under way, wrought by upheaval across the Arab world. Despite the fact it looks secure in its coastal stronghold, the Gaza Strip, Hamas last month reached out to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who governs in the West Bank, and agreed to a surprise unity deal to end years of fierce feuding.

By doing so, Hamas effectively renewed its commitment to a ceasefire with Israel. No mortars or missiles have been fired out of Gaza since the accord was announced on April 27 - a rare period of calm on one of the region's most dangerous borders. Hamas has also conspicuously failed to provide wholehearted support to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who faces the worst civil unrest of his 11-year rule, despite the fact that he has harboured the Islamist group leadership for a decade.

The chilly relations have raised speculation that Hamas might move its main regional office out of Damascus, which would take the group further out of Shiite Iran's orbit. It would strengthen ties with administrations that have good relations with the West, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. Growing signs that the Islamist group is considering moving out first originated in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al-Hayat daily, which cited unnamed Palestinian sources for its report. "I think Hamas is serious this time. It is taking a chance and wants to be given a chance," said political analyst Hani Habib, who lives in Hamas-controlled Gaza. "I don't think players in the region and the rest of the world should worry about Hamas moving in a more moderate direction," he said.

Any suggestion that Hamas might be mellowing is firmly rejected by Israel, which points out that the group's founding charter clearly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel, like many of its Western allies, says Hamas is a terrorist organisation and suffered a PR failure when Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh hailed the slain Osama bin Laden as a "holy warrior" just before the unity deal with Fatah was signed. "Hamas has not changed its ideology or its policy, and it surely does not intend on agreeing to any kind of peace deal with the State of Israel," the outgoing head of Israeli spy agency Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, said in a speech this month.

At most, he told an audience in Tel Aviv, Hamas "may agree to a ceasefire which it will use to build up its power". Interestingly, other Hamas leaders swiftly distanced themselves from Haniyeh's warm praise of bin Laden, who was killed by US soldiers in Pakistan. "Concerning bin Laden, everyone knows Hamas has differences with Al-Qaeda ... especially (its) operations targeting civilians," Hamas leader in exile Khaled Meshaal told France 24 TV. Meshaal has given more interviews in the past several weeks than he has done in the past several years, apparently eager to show the world exactly where Hamas stands on Middle East peace.

Although he stopped short of recognising Israel, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to establish a Palestinian state along pre-war, 1967 borders, implicitly suggesting that Hamas was ready to accommodate the reality of Israel. He also said that he would henceforth consult with more moderate Palestinian factions over how to confront Israel, suggesting that he would no longer attack without consensus. Another Hamas official, Sami Abou Zuhri, told Le Monde daily that observers should not focus on Hamas's uncompromising 1988 charter, but rather judge the group on the words of its leaders.

All this falls well short of the criteria laid down by the peacemaking Quartet - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - which says Hamas must recognise Israel and renounce violence if it wants to be accepted as a peace partner. However, unlike Israel, which immediately withheld tax funds from the Palestinian Authority in response to the unity deal, the European Union and the United States are biding their time, no doubt hoping that Hamas is indeed undergoing a transformation.

Palestinian analysts believe the group has been forced into a re-think because of the Arab uprisings which have rattled its sanctuary in Syria and strengthened its "parent", the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, long suppressed under Hosni Mubarak. "One key element that forced Hamas to ... look more moderate is the unfolding events in Syria and the Arab world," said Samir Awad, a political analyst at the West Bank Birzeit university. "Hamas cannot support a Syrian regime which is slaughtering its people. It is in such an embarrassing position.

Hamas has denied it is considering leaving Damascus, but sources have said it might open new offices elsewhere. Any move from Syria would take Hamas further out of Iran's camp and back into the broader Arab fold, aligning more closely with influential Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which used to help fund the group before Washington objected. It is undoubtedly too early to say where the Arab Spring will lead Hamas and no one expects it to be sitting around the negotiating table with Israel anytime soon. But its every move is being scrutinised and supporters are promoting its cause.

Let me give you a very clear message. I don't see Hamas as a terror organisation," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the US PBS this week - a strong and significant endorsement from the only Muslim member of NATO. "It is a resistance movement trying to protect its country under occupation," he added, in comments that will have delighted Hamas but further eroded Turkey's strained ties with Israel. - Reuters

Russia Stands With Dictators

By Ahmed al-Jarallah 
This commentary was published in The Arab Times on 15/05/2011

Russia has not only inherited the weakened military power, debts and poverty of the former Soviet Union, it has also adopted its foreign policy of supporting totalitarian and dictatorial regimes in the world. Its stand on the recent events in Syria and Libya is similar to those taken by the Soviet Union in the last century on Cuba, Nicaragua and other totalitarian regimes, which have gone too far in oppressing and humiliating their nations. This stand is no longer surprising due to the existence of a new Stalin who controls Russian decisions - once as president and again as prime minister; thus, he keeps on strangling this huge country forever.

When Moscow prevented the Security Council from punishing the regimes of Damascus and Tripoli for the massacres and oppressive acts committed against the Syrians and Libyans, its act was not only about the game of interests. It actually reflected the philosophy behind the totalitarian Russian rule, which tries to hide behind a democracy that has been tailored for certain persons. There is a growing fear over the possibility of turning genuine democracy into an international infection that may one day affect the Kremlin; thereby, bringing back the heydays of the Eastern European spring. This has prompted Vladimir Putin’s regime to prevent the world from taking the rightful stance to help Libyans and Syrians get rid of the oppressive crematories in which they are being pushed into daily.

Moscow’s regime must realize that its counterparts in Damascus and Tripoli have lost their popular legitimacy. While the latter is currently preparing its death certificate, the former is suffering the last moments of collapse as reflected in the deployment of tanks to Syrian towns and villages to confront those who have been demanding for freedom and reform. Every time the popular voice gets louder, the two regimes become weaker. This is a clear indication that Moscow will lose its bet on allies, which have no other means of ruling but to kill, put people in prisons, and steal national resources.

Moscow has deviated from international legitimacy over the last few years. It has not exerted any effort to maintain peace and stability in the world. It has assisted Tehran in challenging the international community through the suspicious nuclear project, so Iran has started imagining itself as the controlling power in the world. Iran has been issuing threats to whoever it wishes, meddling in the affairs of other countries, and spreading terrorist cells in the Arab and Islamic worlds. All this happens under the supportive Russian umbrella.

No one was surprised when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared that his country is against any humanitarian and legal intervention in Syria to help its people eliminate the unjust acts that they were left to face on their own. He made the statement while the Syrian regime and its thugs continue to commit the most horrendous crimes against unarmed citizens, including children, women and the elderly. Is it not the free world’s duty to punish anyone who supports totalitarian regimes, such as those in Damascus and Tripoli?

The Arab Presidents' Crisis: Credibility

By Tariq Alhomayed 
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 14/05/2011 

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh came out yesterday to tell the opposition that those who want to govern must come to power via the ballot boxes, not the street. However the question that must be asked here is "what credibility do these ballot boxes hold, whether we are talking about Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, or Syria, or other Arab states?"

The problems being faced by the presidential systems in the Arab world today is not just because the people want change and are demanding reform, but rather the problem is due to the lack of confidence and credibility between the ruler and the ruled. This is something that we have seen clearly, particularly in the countries that have been affected by the political earthquake that has reverberated through the region. In Egypt, the cases of voter fraud at the last election went far beyond the rules of the game, and this was something that was done openly, and this is not to mention the president's insistence on bequeathing power to his son. Despite everything that former president Mubarak said during the Egyptian revolution, he had no credibility in the Egyptian street, in fact Mubarak only succeeded in reaching the feelings of a broad section of his people on one occasion, and this was during the speech in which he pledged to implement the people's demands, however this was followed by the shocking "battle of the Camel" the very next day.

Whilst in Yemen, we have seen the president in power for three decades, and now he is coming out to say that anybody who wants to rule should go to the ballot boxes!

As for Syria, we saw the president, and the members of his government, speaking about the legitimate demands of the people, and then surprisingly the official media came out to describe what is happening in the country as being part of a foreign conspiracy. The Syrian security forces have killed 850 Syrians, and have arrested no less than 9,000 citizens, and then after all of this the Syrian regime came out on Thursday to say that the president had issued strict instruction to the security forces not to fire upon anybody, however despite this the security forces did fire upon demonstrators [on Friday], killing some protestors.

The same applies to Tunisia and former president Ben Ali, and his famous "I understand you" speech was not enough, because he had already completely lost his credibility. As for Libya, there was no credibility in the first place between the ruler and ruled to be lost, and it is enough here to recall Gaddafi's statement on the day that the Libyan revolution began, in which he said that he had offered the Libyan people the country's oil revenues, but that they had refused this. I do not know how to describe a statement such as this, and whether he was joking or not?

What is clear is that this crisis is a crisis of credibility, for promises have no deadlines. Some of these regimes have never fought an enemy, or developed their country, but rather all they have done is suppress their citizens. If the ballot boxes and the dignity of the people were honored, then our region would never have reached this state. What is even worse is that in our Arab world, our Arab republics are following a strange equation, which is undoubtedly Lebanese, where "there is no winner or loser." For whoever loses the elections remains in power, through the use of force, such as Hezbollah, or thanks to Iranian pressure, like the government of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

The crisis being faced by the majority of Arab republics with regards to their citizens can be summarized by the famous [Arabic] saying "I am not sad that you are lying to me, what saddens me is that I don’t believe you." This is now the mantra of the people, therefore our region is facing a sad and terrifying situation, for those who lie think nothing of killing and torture, for lying destroys all values, whatever they are.