Game Of Thrones

Morocco is the Arab world's last chance to prove that monarchs can reform their countries without getting thrown out of them. 

By James Traub

Is reform possible in the Arab world? Is there, that is, a fourth path beyond revolution, repression, and the wholesale bribery deployed by the wealthy Gulf states? If peaceful evolution is possible anywhere, it is in Morocco. And we won't have to wait more than a week or two for the first clues about which way Morocco will go.

 The Arab Spring reached Morocco on Feb. 20, when over 100,000 demonstrators, mostly educated young people, took to the streets in 53 cities to demand change. King Mohammed VI, 47, one of the generation of allegedly progressive young rulers in the region, allowed the protests to unfold unimpeded. The demonstrations continued, and on March 9 the king took the extraordinary step of appearing on television to promise constitutional reforms which, if actually implemented, would place real restraints on his powers.

This is precisely how those of us who wrote in years past about democratization in the Arab World imagined that change would one day come: pressure from below -- and outside -- would lead to reform from above. That was the premise behind President George W. Bush's "Freedom Agenda," and calls for the United States and other Western states to support indigenous reform movements in the region. But that premise turned out to be wrong. Leaders like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and King Hamad bin Khalifa in Bahrain recognized that real reform jeopardized their rule; they were prepared to open the valves just wide enough to let off steam, and then jam them shut the moment citizens began to imagine that they could actually shape their own destiny.

And that, in turn, is why the choices in the Middle East have dwindled to revolution, repression, and bribery. Since no leader has been prepared to even begin to go down a path that could lead to his downfall, citizens have realized that real reform requires regime change. They've succeeded in Egypt and Tunisia; been checked, so far, by overwhelming violence in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain; and remained silent in Saudi Arabia. Only in Jordan and Morocco, both ruled by new generation monarchs, has there been meaningful hope for liberalization. And Jordan's King Abdullah has been far vaguer about the path of change than has Mohammed VI.

In his March 9 speech, the king promised "comprehensive reforms." The prime minister would henceforth be chosen by the winning party, not by the palace. The parliament would gain "new powers that enable it to discharge its representative, legislative, and regulatory mission." The judiciary, currently run by the Judicial Supreme Council under the control of the king, would be granted "the status of an independent power." New mechanisms would be established to strengthen political parties, now widely deemed moribund. And the king announced that he was impaneling a committee of legal scholars to produce a draft constitution not by some remote future date, but by June.

The king's speech provoked every possible degree of optimism and pessimism from Moroccans and Morocco experts. Tahar ben Jelloun, the country's leading novelist, told me that he viewed the speech as "historic -- the first time the monarchy has laid out a vision of reform." If the changes the king proposed are in fact adopted, ben Jelloun says, Morocco's next elections will be "totally free," and will lead to the appointment of a prime minister with the same broad powers enjoyed by the prime minister of France (a less-than-encouraging analogy, given the way President Nicolas Sarkozy runs roughshod over his own government).

Of course, what was once touted as the new generation in the Arab world, whether the young kings of Jordan and Morocco or second-generation autocrats like Bashar al-Assad of Syria, have almost always disappointed the hopes they've raised. Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, says, "Mohammed has promised substantive reforms time and again, and has always portrayed himself as a modernizing reformer and democratizer. But he's never lived up to that; it's been largely cosmetic." Hamid sees the king's speech as more of the same.

Early reports on the draft constitutional reforms suggest that they will both empower the prime minister and curtail the king's sacred status. The new dispensation may make meaningful inroads on King Mohammed's absolute powers without achieving real democracy. As Lahcen Achy, a scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, recently wrote, "the changes will not lead to a parliamentary constitution in Morocco, but they will introduce the separation of powers and reduce the king's all-powerful role in government."

This is precisely the kind of incremental change-from-above that democracy promoters long hoped for. But Western reformers are no longer the only outside players in this game. Saudi Arabia, which feels profoundly threatened by the forces unleashed by the Arab Spring, has increasingly become a regional autocracy promoter, for example using its dominant position in the Gulf Cooperation Council to dispatch troops to Bahrain to bolster a fellow monarch beset by popular revolt. And last month, the GCC extended membership invitations to Jordan and Morocco, countries that are not in the Gulf and do not, like the other members, have oil. Rather, like Bahrain, they are Sunni monarchies wobbling before mass protest. The Saudis apparently hope to turn the GCC into a club of kings, much as Bourbon France, Russia, and Austria formed the Holy Alliance early in the 19th century to counteract the spread of democracy in the Americas and Europe.

Above all, the Saudis worry about the growing influence of Shiite Iran. But they fear democracy both because it could destabilize Sunni rulers in the region and because it undermines their own legitimacy. "A peaceful democratic transition in Morocco," as Anouar Boukhars, a Morocco scholar at McDaniel College in Maryland, recently wrote, would "provide a powerful model that the monarchies of the Gulf might potentially be forced to follow."

It's not clear how, when, or under what circumstances Morocco would join the GCC, which has no formal accession policy. But the fact is that Morocco needs Saudi and Gulf money. The rising cost of food and fuel, which helped stoke the protests across the region, has forced Morocco to increase subsidies and raise wages, increasing the deficit and undermining an already weak economy. Morocco is engaged in a rivalry with Algeria -- which does have oil -- over the vast desert hinterland of Western Sahara, which it insists on retaining as a colony despite the lack of legitimate historical or cultural ties. Saudi Arabia has helped finance Morocco's military purchases and its investment in the region. The GCC invitation can thus be understood as an offer to deepen ties in exchange for increased Saudi influence over Morocco's foreign and perhaps also domestic policies.

That does not mean that the GCC will be sending troops into Morocco to quell protests, or even that the Saudis will warn the king against handing off real powers to a prime minister. But they might lean on their fellow monarch to slow-walk his planned reforms -- and Mohammed, or more conservative forces around him, might be happy enough to have the pretext to do so. In short, hopes for genuine reform in Morocco are jeopardized not only by the king's own ambivalence but by pressures from the outside.

The West does not have to merely watch this drama unfold. At the recent G8 meeting in Deauville, as I noted in my column last week, the leaders of the major industrial nations, along with the heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, offered a package of debt relief, aid, trade, and investment to Arab countries. Much of this assistance is to be directed to Egypt and Tunisia, the two countries where protest led to political revolution (though the Saudis themselves have offered $4 million to Egypt). The goal of all this assistance is to encourage and sustain the movement towards democracy. Evolutionary movement to this end should count as well. If the new constitution really does put Morocco on the path to democracy, then the country should be included in that most-favored club -- so long as the king actually implements the changes he's sponsored.

This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 10/06/2011

Hopes For Democracy Fade As Civil Wars Grip The Arab World

The anti-regime demonstrations that worked so rapidly and unexpectedly in Tunisia and Egypt are faltering elsewhere as rulers fight to hold on to power 

By Patrick Cockburn
This commentary was published in The Independent On Sunday on 12/06/2011

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A Syrian soldier on a military bus near Jisr al-Shughour, where authorities said 120 soldiers and police were killed

The Arab awakening is turning into the Arab nightmare. Instead of ushering in democracy, the uprisings in at least three Arab states are fast becoming vicious civil wars. In the past 10 days, crucial developments in Syria, Libya and Yemen have set these countries spiralling into violent and intractable struggles for power.

In Syria, thousands of troops are assaulting the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour where the government claims 120 of its soldiers and police were killed last week. Leaving aside exactly how they died, the government in Damascus is making it lethally clear that in future its opponents, peaceful opponents or not, will be treated as if they were armed gunmen. An extraordinary aspect of the Syrian uprisings is that people go on demonstrating in their tens of thousands despite so many being shot down. But some are evidently coming to believe that their only alternative is to fight back.

A week ago in Yemen, the demonstrators, who have been marching and rallying in the streets of Sanaa since the start of the year, celebrated jubilantly on hearing the news that President Ali Abdullah Saleh had left the country for hospital in Saudi Arabia after being injured in a bomb attack. "The people, at last, have defeated the regime," the protesters chanted. But it is ludicrous to portray this as a triumph for peaceful protest, since the reason Saleh went to Riyadh was injuries inflicted by a bomb planted in the presidential compound. It is becoming depressingly clear that the Saleh regime is not as dependent on the presence of the president himself as many imagined. Other members of the Saleh clan are in command of well-armed and well-trained military units that remain in control of most of Yemen.

Even before what was clearly a well-planned assassination attempt against Saleh, the street protesters were looking marginalised. They were able to stay in "Change Square" only because traditional players, including powerful tribal and military leaders, had switched sides and were defending them.

Is Yemen on the way to permanent confrontation of the type that reduced Somalia to ruinous anarchy? In the past, Yemenis often argued that, while Yemeni politics was very divisive and violent, the ruling elite had a remarkable capacity to reach last-minute compromises. Maybe this was true, but the failure to evict the Saleh clan, even when its leader is out of the country, bodes ill and opens the way for a collapse of state authority.

Libya has also moved a long way from the democratic hopes of February. An important signal since the start of June has been the intervention of Nato attack helicopters, making the rebels more an auxiliary force in a foreign-run campaign. The deployment of the rebels is now largely decided by Nato, without whose air power the local anti-Gaddafi forces would long ago have been defeated. Most Libyans probably want Gaddafi to go, but the Transitional National Council in Benghazi may not have the legitimacy or the support to replace him. He is very likely to be displaced before the end of the year, but this will be a victory primarily won by Nato and not popular revolution.

A fourth country where the Arab awakening seemed to be on the verge of success is Bahrain. But since the Saudi-led intervention, and the assault on pro-democracy protesters and the Shia population as a whole since 15 March, this tiny kingdom has been convulsed by a civil war that rages just beneath the surface. The decision by Bahraini al-Khalifa royals to play the sectarian card and pretend the demand for democratic reform was a revolutionary plot orchestrated by Iran has won many believers among the Sunni. Quite why the family should have decided to declare war on most of the Arab population of Bahrain remains something of a mystery since this will make it permanently reliant on Saudi Arabia. Probably a sense of panic, at its height in March and induced by the fall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, explains the intensity of the repression in Bahrain. A price for this will be permanently to deepen the bitter hostility between Shia and Sunni.

Probably one should not be so surprised by the faltering of the mass movements associated with the Arab Spring. The surprise is rather that they should have succeeded so easily in Tunisia and Egypt. After all, so-called "velvet revolutions" do not have a high success rate. They may have worked in Eastern Europe when communism was displaced 20 years ago, but the communist leadership was not prepared to fight it out, was divided, massively unpopular and hoped to be part of the new order. A better parallel to the Arab Spring is the Green movement's attempt to stage a velvet revolution in Iran in 2009, which signally failed. Even if the election of that year was fixed by the Iranian government, it still had a core of committed supporters in the Revolutionary Guards. The urban poor never joined the protests en masse as they did in Tunisia and Egypt.

The lesson of the past six months in the Arab world is that unless the street protesters can split or guarantee the neutrality of the armed forces, their chance of success is limited. Their only option is to get full-scale foreign military intervention, as has happened in Libya. In practice, this means obtaining support from the US, even if the military action is carried out by the UK and France. It was the fear in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies this year that they no longer had a guarantee of support from Washington that panicked them into their violent onslaught on protesters in Bahrain.

The foreign media – notably al-Jazeera and satellite channels – played a central part in opening the way for the Arab Spring. Censorship, control of information and communications played an important role in the establishment of the police states that monopolised power in the Arab world from the 1970s. But this control has been weakened by the internet, satellite television and mobile phone.

At the same time, not all the instruments of power have changed. Security forces remained. The spontaneous nature of the Arab uprising was at first an advantage because the police did not know who to arrest, but this lack of leadership became a disadvantage when the revolution faced opposition. The moderation of the early protesters is turning out to be a crippling weakness as rulers fight for power.

US Mission In Iraq

By Musa Keilani 
This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 12/06/2011

Tareq Al Hashemi, vice-president of Iraq,left Jordan after a three-day stay during which he shared with some media people his ideas about the future of his country, as well as his interpretation of the general pulse of the man in the Baghdad street. Hashemi’s Islamic background gave an extra colour to his understanding of events.

Iraq is too unstable for the US military to withdraw from that country and the situation will remain the same even six months from now, the deadline set by President Barack Obama for the last American soldier to leave. This is the argument put forth by senior Obama administration officials to persuade the Iraqi government to formally request an extension of the US military presence in Iraq, as the newly designated defence secretary hopes for.

Clearly, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, for reasons of their own, want the US forces to stay on. Talabani, a Kurd who has been closely aligned with the US since the end of the 1991 war that ended Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, knows that there will be a violent flare-up between Kurdish forces and Arabs in Kurdistan when the US forces depart from Iraq.

In any event, he would not, and could not, say no to the US when it says it would be for everyone’s good if its military stayed in the country for some decades more.

As far as Maliki is concerned, he knows that the stability of his government depends on continued American military backing (and diplomatic support as well). Ideally, he would like the US military to stay on until his term runs out; he has already announced that he would not be seeking another term as prime minister.

Insisting for months that he wants the US military to leave as scheduled, Maliki switched track now, saying he would take a decision only after consulting his coalition partners. It is known that at least one component of the Maliki coalition, the party led by Moqtada Sadr, who is closely aligned with the Iranian regime, would fight tooth and nail against the US military presence continuing beyond December 31, 2011.

It goes without saying that Sadr, who has even threatened to mobilise his Mehdi Army to fight the American forces if they stay on, could quit the coalition and bring down the Maliki government. So much for Maliki’s ambition to complete his term as prime minister.

Of course, there could be unexpected developments that could change the scenario altogether. We have to wait to see the ramifications as they unfold gradually, starting with the dismissal of Ahmed Chalabi, days ago, as a goodwill gesture to the White House. In the meantime, Peter Van Buren, who spent a year in Iraq as a State Department team leader dealing with reconstruction, says that Washington wants to follow the precedent of post-war Germany and Japan by leaving behind “a decent-sized contingent of soldiers occupying some of the massive bases the Pentagon built, hoping for permanent occupancy.

It is not known how the US intends to accomplish it, but Washington will do it, one way or another.

Van Buren has also brought out some interesting features of the State Department’s plans for the US embassy being built in Baghdad. Writing on his blog under the title “A frat house with guns in Baghdad”, Van Buren says that Washington needs the Iraqi bases to signal its political might in the region.

As per the original schedule, as of October 1, 2011, the State Department will take over full responsibility for the US presence in Iraq from the military. The operations will be run from the embassy, which will cost about $736 million (once completed it will be the largest US diplomatic mission abroad - “built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space”.) The embassy will have some 17,000 personnel at some 15 sites, with 5,500 of them being hired guns to maintain security. Of the remaining 11,500, there will be only 200 or so in traditional diplomatic jobs and the rest will be support staff.

Around the US embassy will be a typical American environment, with pizza and hamburger joints, and convenience shops and shopping malls. There will be schools for the children of the staff of the embassy and indeed US-style hospitals since, as Van Buren puts it, “Iraqi medical care is considered too substandard and Iraqi hospitals too dangerous for use by Americans”.

The embassy compound would have its own arrangements for purifying water, generate power and process its sewage, ensuring that it could outlast any siege. The cost of protecting the embassy will be about $973 million over five years. A company called SOC was already given a contract.

“SOC will undoubtedly follow the current security company’s lead and employ almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians transported to Iraq for that purpose,” said Van Buren.

“For the same reasons Mexicans cut American lawns and Hondurans clean American hotel rooms, embassy guards come from poverty-stricken countries and get paid accordingly - about $600 a month. Their US supervisors, on the other hand, will get about $20,000 every month”.

Another company called Triple Canopy will provide protection outside the embassy compound, reputedly for $1.5 billion over a five-year span.

According to the State Department “Report on Department of State planning for the transition to a civilian-led mission in Iraq performance evaluation”, US diplomats will have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft.

Van Buren raised a few key questions: “Does Iraq threaten US security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it’s got lots of oil underground, but it produces remarkably little of the stuff.)”

“Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or WMDs around? Does Iraq hold trillions in US debt?” And, finally, “What accomplishment are we protecting?”

Many Arabs watching what has been going on in Iraq for some decades now can only share what the Iraqi vice president warned against and what Van Buren graphically elaborated on. All share the opinion that the United States, in its Iraqi experience, had accomplished “preciously little”.

Kuwait: ‘Freedom’ Being Abused By MPs

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
This commentary was published in The Arab Times on 12/06/2011 

We are aware that the public usually revolts against an authoritarian ruler or a corrupt leader who steals the wealth of a nation and allows its people to wallow in abject poverty, or a tyrant who uses armored tanks to suppress freedom and imprisons everyone who expresses his or her opinion. Besides these traits, we do not know of any other reason for the people to rebel against their leader. Maybe the luxury of free time or recklessness with wealth might prompt other people to do so, as in the case of some of our lawmakers who deceive certain individuals and convince them to participate in protests under the pretext of demanding freedom and protection of dignity. They have been calling for the ouster of the prime minister to settle personal scores, considering no one has tampered with their freedom or dignity. Actually, these lawmakers have disregarded the freedom of others and pride of the people. They have abused the absolute freedom in the country with impunity.

Is it not strange that those claiming to be part of the opposition -although very small, sit back at home in front of their computers to abuse, attack and accuse people and officials through their postings on the Internet, while they enjoy the best foods and drinks that define their potbellies, and then they drive to the demonstrations in flashy cars? Most of these people are government workers, who protest at night and fail to show up at the office in the morning. They still receive the highest salaries at the end of the month, in addition to allowances, bonuses, ‘threat’ money, and ‘curse’ tips.

Yes! This is what is happening in Kuwait. The opposition members live in affluence. They have the prerogative to hold protest actions at night, so they will not get burned by the scorching heat at noon! They employ their maids to carry the placards for them to ensure their hands will not be stressed. They teach them the slogans that should be chanted, while their vehicles with two drivers each come behind them so that when they get tired, they can continue their march inside the car. What kind of freedom do these people demand? When, where and how have their dignities been violated?  
The lawmakers, who have been spearheading these protests, milk the nation day and night without any hindrance, yet they still take to the streets with placards, shouting slogans at the top of their lungs to demand the ouster of the prime minister, who repeatedly demonstrated his resolve to respect freedom of expression without limits.

Those who have been following the ongoing drama may have been astonished by the irrational demands of the participants. The onlookers cannot find any explanation for this other than recklessness. How can one demand for something he possesses and uses freely? In spite of the tragic drama, we do not raise an eyebrow as long as the actions of this minority cause no harm. It rather creates an impression locally and internationally that the scope of freedom in Kuwait should not be expanded. Freedom has been abused up to the extent of humiliating and attacking others, including HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah whose pictures were burnt and slogans were raised against him. However, no one has been imprisoned, while we see pools of blood flowing in other countries where the people merely demanded reforms.

At this point, we want to repeat our question: What sort of freedom and dignity do these lawmakers want? Do they intend to demand for the fall of the regime after the ouster of the prime minister? The recent events have proven that these lawmakers do not represent anyone except themselves. They do not express the will of the citizens who have realized that their elected representatives are suffering from unstable conditions, which have prompted them to commit political sins and become ungrateful for God’s blessings to them and the nation. They have failed in their repeated attempts to seize the seat of power or push for the fall of the regime and the prime minister. Anyone who dreams beyond his capabilities ends in frustration. He is just like someone who tries to farm in the sea!

Ahmed Al-Jarallah is the editor-in-chief of The Arab Times and the daily Kuwaiti Assyassah

Saudi Arabia's Selective Amnesia

Tariq A. Al Maeena writes: Some residents have dismissed the edict against mingling of men and women as not being comprehensive enough or practical
This commentary was published in The Gulf News on 12/06/2011

In the same week that King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz instructed all government departments to implement the short-term and long-term plans he approved for creating jobs for the increasing number of Saudi graduates, which is also expected to create at least 70,000 new jobs for Saudi women, the permanent committee for issuing religious edicts, chaired by Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, issued a new ruling.

The ruling forbids the mingling of men and women in offices and educational institutions. ‘Women are not allowed to work with men. For example, they cannot work as secretaries for men or at receptions, production lines or accounting sections in a commercial centre, pharmacy or restaurant where men are also present,' the ruling stated.

In response to a question on mingling, the committee warned that the mingling of sexes would have a negative effect on the family and society which would lead to eventual breakdown of the moral fibre of the country. ‘Women's work and education should be done without mingling with men. They should work in women-only workplaces, as Islamic teachings ban the mingling of sexes.'

Quoting a verse from the Quran: "When you ask them [wives of the Prophet] for any goods, ask them from behind a curtain. This is purer for your hearts and for theirs," the committee said the verse applied to all Muslim women until the Day of Judgement.

The committee also stated that the Prophet (PBUH) had said that it was better for women to pray in their homes than in mosques. However, in the same Hadith, the Prophet (PBUH) had urged Muslims not to prevent their women from praying at mosques. The committee urged all citizens and residents to fear God and follow His teachings in all their affairs and dealings.

It was this same committee that issued an edict along the lines of the mixing of the sexes that banned women from working as cashiers at supermarkets. This recent religious edict was signed by prominent clerics such as Shaikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, Shaikh Ahmad Mubaraki, Shaikh Saleh Al Fowzan, Shaikh Abdul Kareem Al Khodair, Shaikh Mohammad Al Shaikh and Shaikh Abdullah Bin Khonain. Naturally such an edict raises eyebrows coming in the footsteps of an announcement of the creation of 70,000 jobs. Some citizens and residents have dismissed this edict as not being comprehensive enough or practical.

They question the absence of this ruling on the hundreds of thousands of maids and drivers living in Islamic households. Or women having to purchase their clothes and undergarments from male salesmen. And wouldn't mingling as defined by these clerics apply to women approaching male cashiers at supermarket check-out stands? Or riding a taxi driven by a male, seated in the closed confines of the vehicle, barely a foot or too away? Then there is the issue of housemaids in Saudi households. Are they not mingling in close quarters with the male members of that house? Or is mingling considered when both parties are Saudi nationals?

Moral values

In reacting to the fatwa, Olga P. writes: "How about travel by plane? Muslim women enter planes which have mixed company in the kingdom. How about Muslim women studying abroad where universities are mixed?" She wonders, "Is this fatwa for all Muslim women meant only for those living in Saudi Arabia exempting Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain and other Muslim countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia so those women should not worry when Judgement Day arrives?" Another added, "Please don't generalise yourselves to be the sole Muslims on this planet. It's the Saudi culture which you are talking about. Do you consider women of countries like Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan not to be ideal? They mingle with men at work, and still have better moral values than a lot of Saudis living in this country. I am not being biased; I am just saying that the Saudi conservative culture should not be portrayed as Islamic law."

Another wondered if this ban is based on Islamic teaching. "If so, then the ban must be implemented in all, and I mean all establishments, not only in educational institution and offices. They should also ban female nurses from working in hospitals where they can mingle with male patients. Is this ban applicable only to Muslim women? If the fatwa is applicable only to Muslim women, then what about those who belong to different religious group who work in different establishments in KSA? Does it mean it's okay for them to work with their male counterparts and Muslim women are not? The government must establish a separate hospital, restaurants, post office, school and many more so that this edict will truly be more meaningful.

So here we have a fatwa and yet we end up more confused than ever. Are we indeed a special people, Muslims of a different degree who require a different set of rules? Or should we just dismiss this latest edict as another case of selective amnesia?

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

Civil War Fears Grow In Syria

By Mariam Karouny 
This commentary was published in The Kuwait Times on 12/06/2011 

Fears that Syria may slide into civil war are growing after a week when the government said over 120 servicemen were killed at a town near the Turkish border. As it sent tanks on Friday into Jisr Al-Shughour, a mainly Sunni Muslim town whose 50,000 inhabitants had mostly fled, the cause of last weekend's bloodshed was still in dispute - state media blamed unidentified gunmen but democracy activists said troops mutinied after refusing to fire on unarmed demonstrators. Whatever the truth, the killings suggest either cracks within President Bashar Al-Assad's security forces or the beginnings of an armed revolt - or some combination of the two.

Either way, the scale of the killing in an area prone to tension between Syria's Sunni majority and Assad's Alawite sect points to a bloodier turn of events after three months of unrest against 41 years of Alawite-dominated Assad family rule. That in turn would rock the entire Middle East, where Syria, Iran's main Arab ally, sits at the heart of numerous conflicts. "The country is sliding towards civil war. It is a step towards civil war," said Syria expert Joshua Landis, associate professor of Middle East studies at Oklahoma University.

He noted that the poor area around Jisr Al-Shughour, lying at the foot of the "Alawite Mountain", the heartland of the dominant minority sect, was home to conservative Sunni Muslims. Many Syrians who joined the Sunni Islamist insurgency in Iraq against US forces came from that region, he added. "It's got a history of anti-government agitations," Landis said. "The Islamic currents are very strong there.

In 1980, the late Hafez Al-Assad, who preceded his son as president, crushed a Sunni revolt in Jisr Al-Shughour, which lies on a strategically important road between Syria's second city Aleppo and the main Mediterranean port of Latakia. Two years later, Assad's forces put down an armed uprising in Hama by the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, killing many thousands and razing the old town - an event which still resonates for Syrians considering challenging their rulers.

Those who have taken a lead in demonstrating for reforms, inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian protests which launched the Arab Spring, stress their insistence on non-violent action. Few are willing to speak publicly about taking up arms. And some dismiss talk of sectarian and ethnic violence as scaremongering by Assad loyalists intent on keeping power.

However, in conversations this week with a number of Syrian activists, several said they believed some of Assad's opponents were already using weapons, including arms smuggled from abroad. "Some people have taken up arms against the security forces in Jisr Al-Shughour. We know that," said one activist who, like many, would speak on the subject only on condition of anonymity. "The question is: Is this limited? Or is it going to spread to other cities?

After years of repression, it is hard to establish the strength in Syria of organised movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone of other anti-government groups. As in several other towns, residents in Jisr Al-Shughour have accused Alawite militiamen, known as shabiha and fiercely loyal to the Assads, of helping the security forces. Two activists said armed Sunni men, as well as shabiha groups, had set up rival sets of checkpoints on roads - an echo of the kind of sectarian tension familiar from neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq. Guns are widely available across Syria. "People have taken arms," Landis at Oklahoma University said. "Things are about to get a lot worse than we thought.

Louay Hussein, an activist in Damascus, said he did not know of Sunnis taking up arms in the northwest of the country. But he told Reuters from the capital: "We have warned the authorities from the beginning that the excessive use of violence will, in the end, allow armed groups to use violence against them." Assad has responded to protests, which began in the southern Sunni town of Daraa, by offering discussions on reform but also by sending in security forces to detain and kill demonstrators.

The government insists it is willing to listen but rejects Western pressure for radical changes. It points out Syria has a potentially volatile mix of ethnic and religious communities, including Christians and Kurds, as well as Sunnis and Alawites. "Syria is a mosaic," Syrian government spokeswoman Reem Haddad told Al Jazeera this week. "It is made of many different sects living together.

Many in the Christian and Alawite minorities say they support reforms, but fear that calls for the overthrow of Assad could fragment the country of 20 million and hand it over to hardline Sunni Islamists who would persecute other religions. Assad's initial response to the protests has included steps toward reforms, including granting citizenship to some ethnic Kurds, lifting a draconian state of emergency, freeing hundreds of prisoners and calling for a national dialogue.

Protests, triggered by anger and frustration at corruption, poverty and lack of freedoms, have been mainly peaceful, though rights groups say the death toll among protesters is over 1,100. At least 200 security personnel have also been killed, the government says. Activists say that at least some of the dead soldiers were killed for disobeying orders to stop protests. Syria has expelled Reuters correspondents and barred most foreign media, preventing independent reporting from Syria.

 Fayez Sara, an opposition figure who was detained earlier in the uprising, said he still has hopes that a political solution might save the country from descending into chaos. "We should try till the last minute because otherwise the price tag will be high," he told Reuters from Damascus. "When we say the time has ran out for a political solution, this means we are opening the country to civil war.

Western powers and their Arab allies have voiced concern but show no appetite for Libya-style intervention in Syria. The gravity of the situation particularly alarms some across the border in Lebanon, where officials with ties to Syria privately express concern that some areas may be headed for chaos. A Lebanese analyst, who is close to some opposition figures in Syria, said: "We have been warning our Syrian brothers but they do not want to listen. They think the civil war in Lebanon and in Iraq will not reach them. They are wrong.

The possibility of splits in the armed forces, where the top command ranks and elite units are largely Alawite while the mass of conscripts are Sunni, is also a concern. A Damascus based analyst, echoing many observers abroad, said Assad and his Alawite allies appeared bent on hanging to power at all costs: "The regime has essentially vowed to break the country over the people's heads," the analyst said. "It will push the country over the cliff unless Syrian society resists its divisive tactics. So the fate of Syria lies not in the hands of the regime, but in that of the people".

An activist who took part in an opposition conference in Turkey last week said he believed that widespread violence was a risk many were willing to take, however, to be rid of Assad. "Even if there is ... a civil war or anything like that, people are determined to go all the way, to the end, regardless of the cost," he said. "We want him out and we want to be free of this regime. "The regime is pushing the country towards civil war and we are heading that way it seems." - Reuters

An Iranian Minister Pretending To Be A Syrian Reporter!

By Tariq Alhomayed 
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 11/06/2011 

Last week, in my article "The child who shook Syria" [2/6/2011] I wrote that "respected Arab news outlets in our region should not accept the emergence of this phenomenon [so-called Syrian "analysts" defending the regime in the media], and if the Syrian regime wants to defend itself, it should do so through an allocated official spokesperson, or through the regime's Minster of Information…rather than through these "analysts" who the media stations know, more than anyone else, are not credible."

Today we return once more to the same issue, and that is for one simple reason. Yesterday the British Sky News channel reported a story about the Syrian regime's suppression of civilians, however the Sky News presenter then said "and now, with us to comment on this issue is a spokeswoman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry." This British news channel did not agree to host any Syrian "analysts" because it is a professional media outlet that respects its viewers and does not subject them to false propaganda, and so the Damascus regime acquiesced and sent a fair-haired spokeswoman [to comment]. This is something that our own [Arab] satellite channels have failed to do!

What is strange is that the Syrian regime attacks Arab satellite news channels rather than thanks them, for these are media outlets that give air-time to these so-called "analysts". Indeed one such Arab satellite news channel hosted one of these "analysts", who live on air invited European ministers to visit Syria, without the satellite news channel host asking "in what capacity are you [the Syrian analyst] extending this invitation?" Indeed if you were to Google the analyst in question you would find that he is not known to the press, but rather is described as being a real estate contractor, whereas this same Arab satellite news channel described him as a "media figure", which is a description that has no basis in reality. One is either a journalist or not; this so-called analyst does not even have a single article to his name, and cannot even be classified amongst those writers who I personally term "the writers who say 'invite me to write for you.'" These are the writers who say, send me an invitation and an [airplane] ticket, and I will extol your virtues, and such writers are in abundance.

What is even more serious is that this same Arab satellite news channel broadcast a tape of a call previously shown on official Syrian television, claiming that this was an armed group targeting the [Syrian] army. This is something that can only be described as ridiculous and abhorrent, and something that no respectable Arab satellite channel should re-broadcast, particularly following the scandal which saw a woman pretending to be the French ambassador to Syria contact a French television news channel and announce her resignation live on air, only for it to be revealed that this woman was an imposter. This is something that I previously described as "the return of the false witnesses" ["Syria…Have the false witnesses returned?" 9/6/2011], and this is an issue that is connected to this same issue [of the so-called Syrian analysts]. We also saw another Arab satellite channel host a guest it introduced as an "Arab intellectual", and who said that he feared Syria becoming a sectarian state such as Lebanon, where he said that sectarianism was 'institutional." However this so-called "intellectual" seems to have forgotten that it was the al-Assad regime – both the Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad regimes – in coordination with Iran that are responsible for institutionalizing sectarianism in Lebanon in the first place.

To return to the issue of the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who spoke to Sky News, and because many of our Arab satellite news channels prefers "ready information", i.e. news already published by newspapers, let me say that the name of the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman is Reem Haddad, and it is now up to these Arab satellite news channels, of course, to try and contact her [to book her to appear on their shows].

In any case, the objective of this article is not to target the mistakes made by our satellite news channels so much as it is an attempt to protect our media as a whole from the deception of the Syrian regime, which does not hesitate to exploit the media, and has been doing so for decades. Patrick Seale, in his 1989 book "Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East", points out that the Hafez al-Assad regime provided Sadegh Ghotbzadeh – an Iranian Minister under Khomeini who was later executed – with a Syrian passport which allowed him to travel to work against the Shah [prior to the revolution]. This saw Ghotbzadeh disguising himself as a reporter for the Syrian "Al-Thawra" newspaper.

Is this enough, or do I need to go on?