After Gaddafi, Let's Hope For The Best In Libya

Yes, Gaddafi's fall will expose factional rivalries, but Libya is unlikely to turn into another Iraq, let alone Afghanistan

By Brian Whitaker

Libyans celebrate the capture in Tripoli of Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam, at the rebel-held town of Benghazi. Photograph: EPA

As recently as last Friday, Kathleen McFarland, a security analyst at Fox News, was lecturing President Obama on America's "missteps" in Libya.

"Libya and Syria are the textbook examples of why it's important to pick your battles, and then make sure you win the one you pick," she wrote. "President Obama picked the wrong fight by going to war against Libya, and so far is not succeeding."

Just three days later, the Gaddafi regime is almost gone and it's looking as if Obama picked the right battle after all. The real test, though, is further down the line. One year from now, will Libyans be living under a government that is significantly better than the one that tyrannised them for almost 42 years? Will they be able to speak their minds freely and engage in the country's politics without fearing the consequences?

The next few months in Libya are not going to be easy – only a fool would imagine that – but nor are the grimmest predictions likely to be fulfilled. Libya is unlikely to turn into another Iraq, let alone another Afghanistan.

The first encouraging sign is that the National Transitional Council – a diverse alliance forged out of necessity – has begun making the right noises. Its interim constitution, published last week, acknowledges the need for give and take. It recognises the rights of the Berber minority and, while accepting a role for Islamic law, also sets some limits to it.

As far as retribution is concerned, initial indications are that it intends to go by the book. Gaddafi's most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, has reportedly been captured alive so that he can be put on trial.

Like Iraq (and many other Arab countries, for that matter), Libya has its social faultlines. Tribal, ethnic and religious rivalries that were swept under the carpet by the Gaddafi regime will now emerge into the open. Allowing them to do so is the only way to address them in the long term, though in the short term they could easily become an obstacle to democratic processes.

On the plus side, however, many Libyans insist that the social divisions are nowhere near as deep as in Iraq (we shall soon know if they are right) but, perhaps more importantly, in Libya they are less likely to become a proxy battleground for foreign powers.

There is also no reason to suppose that Libya will turn into a failed state. Under Gaddafi, it ranked 111 out of 171 in the Failed States Index – closer to Finland and Norway (the least failed states) than to Somalia or Afghanistan.

Regardless of the eccentricities of its leader, and despite the corruption and the secret police, Gaddafi's Libya also had most of the apparatus for government that would be found in a "normal" country. The need here is to heed the lessons of Iraq and not dismantle it at a stroke and then start again from scratch but to take control of it and reform where necessary.

Libya also has a couple of advantages over its revolutionary forerunners, Tunisia and Egypt, which could prove important in the immediate aftermath.

The first is that it has a substantial economic cushion: large oil revenues, a small population (6.5m) and $70bn in its sovereign wealth fund. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, its tourism potential – Mediterranean beaches and spectacular historical sites – is virtually untapped, so there is room for some relatively easy growth, especially if exiled Libyans start returning in large numbers.

The contrast here with Tunisia and Egypt is striking. With more limited financial resources, neither of those countries has been able to seriously tackle the economic problems that were a major factor in the uprisings that led to the overthrow of their presidents.

Libya's other advantage, noted by Tom Gara in a blog post for the Financial Times, is the defeat of Gaddafi's security forces.

"The backing of Nato air strikes means the physical infrastructure of the regime, from intelligence offices to security headquarters and military equipment, has been severely downgraded to the point of collapse," he wrote. "The country will be the only [one] in the Arab world where an opposition movement greets the new day with an old regime that is physically broken."

Exactly what this means for Libya is still unclear, but we have only to look at Tunisia and Egypt to see its potential importance. In Egypt, where the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took charge after Mubarak's fall, and to some extent in Tunisia too, the survival of unreconstructed security forces is proving a barrier to political change.

The difference in Libya is that the destruction of Gaddafi's army does at least open up the possibility of politicians, rather than the military, gaining the upper hand.

At the moment, of course, there's little we can be certain about. But let's hope for the best, stop predicting the worst, and prepare for something in between.

-This commentary was published in The Guardian on 22/08/2011
- Brian Whitaker has done a variety of jobs at the Guardian including, most recently, seven years as Middle East editor. He is currently an editor on Comment is Free. He is the author of Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East (Saqi, 2006) and What's Really Wrong with the Middle East (Saqi, 2009)

U.N. Recognition Is Good For Palestinians

By Daoud Kuttab

In their frantic efforts to stop the Palestinian leadership from going to the United Nations to gain recognition, Israeli officials and propagandists are imposing what appears to be a mistaken choice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Palestinians to engage in direct talks. He has even offered to meet Palestinian officials anywhere if they choose direct talks instead of unilateral action. On the surface, this seems logical. Behind the rhetoric it is obvious that Netanyahu’s offer is a continuation of Israel’s policy of obfuscation and political maneuvering.

Palestinians have been in direct negotiations with Israel since the Madrid peace conference of 1991. Despite the signing of a five-year interim agreement in 1993, Palestinians are nowhere nearer to establishing a state today than they were back then.

With the exception of some administrative and municipal responsibilities and autonomy in major populated areas, during the post-1993 period the Israeli occupiers continued to control the movement of people and goods within Palestinian areas and between Palestinian areas and the rest of the world. This military control is a 44-year-old unilateral action that contravenes international law and violates the spirit and text of multilateral and bilateral agreements.

Not only did direct talks fail to produce the desired results, their continuation contributed to masking widespread theft of land. And Palestinian lands continue to be confiscated. Jewish settlements are still being built (the construction of 300 new housing units has just been approved in the settlement of Ariel) and the security wall still strangulates Palestinians. The International Court of Justice at the Hague has ruled that the wall built inside Palestinian territory is illegal under international law.

American and Israeli officials have used different methods to dissuade Palestinians from following through on their intention of obtaining statehood at the U.N. Both carrots and sticks (more sticks) have been dangled in an attempt to get Palestinians to change their mind. However, for once Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership seem determined to press on.

It is still not clear which precise route the Palestinians will follow. Will they go to the Security Council on Sept. 20, when the Lebanese government will hold the council’s presidency, and ask to be recognized as a state? There has been much information indicating that the United States would likely veto such a request. However, addressing the Palestine National Council two weeks ago, Abbas said that no American official had told him so directly.

It is also possible that before or after a Security Council vote the Palestinians will go to the U.N. General Assembly. The assembly cannot recognize states (the way the Security Council does), but if two-thirds of the member states agree, they can recognize Palestine as a state with observer status, similar to the Vatican. After such a vote – and Palestinians are confident they have a two-thirds majority – the Palestinians might try to invoke the rarely-used Uniting for Peace resolution, which the General Assembly is entitled to approve. According to the resolution, the General Assembly can immediately examine and issue non-binding recommendations addressing issues affecting international peace and security on which the permanent Security Council members are unable to achieve unanimity.

If such a resolution is approved, the international community may be obliged to impose sanctions against any party denying Palestine the right to be a fully functional and sovereign state.

The Palestinians’ desire to obtain a U.N. vote on statehood (in whatever form) does not mean they cannot embark on direct negotiations with Israel. Palestinian spokesmen, including Abbas, have said they see no reason why representatives of a newly approved state cannot negotiate with representatives of the state of Israel.

What is not clear, though, is whether after September the Palestinians will be represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority, or some other entity. The Palestinian Authority, established as part of the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO, is the address that most of the world recognizes and deals with. This will likely remain the case after the U.N. vote.

Threats by Israel that it will cease recognizing the Oslo Accords were quickly withdrawn when it became clear that such a measure would not deter Palestinians. In fact, the Israelis saw that Oslo does more for Israel (especially on security coordination) than for Palestinians.

Despite the overblown Israeli hype, Palestinians in the occupied territories are not holding their breath as to what will happen in September. Israel and its army will continue to rule Palestinian territories no matter what the international community says. Palestinians can and will have direct talks with Israel regardless of what status they hold after the U.N. vote. The Palestinian move at the U.N. will not, on its own, bring about a state. But it does reflect Palestinian and international aspirations, therefore it will strengthen the Palestinian position when it does return to those talks.

-This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 22/08/2011
-Daoud Kuttab is founder and director of the Community Media Network, an NGO dedicated to advancing independent media through new and alternative platforms. This commentary is published by permission from the author

Equal Before The Law

By Nermeen Murad

Morocco’s new constitution stipulates that it is a charter for human rights, as well as for the rights and duties of citizenship. In this context, it claims, the supremacy of international charters is asserted over the national legislation, as is equality between men and women, when it comes to civil rights, in the context of respect for the rulings of the constitution and the laws of the kingdom, which are inspired from Islam.

It also confirms the equality of men and women when it comes to all political, economic, social and cultural rights, and sets up mechanisms to promote gender equality.

Article 10 of the Turkish constitution guarantees that all individuals are equal without any discrimination before the law, irrespective of language, race, colour, sex, political opinion, philosophical belief, religion and sect, or any other considerations. It further adds that men and women have equal rights. It stipulates that the state has the obligation to ensure that this equality exists in practice.

It warns that no privilege shall be granted to any individual, family, group or class and, finally, it proclaims that state organs and administrative authorities shall act in compliance with the principle of equality before the law in all their proceedings.

The Bangladeshi constitution states that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. It adds that women shall have equal rights with men in all spheres of the state and of public life. No citizen shall, on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth be subjected to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to access to any place of public entertainment or resort, or admission to any educational institution.

“Nothing in this article shall prevent the state from making special provision in favour of women or children or for the advancement of any backward section of citizens,” it adds.

The Qatari constitution says that all persons are equal before the law and there shall be no discrimination whatsoever on grounds of sex, race, language or religion.

These are only some examples of constitutions of other Arab and Muslim states, to be used as a reminder of where we are along the scale of equality and how we compare with equally conservative, Arab and Muslim countries.

This week, we in Jordan watched the delivery of the new draft of the Jordanian Constitution, only to find out that in somebody’s grand wisdom, it was decided that Jordanian women are not necessarily equal to Jordanian men and therefore the Kingdom is now not constitutionally committed to the principle of equality for all its citizens, only the men among them.

One of the Jordanian “statesmen” entrusted with the task of drafting the new constitution added insult to injury by proclaiming that women ”should work to establish their presence in society” because the hindrance to their equal status, in his opinion, “is the culture and the mindset which can’t be controlled by the Constitution”.

If we follow his line of reasoning, then our Constitution should not mention any category, including religion, language and ethnicity, and we just ask those Jordanians who belong to non-mainstream (male) communities to just go ahead and lobby for themselves against discrimination without any state or legal protection.

It would be an interesting state of affairs where Christians and other religious minorities would have to fend for themselves and create campaigns to change the culture and mindset of some Jordanians who do not view them as equal citizens.

Or is it just women who need to do that?

Another member of the committee entrusted with redrafting the Constitution let on in a closed briefing to political experts and personalities that the “political price” of granting women constitutional equality would have scuttled the whole political reform effort.

There is this quiet whispering and resigned raising of the brows as the word “nationality” buzzes around us to somehow give the impression that women were not granted equality in Jordan only because there are hundreds of thousands (exaggerated) of Jordanian women married to poor desperate Palestinians and these would change the ethnic and economic makeup of Jordan and irrevocably change its political identity - if not empty the whole Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of its men who would be rushing across the borders to marry Jordanian women and take their nationality for their offspring.

If it were not so sad, embarrassing and demeaning to our Jordanian men and women - and a huge black mark on the country’s reputation and international standing - it would actually be sarcastically hilarious that the team of elders entrusted with the historical duty of taking Jordan to another level failed in one of the first and most important articles of the Constitution - the one that guarantees all the Kingdom’s citizens equality before the law.

They effectively relegated half of the population to a substandard and lowlier level of citizenship based on their sex, starkly highlighting the irony of their decision to deny women equality in their country.

Women leaders met to discuss this development and their meeting was characterised by disappointment, shock and incredulity that they - half of the Jordanian population - were bartered easily just to avoid a political headache and clash with xenophobes and male supremacists.

An air of resigned sadness permeated the atmosphere while they tried to find excuses for the betrayal they just experienced. One of them proclaimed: “Today our voice was silenced.”

I add: “Today our citizenship was stolen.”

This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 22/08/2011

Libya: The Endgame Is At Hand, But Holds Dangers Of Its Own

Cartoon by Dave Brown

As of last night, it was unclear whether the regime of Muammar Gaddafi was in its last days if not hours. But it did seem that, for the first time in the six-month conflict, the endgame was finally at hand. Opposition forces were advancing on the capital from three sides and, while reports of clashes in Tripoli itself appeared to be premature, the central question was no longer whether the Gaddafi clan would be overthrown, but when and how – and then what would happen next.

The "when" depends on the real balance of forces and on the regime's readiness to fight. Yesterday, the Information minister, Moussa Ibrahim, spoke, as he has so often, with forked tongue. Like Gaddafi himself in an earlier broadcast, he disparaged the opposition forces and evinced a fierce determination not to cede power without a fight. At the same time, he spoke about being amenable to talks. So long as the opposition senses that it has the upper hand, however, the prospects of talks at this stage look remote.

The "how" is equally hard to gauge. There were reports over the weekend of more high-level defections from the Gaddafi camp, but also of support still holding up in Tripoli. This is not a regime that has so far shown any signs of being ready to give up power. There was a street-by-street battle for Zawiya on the western approaches to Tripoli. In the east, the oil city of Brega has changed hands several times since the start of hostilities. If the opposition has to fight for the capital, a protracted bloodbath could be the result.

This in turn could precipitate more overt Nato intervention, on the same pretext that justified the original air strikes near Benghazi: the need to protect the civilian population. Thus far, the opposition can just about claim that it has achieved its victories by itself. Nato may have advisers on the ground, and individual member countries may have special forces deployed in ways, and places, that can be technically distinguished from UN-authorised Nato operations. But it is in everyone's interest – that of the Libyan opposition and the western alliance – that the home forces should be able to win power and keep it by themselves. Anything less, and the authority of the opposition if and when it enters Tripoli will be compromised to the degree that it is seen as a client of foreign powers, rather than a legitimate ruler in its own right.

The population's perception of the opposition's strength will be a key to what happens next. And this will depend to a large extent on how far the leaders of its National Transitional Council can present a united front and a coherent vision for Libya's future. Regrettably, their performance so far has not given grounds for confidence.

Not only have there been open political differences almost from the start, but the murder last month of the military commander, Major-General Abdel Fatah Younes – allegedly for talking to representatives of Gaddafi – suggested serious, and continuing, differences in approach. With the forces converging on the capital under separate commands and with distinct regional identities, there is a real risk of further fighting over the spoils. As the endgame proceeds, those who wish Libya well should hope for the best, while preparing, in hard-headed fashion, for the worst.

This article was published in The Independent on 22/08/2011

Gaddafi’s Fall Will Renew The Arab Spring

By Philip Zelikow

The situation in Tripoli finally seems to be breaking the way I hoped it would when I wrote about Libya for the FT in March. Much of the debate about this, in the US, at least, characterised the Libyan intervention as “liberal interventionism.” People chose sides based on what they already thought about that notion. This was always a mistake.

As I argued in March, however, it was – and is – wrong to see the Libyan case as a generic case to evoke such well-conditioned responses. Libya’s circumstances and Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’s tyranny has a history and a geography that would well justify hard-headed calculations by the US, Britain, France, and many other countries that they should seize this opportunity to help the rebels get rid of this regime.

Much of the conventional wisdom in recent weeks has been that the Arab spring has been turning into a dreary summer. Not so dreary now. The fall of Col Gaddafi will renew a sense of momentum. The ongoing struggle in Syria, which seems to be slowly escalating, will move even more into the foreground.

My sense is that much of the drive in Arab spring policymaking is now actually coming from the Persian Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. This is now their hour. I would feel better if France, Britain, the US and those three countries were having regular working group discussions at the political director-level on a nearly daily basis. Perhaps they are.

The consensus now seems to be that there are three major possible outcomes to all these revolutionary situations. One is that a new group of authoritarians take control — the forces of reaction reassert themselves. Second is that Islamist extremists take control.

Then, as usual, there is the hope for the “third way” – of more open and democratic societies along lines familiar to citizens of Western societies. At the moment it looks like the betting has been on track one, with the assumption that this is also the option being backed by the Arab Gulf money, which has been flowing much more freely than funds from the constrained American and European coffers.

My argument is only this: don’t downplay the chances that a new and distinctive way can emerge, one that doesn’t fit into these preconceived categories. It may be crafted by exhausted cadres of newly successful revolutionaries in tiresome bargaining with wary existing elites, worrying over how to fuse concerns about traditional values, stability, and more open societies. There are intriguing developments going on across north Africa and south-west Asia, not yet quite comprehended or digested by many observers, in places like Morocco, Turkey, and even inside a seemingly conservative emirate like the UAE.

Many leaders in Arab and other Muslim communities know that, somehow, it won’t do just to create a new oligarchy of cronies controlling all the key jobs and lines of credit. Multi-ethnic communities in countries like Libya, Iraq, and Syria are and will be experimenting with federal or perhaps even confederal solutions that grant greater room and delegated authority.

In this part of the world it is the “total state” model itself that is crumbling, the decrepit son of decolonisation. That unitary, statist model has been the vehicle for all the cronyism and it is giving way to something new. Outsiders can be enablers for all this, offering information, tabling menus of ideas and incentives. The efforts so far have not yet jelled into a coherent framework. But the outsiders will not be the deciders.

-This opinion was published in The Financial Times on 22/08/2011
-The writer is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 he was the counsellor of the US Department of State

The Arab Spring May Not Deliver Liberal Democracies

There is a growing fear in the Arab world, especially in Egypt, of a second revolution led by Islamists themselves

By Abdullah Al Shayji

Over the past six months we have inked a few columns discussing and analysing the forces of change sweeping the Arab region. I have argued that what we are witnessing in numerous Arab republics does not amount to real classic revolutions, notwithstanding the West's labelling of these unprecedented changes as the Arab Spring.

Who would have thought that a little-known man called Mohammad Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, by setting himself on fire last December, would generate this unfolding political tsunami in the Arab world?

For the sake of argument let us call these changes ‘uprisings' that are sweeping the Arab world, from ‘the ocean to the Gulf'. These are leading to unprecedented changes in the region in terms of liberating the masses from decades of oppression and iron-fisted rule by a single-party apparatus in much of the Arab world. Such fundamental changes are not only changing the face of the region and emboldening the masses, but, along the way, are also eradicating the long-held belief of Arab exceptionalism.

This belief held that the Arab world defied change and resisted democracy. Finally something gave in, and Arabs surprised themselves and others and joined other civilisations and cultures in their pursuit of change which has eluded them for generations.

But alas, change is costly and is always fraught with unintended consequences and heavy casualties along the way. The optimism of the early Arab Spring seems to be more of wishful thinking than reality. Nobody claimed change will come easy. The beautiful phrase — Arab Spring — was probably coined by wishful thinkers; what we all cheered for is giving way to a bloody autumn and may even become a winter of discontent. Two of the most repressive Arab regimes, in Tunisia and Egypt, were toppled and disappeared from the political scene in mere weeks with minimal bloodshed. Bewildered and wide-eyed Arabs were glued to their TV screens watching in disbelief a little Pharaoh abdicate his throne in Egypt after trying to pave the way for his son to succeed him. They also saw a brutal little dictator dripping in corruption and nepotism in Tunisia, who amended the constitution many times to become a president for life in a police state, fleeing the country.

Unlike fall of communism

George Friedman, in his poignant article in Stratfor.com, a private intelligence outfit in the US, titled ‘Re-Thinking Arab Spring', argued convincingly that "some regimes have come under massive attack but have not fallen, as in Libya, Syria and Yemen. And in many countries, such as Jordan, the unrest never amounted to a real threat to the regime. The kind of rapid and complete collapse that we saw in Eastern Europe in 1989 with the fall of communism has not happened in the Arab world. More important, what regime changes that might come of the civil wars in Libya and Syria are not going to be clearly victorious. Those that are victorious are not going to be clearly democratic and those that are democratic are obviously not going to be liberal."

Again the point is made: what we are witnessing in many Arab countries are not real, classic revolutions similar to 1989 post-communism Eastern Europe or the Iranian revolution, where the head of these regimes, along with their entire political apparatus, military, security and intelligence agencies were all swept away and put on trial. This is not the case in Libya, Syria and Yemen. The regimes are digging in and committing atrocities with reports of "crimes against humanity" that will probably surface in the International Criminal Court, especially in the case of Libya and Syria. Even in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, where Hosni Mubarak and Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali were ousted and departed the scene, their henchmen, political and military leaders, are still running the show appointing prime ministers, and administering and charting their countries' political future. Instead of being put on trial and indicted for their role in the old regimes, they have become the new masters. This also could lead to other Arab countries that are undergoing change seeing this as a model to be emulated.

The other unintended consequence of change is the unruly masses with high expectations. This manifests itself in Tahrir Square in Egypt, where people of different stripes — Islamists, liberals and independents — gather in the Square to protest any unpopular government decree. The current Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf pledged his allegiance to the Egyptian people one hot Friday in Tahrir Square! Does this mean that Tahrir Square will be the new arbiter in the new Egypt?

Moreover, there are now creeping doubts in the minds of many in the Arab World and in the West about the growing clout of Islamists. They feel that the end result of the pangs of Arab Spring won't deliver liberal democracies, but rather Islamic republics. There's fear, especially in Egypt, of a second revolution led by the Islamists themselves. We are living in exciting times, where change is still happening and these changes have not reached their final stage. At any rate, I repeat, we are making history and living it.

-This commentary was published in The GULF NEWS on 22/08/2011
-Professor Abdullah Al Shayji is the Chairman of the Political Science Department, Kuwait University

Dangerous Fissures In Iranian Society

Silencing of the organised opposition has not brought peace to the country's decision-making elite

While the Arab spring unfolds all round them, the citizens of Iran seem condemned to a lonely purgatory. Their 1979 revolution promised refuge from the Shah's roller-coaster rule, but the Islamic Republic that replaced it is beset by an equally secular malaise. A soaring murder rate (the country's top weightlifter was a recent victim), family breakdown and chronic levels of personal debt are standard topics of conversation in homes and on buses that ply the capital. The country's most accomplished filmmaker depicts a society that is built on deception and mired in strife. At a middle-class dinner party, a female guest talks casually of driving her car off a cliff.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, disapproves of all this Cassandraism. Under his guidance, he believes, Iran has become internationally respected — especially for its refusal to give up a controversial nuclear programme in the face of international sanctions. Khamenei demands an end to ‘negativist' statements from the country's officials, which breed ‘hopelessness'.

Iran's leaders put a stop to participatory politics when they rigged the 2009 presidential election in favour of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and crushed the opposition ‘green' movement that rose up in response. Its figureheads, Mir Hussain Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, were put under house arrest last winter. But the silencing of organised opposition has not brought peace to the country's decision-making elite, even if its members claim to be united behind the principle of clerical rule. On the contrary, in government, as in society, dangerous fissures have opened up.

Disunity is all the more remarkable in light of the harmony that prevailed after the flawed presidential poll. Back then, the country's conservative establishment, led by Khamenei and stiffened by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, came together to save Ahmadinejad from a wave of unrest. That solidarity has now ended, poisoned by a cocktail of personal ambition and millenarian quackery.

Relations between Ahmadinejad and some of his former backers have deteriorated to such an extent that the president is now depicted as a maverick who has been ‘bewitched' by his own chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai. A former intelligence ministry official whose daughter is married to the president's son, Mashai is regarded as the source of what his rivals call a ‘current of deviancy' running through the government. Mashai is an unpredictable force in public life. He is an Iranian nationalist in a regime that stresses the universal values of Islam. Yet his approach to external relations — he has acted as the president's personal envoy, increasing the envy and suspicion of others — can be surprisingly emollient.

Under pressure

Khamenei is in a bind. Scores of parliamentarians now hope to impeach the president, but the supreme leader will probably not let them. It was he who put Ahmadinejad in power, and the two men know each other's secrets from the 2009 election and its grisly aftermath. Far better, the ayatollah may judge, to ride out the two years that remain before Ahmadinejad is constitutionally required to stand down.

Yet for all the pressure he is under, Ahmadinejad has assets of his own. A brilliant populist, he has showered enough attention and largesse on poor, pious Iranians to win a place in their hearts. As expected, inflation has risen (it is expected to peak at 22 per cent early next year) but a new monthly dole has softened the blow for many people. Other extravagant promises (a plot of land for every family, for instance) are derided by economists, but lapped up by the credulous.

Almost entirely reliant on oil receipts, unproductive and monopolistic, Iran's economy is not as strong as it should be. Entrepreneurship has been stymied by sanctions, while the Revolutionary Guards' commercial divisions take over ever larger bits of the economy in the absence of foreign investment. On the country's periphery, revolts by minorities such as the (mostly Sunni) Kurds and Balochis smoulder on. A dribble of assassinations of scientists associated with Iran's nuclear development (the most recent took place on July 23, though Iran denied that the victim was involved in the programme) serve to illustrate the determination of Iran's enemies to deny it the bomb. In such an environment, it is not surprising that existential angst in various forms, religious and secular, is now perceptible across Iranian society.

This article was published in The Economist on 22/08/2011