Counter-Revolution In The Gulf

How the monarchies are striking back against the Arab Spring. 

By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 06/05/2011 

While Tunisians and Egyptians are enjoying their newfound freedoms, forming political parties and holding passionate debates on their countries' futures, across the six Arab states along the Persian Gulf, a counterrevolutionary pushback against the Arab Spring is steadily gaining steam. Autocratic rulers are clamping down hard at home, closing down political space in an attempt to isolate their citizens from the transformative pressures at work elsewhere in the Middle East. It's safe to say that -- at least for now -- the Gulf region is becoming more repressive, not less, with potentially dangerous long-term consequences not only for these oil-rich monarchies but also for their Western allies.  

Saudi Arabia's announcement on April 29 of sweeping new media restrictions is just the latest effort to narrow the parameters of legitimate political debate. Saudi King Abdullah's decree, which amended the 2000 Press and Publications Law, prohibitedthe media from reporting anything that contradicts Islamic sharia law or serves "foreign interests and undermines national security."

Such a vague -- yet potentially all-encompassing -- definition considerably tightens the noose of self-censorship in Saudi Arabia. It also includes provisions for closing publishers and banning writers who violate the decree from contributing to any media organization for life. With Saudi forces engaged in a highly sensitive crackdown in neighboring Bahrain, the creation of these new "red lines" sends a powerful signal that critical reporting or dissenting viewpoints will not be tolerated.
Back in March, Saudi Arabia also suppressed an effort by a group of intellectuals to establish what would have been the first political party in the kingdom: the Umma Islamic Party. Their call for peaceful political reform obviously unnerved the authorities, as five of the founders were arrested a week later. However, a spate of petitions -- including a Declaration of National Reformcalling for constitutional monarchy, as well as a "counter-reform petition" warning of creeping liberalisation -- suggest that Saudi officials have not been successful in squelching domestic debate. 

It's not only Saudi Arabia that's cracking down on dissent. Beleaguered Gulf monarchies in Bahrain and Oman have violently suppressed demonstrations, while the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait also stepped up repressive measures. But it's not just a backlash against events in Tunisia and Egypt -- the roots of the authoritarian inward turn were visible well before the outbreak of the Arab Spring. 

In the final months of 2010, simmering discontent in Kuwait and Bahrain was met by unusually blunt displays of force. In Bahrain, security forces detained more than 20 prominent opposition and human rights activists ahead of the October parliamentary elections. Meanwhile in Kuwait, a string of confrontations between the ruling family and the political opposition culminated in December with the use of force by security forces to break up a demonstration, during which four MPs were beaten and injured, and the death of a Kuwaiti citizen, who was allegedly tortured in police custody, in January. 

The political temperature in the Gulf was therefore rising even before the start of widespread demonstrations in the Middle East. And the case of Bahrain, the first Gulf country to experience widespread protest, shows just how deep-seated some popular grievances are. The rapid swelling of the initial pro-democracy protests into a cross-sectarian movement for substantive political reform panicked the ruling al-Khalifa regime, which "invited" Saudi and Emirati forces to restore order in March, under the guise of the region-wide Peninsula Shield Force.

The foreign intervention has been accompanied by an escalation of repression as security forces ruthlessly eliminate all forms of dissent to the Khalifa's continuing rule. Doctors who treat injured protesters have beenrounded up and lawyers representing them have been arrested. Opposition and human rights activists have been detained and allegedly tortured, and mysterious deaths in police custody have included one of the founders of Bahrain's leading independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, which then announced its impending closure on May 2.

The apparent vulnerability of the Bahraini ruling family frightened other Gulf rulers, leading them to crack down on their own dissidents. Action was most concerted in the UAE, where prominent pro-democracy activists such as Nasser bin Ghaith, professor of economics at the Abu Dhabi branch of the prestigious Sorbonne University, and Ahmed Mansoor, who founded the UAE Hewar online forum for political discussion, were both arrested. Gaith and Mansoor were among 133 Emirati intellectuals who signed a petition in March calling for the direct election of all members of UAE's Federal National Council, and the passage of constitutional amendments to vest it with legislative and regulatory powers.

These arrests have been followed by an assault on civil society organisations. The UAE Ministry of Social Affairs dissolved the elected boards of the Jurist Association and the Teachers' Association, replacing them with state appointees. An early sign of the chilling effect that these measures had came on May 2, when more than 200 lawyers issued a pledge of allegiance to the UAE rulers, denouncing"false statements" by "misled and deceived persons."

Gulf rulers have complemented their repressive tactics with a series of economic blandishments, such as announcing additional public sector jobs, pay increases, and benefits. Together, these steps have provided the royal families with a temporary breathing space. Few analysts expect anything like an Egypt or a Tunisia scenario to develop. But by ignoring the crucial social dimensions of the Arab spring and refusing to modify political structures that seem ever more anachronistic by the day, the Gulf states are trying to swim against the tide in the Middle East.

Pushback in the Gulf also raises awkward questions for the monarchs' Western partners. Bahrain's status as a Major Non-NATO Ally and the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet has caused the United States to remain silent about the ongoing crackdown there, a fact that sits uneasily with the United States' rhetorical support for pro-democracy movements and the right to protest elsewhere. 

But it's not just policymakers that have been placed in a delicate situation by the crackdown in the Gulf: Universities such as the NYU and the Sorbonne, and other Western institutions such as the Guggenheim, have invested heavily in branch projects located in the UAE in recent years. Thus far, they have largely chosen to maintain a studious silence about the worsening human rights situation, leaving them open to charges of naivety or even complicity. NYU now faces an escalating backlash from staff and students over whether the kinds of rights, freedoms, and methods of political engagement they expect of an American university even apply in the authoritarian Gulf. 

Don't expect this tension to resolve itself anytime soon. As long as the Gulf states remain authoritarian bulwarks in a radically changing regional environment, Western governments and institutions will continue to find themselves caught between their values and their interests. And unless the ruling families acknowledge take measures to resolve their citizens' simmering social, economic and political grievances, the next explosion in the Gulf could be greater still.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is deputy director of the Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance and Globalisation in the Gulf States at the London School of Economics.

Syrians Defy Crackdown, Stage Widespread Protests

 Tens of thousands of people are taking part in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

By Liz Sly from Beirut
This article was published in The Washington Post on 06/05/2011 

Syrians swept onto the streets in towns and cities around the country after noontime prayers on Friday, sustaining their seven-week-old revolt against the government of President Bashar al-Assad despite a massive security crackdown in which hundreds have died and thousands have been arrested.

Anti-government protests in response to a call by activists to stage a “day of defiance” were reported across the country, including in towns that had been ringed by tanks in recent days in an attempt to deter citizens from taking to the streets.

Activists reported that security forces opened fire on protesters in the cities of Homs, Hama, Latakia and in the Damascus suburb of Tal, and there were unconfirmed reports of casualties. Human rights groups said at least 21 people were killed when troops fired on demonstrators.
In Damascus, which has so far remained largely immune from the unrest, security forces detained the veteran opposition activist Riad Seif, a leading figure in the 2001 Damascus Spring democracy campaign, human rights groups said.

The Associated Press quoted his daughter Jumana as saying that Seif, 64, was rounded up with a crowd of protesters at a mosque in the central neighborhood of Midan and was taken away on a bus.

With tanks and security forces blocking major roads and sealing off neighborhoods in most towns, people have been unable to form large gatherings in central squares, said Wissam Tarif of the human rights monitoring group Insan. Instead, he said, they are staging smaller protests in individual neighborhoods.

“But what is amazing is that it is happening in so many towns and villages around the country,” he said.

Friday marked the seventh week since Syrians first took to the streets, initially in small numbers, to call for political reforms. But as the Assad government has responded to the unrest with escalating force, the protest movement has swelled, and it now seems clear that much of the country is in open revolt.

In many of the demonstrations around the country, crowds chanted, “The people want to topple the regime.” The slogan echoed the refrain of democracy protests elsewhere in the region and left little doubt that the demands of most demonstrators now go beyond mere reforms.
Although the unrest has yet to reach significant proportions in the capital, Damascus, and Aleppo, Syria's most populous city, where the government’s supporters and the country’s business elite are concentrated, few other parts of the country have been untouched.

Demonstrations were also reported to be underway in the northern coastal cities of Latakia and Baniyas, the northeastern town of Qamishli, Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border in the east and in several small villages around the besieged southern town of Daraa, where the protest movement started.

The crackdown in Daraa seemed intended to serve as a lesson to other Syrian towns where the unrest was slower to build. Activists fear that hundreds of people were killed in the 12-day siege of the southern rural town, during which artillery was used to pound neighborhoods into submission and snipers were deployed on rooftops to shoot anyone who stepped outside.

But many Syrians say they have only been galvanized by the brutality in Daraa to call for the overthrow of the regime.

The northern town of Baniyas has also been ringed by tanks for more than a week, but citizens there have continued to stage demonstrations on a near daily basis, according to witnesses and amateur videos posted to Web sites. On Friday, electricity to the town was cut off after the al-Jazeera television network set up a link to transmit the protests there live.

But a student activist in Baniyas said demonstrators remained undeterred by the security presence, and that thousands were rallying in the town center to call for the Assad government to go.

“The tanks could come to crush us at any time,” he said. “But we are not afraid, and we will continue our protest.”

Verifying reports from Syria is difficult because foreign journalists have been denied visas to work in the country. Among the hundreds detained in the crackdown is a journalist for the al-Jazeera English network, Dorothy Parvaz, an Iranian Canadian who was taken into custody after she flew into the country from Qatar last week.

Is Turkey Overplaying Its Hand?

By Rafael Kandiyoti

This commentary was published in Le Monde Diplomatique on 05/05/2011

 

Nihat Erim, a former Turkish prime minister (1971-72), once said facetiously that Turkey couldn’t ever be run without the backing of the United States or Russia. At the height of the cold war, no prizes for guessing which superpower the famously conservative Erim favoured as ally. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP government has not deviated from that path, or not by much.

Following his first election victory in 2002, Turkey’s energy policy formally aimed to reduce dependence on “Russian” gas to 30% of imports. The motivation was political, heeding Washington warnings against becoming too dependent on Russia. There was much talk, now forgotten, of transiting natural gas from Russia and fresh water from Turkish rivers to Israel, through pipelines laid outside the Syrian exclusive economic zone.

The scope of Turkish external relations today compared with that of only six or seven years ago is nothing short of breathtaking. Contractors have been removing minefields on Turkey’s long frontier with Syria; visa-free travel is now the norm; predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq has become an important trading partner, as has Iran. To the east, linked by crude oil and natural gas pipelines, Azerbaijan and Georgia have been enlisted as strategic partners. There have been moves to befriend Armenia (although nothing, it seems, will be achieved before implicit claims to a Greater Armenia can be laid to one side).

When the Turkish-Israeli axis foundered with Israel’s winter 2008-09 Gaza war, with Operation Cast Lead, many observers blamed hastily forged understandings between Israel, Greece and Cyprus on Erdogan’s harsh and personal rhetoric, saying “so much for zero problems with neighbours”. The prime minister’s harsh language may have served to discount Ankara’s legitimate grievances, from ill-judged Israeli meddling in Iraqi Kurdistan to Cast Lead itself, which put an end to the Turkish-sponsored negotiations between Israel and Syria. (Turkey had not been warned about the offensive.)

Since then, some friends of Israel have suggested that Erdoğan’s government is “going east”. The charge is mainly directed at Turkey’s western allies, and the pro-Zionist lobbies among them, and aims to undermine the Israel-Turkey alliance, a relationship that had served Turkish diplomacy well over several decades. However, the “Turkey going east” warning did not register in the US, reluctant to take on new challenges in the Middle East and clearly wanting to see Turkey “inside the tent”, not out.

But has Turkey really gone east? Or was the perception to do with the government’s acknowledged religious activism, or the desire to expand business with Arab neighbours among Erdogan’s domestic constituency?

In reality, the transformation of Turkish foreign policy draws from many disparate elements. Take energy for example. In an earlier article (1) I pointed out that over recent years Russo-Turkish energy cooperation has gradually been taking on aspects of medium-to-long-term inter-state accommodation. Turkey is Russia’s second largest gas importer, after Germany. In May 2010, an agreement was signed for a Russian-built nuclear power station on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. There are also reports that Turkey has agreed to favour Gazprom’s South Stream gas pipeline over Nabucco, an EU-sponsored plan with no confirmed source of natural gas. Ankara has since contributed its own confusing signals to the EU’s feeble efforts to somehow find access to “non-Russian” gas, by signing documents supporting Nabucco one week and South Stream the next (1).

However, recent reports suggest that the Turkish government has yet to give formal consent to South Stream being laid on the Anatolian shelf on its way to the Balkans. Turkey is seeking a downward revision of the price it pays for Russian gas and wants to modify the rigid take-or-pay agreements signed before the AK government came to power in 2002. Gazprom has baulked and the train of energy-related agreements that were to follow has run into the buffers (2).
Over recent years, perceptions of Turkey in the international arena have been subtly altered, along two parallel tracks. Strong year-on-year economic growth (6.6 average GDP growth between 2001 and 2008) has attracted attention. So has sound monetary governance and rapid recovery after the low-growth years of the 2007-09 crash: GDP shrank by 4.7% in 2009 and grew by nearly 9% in 2010 (3). In parallel, the intelligent diplomacy of foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has aimed to reduce tensions with neighbouring countries and to mediate in regional conflicts. (Admittedly, Turkey’s intercession between the US and Iran has backfired, giving hawks in Israel’s foreign ministry unexpected ammunition in the matter of “Turkey going east”. Clearly, there is a problem in defining Turkey’s east.)

As well as acknowledging Turkey’s potential as a future major energy conduit, commentators suggest it is an indispensable partner to the West in economic and security matters (4). With this year’s Arab spring, the Turkish regime has been held up as a model of stable, prosperous democracy. But while the economy is strong, Turkish unemployment levels (which send shivers down the backs of EU negotiators braving what remains of Turkey’s accession negotiations) and income disparities of unseen proportions have been overlooked, as has the position of dissenting media.

Much of Turkey’s economic growth is based on increasing imports of crude oil and natural gas. And the country’s current account deficit, 6.5% of GDP in 2010, is rising rapidly with increasing oil prices; an article in the pro-government Today’s Zaman said that Turkey’s current account deficit jumped 127% in February to $6.12bn (5). Bankers often maintain that a country’s ability to repay its debts is not an immediate concern; what matters is the country’s ability to service that debt. Since its own banking upheaval of 2001-02, Turkey appears to have serviced its obligations in an orderly manner. The country needed about $53bn in aid from the IMF between 1999 and 2008 and has since declared itself not to be in need of further assistance. It is rated Ba2 at Moody’s and BB by Standard and Poor, two levels below investment grade. One obvious cause of the yawning gap in Turkish finances is rising energy prices, not helped by the exorbitant prices extracted by Gazprom.

One has to acknowledge the audacity of the government of a populous country, in a dangerous neighbourhood and with a relatively small economy and a large external debt, playing a hard-edged game with two superpowers at once. With the IMF sidelined and some very powerful lobbies in Washington and elsewhere now hostile, both Turkey’s growth rates and its increasingly bold diplomacy seem to hang on how its finances are viewed by the international markets.

In late autumn 2010 – before the latest rise in oil prices, which caused successive $5bn and $6bn monthly current account deficits this January and February – yields on Turkey’s international bonds had already risen to nearly 6% (6). That is clearly some way off the 17%+ being currently charged for Greek government debt by Greece’s EU allies. But it suggests that rates charged for Turkish government debt in international markets need careful watching.

Notes and References

Professor Rafael Kandiyoti is Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London and author of Pipelines: Oil Flows and Crude Politics, IB Tauris, London, 2008.

(1) Rafael Kandiyoti, “Europe’s energy diplomacy all at sea”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, Diplomatic Channel, 11 March 2011.
(2) Rafael Kandiyoti, “Pipeline chess across the Black Sea”, idem, 19 January 2011.
(3) “Turkey: Overheated”; Financial Times LEX column, 17 April 2011;
(4) ISN Security Watch, 7 April 2011.
(5) “February current account deficit soars 126.7 pct”, Today’s Zaman, Istanbul, 12 April 2011.
(6) M Patterson and S Bryant, “Turkey Bonds Are Biggest Losers in Worst Rout Since 2008”, Bloomberg, 1 March 2011.

Lebanon’s Media Heroes

This editorial was published in The Daily Star on 06/05/2011 

Lebanon will commemorate its fallen members of the press Friday, in a somber occasion that highlights the lack of respect for the profession in this part of the world.

The country’s journalist martyrs during years of peace have outnumbered those members of the media who are killed during wars in other countries.

Lebanon can continue to boast of its relatively high level of press freedom, when compared to surrounding countries, but this mark of distinction doesn’t erase the fact that local journalists suffer from a range of problems, starting with the lack of legal and other forms of protection for their profession.

This is due largely to the attitude of nearly every government in the region: The media is only doing its job when it is directly affiliated with a given regime, or political party, or caters to the whims and interests of such entities. Anything else is interpreted as trouble-making, or worse.

Despite this depressing situation, this newspaper can only salute Lebanon’s media martyrs, whether prior to Independence or afterward.

These fallen heroes stood up for their principles, which proved detrimental to their very lives, while their courage has kept the flame burning brightly for future generations.

This newspaper hopes that the media in general gains true respect, both as an industry, and as a profession. Through the eyes of the media, society learns about what is taking place around it. This function is even more relevant and resonant today, as the revolutions in communications and transportation turn the world into a global village.

The conditions of Lebanon’s own press involves many negative aspects, but the freedom and performance of Lebanese journalists should serve as a model for the press in this region, where the situation has, for many decades, been nothing to write home about.

Commemorating the martyrs of journalism is especially important in today’s Middle East, where freedom of opinion and expression is being contested on a daily basis. A free media is a responsibility; it is also a basic necessity, since a society cannot healthily decide its future without having access to credible and accurate information.

It is no exaggeration to say that the press in the wider Arab world, despite the stance of the authorities, has made some strides in revealing the appalling injustices and human rights abuses that have marred this region. Members of the Lebanese press and their Arab colleagues have, through their efforts, helped open the eyes of local populations to their situation, and in recent months, the world has witnessed drastic changes in regimes that were formerly thought to be unconquerable.

What the press has achieved through words and pictures has proven to be mightier than the means of violence that have been arrayed against it, and Friday is a day to remember this powerful truth.

Egypt Shifts The Region

By Rami G. Khouri

This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 06/05/2011 

 

Sometimes you can almost physically feel the political earth shifting beneath your feet. One of those moments occurred in Cairo a few days ago, when the main Palestinian factions Fateh and Hamas signed the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement to reconstitute a single Palestinian government.

This will be seen in retrospect as a historic turning point in the contemporary history of the Middle East - not so much for what it means for the Palestinians, but more for what it tells us about the return of Egypt to its natural role in regional diplomacy. It is the first tangible sign of the return of sanity and dignity to the affairs of state and diplomacy in Cairo’s foreign policy, after decades of emasculation, subservience and marginalisation.

Others will follow quickly, including opening the Gaza-Rafah border, resuming normal relations with Iran, rational relations along the Nile Valley, more effective and realistic regional nuclear policies, and greater regional trade and economic complementarities.

(Egypt’s relegation to the sidelines of contemporary politics and diplomacy since the 1980s was due largely to its foreign policy being captured by a combination of money-obsessed conservative Arabs and narrow-minded ideologues in Washington who were almost totally under the sway of pro-Israeli zealots. That is a fascinating tale that deserves its own accounting another time, so that other newly liberated and relegitimised Arab governments can have a documented handbook on how to preserve sovereignty and not to conduct foreign policy in the future.)

The Egyptian government’s constructive and impartial mediating role that achieved the intra-Palestinian reconciliation stands in stark contrast with the pro-Fateh and anti-Hamas tilt of the Mubarak regime and its prime purveyor of political and intellectual dishonesty, former intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman.

The differences between Fateh and Hamas were all related to political and security matters that had logical solutions because they emerged from short-term political actions rather than long-term structural differences.

Israeli-American-Mubarak/Suleiman resistance to deal with Hamas in power and giving Israeli concerns greater importance than Palestinians’ rights prevented a reconciliation earlier on. The agreement now, so soon after Mubarak-Suleiman have left the scene, is a telltale indicator of where the problems really were. So was the speedy, almost Pavlovian, comment by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, within hours of the reconciliation accord, that Fateh could have peace with Hamas or peace with Israel, but not with both.

The implications of a unified Palestinian government and a reintegrated national political system for wider Arab-Israeli and Middle Eastern matters are enormous, and they will play themselves out gradually. The more significant development now is that Egypt’s resumption of its traditional role as a regional Arab power will slowly influence some of other key ideological and diplomatic confrontations that have defined the Middle East for decades, because the Palestinian-Israeli and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict remains at the heart of many of those regional and global dynamics.

Four main ones will now be impacted by the Egyptian shift back to a rational foreign policy: the Arab-Israeli, Arab-Iranian, intra-Arab, and Arab-Western conflicts, or at least recurring tensions.

The reactivation of Egypt’s regional role is also significant because it comes at a time when four other important developments are under way in foreign policy trends that impact the Middle East.

The first is the dynamism among some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, three of which (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar) unusually sent troops beyond their borders to engage in martial diplomacy in Bahrain and Libya. The second is the active global intervention in Libya through the UN Security Council, now aiming to overthrow the Libyan leader, Muammar Qadhafi. The third is the increasingly important counsel and role of Turkey in the area. The fourth is the increasing regional and global pressure being brought to bear on the Syria-Iran-Hizbollah axis, combined with Damascus’ preoccupation with its domestic condition.

In this context of an ongoing structural reconfiguration of Middle Eastern foreign policy actors and influences, an Egyptian foreign policy refreshingly based on integrity, national interest and plain old common sense represents the first significant move towards redressing the most glaring imbalance in the region since Egypt slipped out of the Arab order around 1980.

The region’s security architecture since then has been defined by interactions among four non-Arab powers - Israel, Iran, Turkey and the United States - and this has left this area as a playground for their scheming and rivalries. A robust Egypt that may coordinate more closely with the equally effervescent GCC states, while Syria is preoccupied at home and the Palestinians present a unified face to Israel and the world, means we should expect important changes ahead in the four overriding regional dynamics that continue to link the Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and major Western powers in mostly uneasy relationships.

As pro-democracy revolts continue to spread around the region and install governments that more accurately reflect their public opinion, we should expect more such seismic shifts in regional and foreign policies, most of which will be welcomed by the Arab people who long for integrity, sovereignty and genuine national interest in their foreign policies.

Hard Work Ahead For Palestinian Unity

By Tom Perry from Ramallah
This commentary was published in The Gulf Times on 06/05/2011 

The Palestinians’ path to unity is strewn with obstacles that have thwarted past efforts at reconciliation between rival groups Hamas and Fatah and could do so again.

Whether the groups can overcome the challenges this time will likely depend on the course of regional upheaval that brought them this far, leading to what one analyst said was a deal forged out of “necessity rather than conviction”.

The deal endorsed in Cairo on Wednesday presents a united front as the Palestinians seek UN recognition as an independent state in September. But it offers no clear solutions to some of the toughest problems faced by Fatah and Hamas.

Their conflict has resulted in rival administrations governing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and has set back the Palestinians’ quest for statehood.

Early signs do not bode well. Hamas says PA security forces that have suppressed its activists in the West Bank have detained six sympathisers since its leader Khalid Mishal met Fatah chief and PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Egypt.

Managing security in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is seen as one of the potential pitfalls in “the understandings” reached under the mediation of Egypt’s new military rulers who took power from Hosni Mubarak in February.

Security will not be on the agenda of a new, technocratic government envisioned under the agreement. Its main tasks will be Gaza reconstruction and holding elections within a year.

For now, the sides appear to have shelved the question of exactly how internal security forces operated by the rival administrations can be united. De facto, that means Hamas will continue to control the Gaza Strip.

“You will have a government governing two different situations,” said Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political commentator closely involved in the reconciliation efforts.

“This landmine will mean the new government will manage rather than end the division,” he said.

The sides have agreed to the formation of a “supreme security council”, though the Cairo understandings do not state what it will do.

With the help of its Western allies, the Palestinian Authority has built new security forces trained to keep law and order in West Bank cities and prevent any repeat of what happened in Gaza in 2007, when Hamas seized control there.

Hamas, in turn, has developed its own security forces in Gaza, while also maintaining a military wing designed for armed conflict with Israel - an objective openly opposed by Abbas who believes in negotiations over combat.

The Cairo agreement does not indicate how the rivals will reconcile that fundamental difference in approach to Israel that lies at the heart of their division, though Masri said the deal indicated Hamas had de facto decided to a ceasefire for now.

The understandings are also not clear on the role of a new Palestinian leadership body designed to run affairs until the reform of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) - another issue that has long thwarted attempts to forge unity.

The PLO is the umbrella organisation led by Abbas which has led negotiations with Israel over the past two decades. Hamas is not a member. The Cairo agreement talks of a temporary leadership body whose decisions “cannot be obstructed”. Hamas will be part of it, but it is not clear what power it will have. It could take months for the rivals to agree on the make-up of the technocratic government of independents outlined in the deal, though this is seen as doable.

By keeping Hamas out of the government and keeping it out of politics, the Palestinians hope to avoid a repeat of the Western boycott faced by the Palestinian Authority when Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. It may not be that simple.

The PA’s Western donors, including the US, have said the new government must commit to conditions including recognition of Israel and the renunciation of violence - terms Hamas will not accept.

Israel, which has described the unity deal as a blow to peace, has already taken action, freezing transfers of tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

Bassem Zubaidi, a Palestinian political commentator, said “external obstacles” erected by Israel or the PA’s donors could pose another major challenge to the unity agreement.

To forge real agreement on the issues at the heart of the division, including a common political agenda, would take years, he added. “These matters are big and very complicated and will not be implemented overnight,” he said.

“But they can start with small steps, such as forming the government and holding elections.”

Assad Retrenches Into Alawite Power Base

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
This analysis was published in The Kuwait Times on 05/05/2011 

President Bashar Al-Assad is increasingly relying on his Alawite power base to crush pro-democracy protests that have posed the boldest challenge to the Assad family's 41 years of rule over Syria. Assad, an Alawite, sent army and secret police units dominated by officers from the same minority sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, into mainly Sunni urban centres to crush demonstrations calling for his removal for the last six weeks. Their use of tanks to shell the city of Deraa last week, storming of mosques and attacks on unarmed civilians - as reported by residents and activists - have raised the stakes.

Reports say that Sunni conscripts, Syria's majority sect, refused to fire at their co-religionists. The 45-year-old president, who has kept the Soviet-era political system he inherited from his father intact, has hinted repeatedly that the protesters were serving a foreign conspiracy to spread sectarian strife. The warning was reminiscent of language his father, the late President Hafez Al-Assad, used when he put down an Islamist and secular leftist challenge to his rule in the 1980s and has not found wide resonance.

Mass protests for political freedoms and an end to corruption spread after Assad made his remarks. An official media campaign was launched last month with the motto "surround the symbols of sectarian strife". Security forces have shot dead at least 560 civilians in attacks on protesters, human rights groups say. Hundreds more are missing, many feared killed, and thousands have been arrested, adding to thousands of political prisoners.

But Assad may have struck a chord among members of the Alawite sect, who rose to prominence in the army under French rule, when the colonial administration used "divide and rule" tactics to control Syria. Alawite officers expanded in numbers and gained control over the armed forces a few years after the Baath Party took power in 1963, especially key air squadrons, missile and armoured brigades and intelligence. "The army is mostly Sunni in terms of numbers, but an Alawite captain has more say than a Sunni general," said a former member of the army's personnel division.

Alawites received preferential treatment in government and security jobs, although many Alawite villages remained poor and prominent Alawite figures led part of the secular opposition against Assad family rule. A declaration signed last month by Aref Dalila, a leading Alawite economist who spent eight years as a political prisoner after critcising monopolies granted to an Assad cousin, denounced what he called the sectarian scare tactics used by authorities. Assad, who allowed Islamists to exert more control over society as long as they did not interfere in politics, tried during the protests to placate conservative Sunnis by promising to open an Islamic university and easing bans on wearing the full veil.

His father used a blend of repression and the granting of privileges to ensure that the Sunni merchant class, whose influence has gradually waned as a new business generation tied to the Assad family rose, supports Syria's minority rulers. Control of the army, however, has remained key to perpetuating Assad family rule over a majority Sunni population. The Fourth Mechanised Brigade, headed by Assad's brother Maher, bombed and machine-gunned the city of Deraa into submission last week. Republican Guards units deployed around Damascus. In Rastan north of Homs, residents said Military Intelligence agents killed 17 protesters on Friday.

Witnesses said authorities have begun to arm villages in the Alawite Mountains overlooking the mixed coastal cities of Latakia, Banias and Tartous, where Alawites who descended from there were employed in the government and security apparatus, marginalising traditional Sunni communities. Gunmen loyal to Assad, known as 'shabbiha', have rampaged in Banias and Latakia to scare demonstrators, killing at least six civilians in a sectarian-driven attacks, residents said. "I was driving with my wife and children through the Alawite Mountains over Banias and road blocks appeared in almost every Alawite village. Villagers were carrying brand new AK-47s," said a Syrian Christian engineer, whose community has stayed on the sidelines during the unrest.

Anas Al-Shughri, a protest leader in mostly Sunni Banias, said armed Alawite villagers in the hills overlooking the restive city have been loosely grouped into loyalist militias. "I regret to say that the propaganda that Assad is spreading that the Alawites will not survive if he is toppled is receiving an audience among our Alawite neighbours," Shughri said. A report by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, which is headquartered in Doha, said sectarian "agitation has reached an advanced stage in mixed areas" but that Syrians in general have not fallen for it. "There is no dispute that the 'shabbiha' are semi-criminal gangs comprosed of thugs close to the regime," it said. Syria's leadership was exploring "the importance of the sectarian factor and how to use it to confront the mass demonstrations freedom and dignity," the report said. - Reuters