Out Of Syria's Carnage: A Survivor's Testimony Of Bab Amr's Last

By Vivienne Walt

En route to Homs, photographer William Daniels made this photograph of an Free Syria Army fighter manning a checkpoint on the highway near Al-Qsair, Syria, Feb. 21, 2012.

Late on Feb. 21 a message arrived at TIME's Photo department in New York. It was from French photographer William Daniels, saying he had smuggled himself into the epicenter of Syria's yearlong revolt — the besieged neighborhood of Bab Amr, in the city of Homs. Holed up with him were a few local activists, plus French reporter Édith Bouvier, French photographer Rémi Ochlik, Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa, as well as American war correspondent Marie Colvin and British photographer Paul Conroy, both of whom had arrived there the day before. They had all sneaked into the country with the help of Syrian activists who had smuggled them across the border, at immense risk to themselves, believing it was crucial for the West to know about the mounting disaster. The journey included a hair-raising stretch through 2.5 miles of tunnel running under the Syrian Army's firing positions. For a moment, the journalists felt the thrill of adventure, as Daniels himself now admits. They were in the middle of the biggest news story in the world. But the adventure would quickly turn to terror and, for those who made it out alive, those nine days in Syria could well haunt them for the rest of their lives.

At 8:22 a.m. the next morning, Feb. 22, the Syrian Army opened fire on the area where the journalists were staying. "The shelling began very close to us. One boom, then a second. On the third the Syrians with us shouted 'you have to get out!'" says Daniels, 35.

Colvin and Ochlik ran out the door of their two-room hideout to grab their shoes at the entrance so they could flee. In the chaos, Daniels made a different, split-second decision: to stand a foot to the right of the wooden doorway to the room, placing his body against the inside wall, a reflexive action that would save him. Espinosa, meanwhile, jumped to the right of the doorway. The night before, Daniels and Conroy had surveyed their quarters — a makeshift media center deemed convenient since it had internet access — and concluded that the simple wooden door would not withstand a blast. But when the blast occurred, Conroy found himself in the path of the doorway, along with Bouvier.

At that instant, a rocket exploded at the front of the building, killing Colvin and Ochlik instantly. The space was filled with dust. In the chaos, Daniels heard Bouvier scream, "William, William! I can't move!" Her left leg was crooked. He pulled her out by the shoulders. She was bleeding heavily. Carrying his colleague, Daniels staggered to the doorway. As he glanced down, he saw his friend Ochlik, just 28, lifeless on the floor. "Edith," he gasped to Bouvier, "Rémi is not with us anymore."

Bleeding and shaken, the journalists and Syrians in the house hid for 10 minutes in the bathroom, the safest spot in the house, until a car arrived to get them out. Frantic Syrian activists raced them to a makeshift clinic, where the doctor, a defector from President Bashar Assad's military, declared that Bouvier needed an operation on two fractures on the femur. It was a procedure impossible to undertake given the war conditions in the besieged Bab Amr district of Homs. Equally impossible was fleeing through the tunnel by which they'd come, since Bouvier could not walk and transporting her by car was too dangerous for her safety. Conroy, who was also injured in the abdomen, had a large leg wound, but could be carried easily. The doctor injected Bouvier with morphine, and helped the journalists find a new hideout: a room with one small window surrounded by three-story houses, and hidden from the street.

Traction was crucial to avoid blood clots in Bouvier's leg. "We had to keep finding things to weigh her leg down," Daniels says. "We took six bags of saline fluid and tied them to her foot." Two activists with first-aid training were assigned to care for Bouvier and Conroy in two 12-hour shifts, injecting Bouvier with pain killers and finally instructing Daniels about how to administer the injections.

They were trapped — Daniels, Bouvier, Espinosa, and Conroy. Confined to their sunless shelter, they sat listening, day after day, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., to rockets and shells exploding outside, with a lull only around midday prayers. The closest Internet connection was a hazardous 10-minute walk through Bab Amr. But the journalists recorded a videotape, and handed it to activists to upload on YouTube. Broadcast across the world, it showed Daniels, Conroy and Bouvier appealing to the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to evacuate them. They looked curiously upbeat. Bouvier's dark curls framed her broad smile. "We were happy just to have people come see us," Daniels explains. "Edith looked radiant because that is her personality, she smiles a lot and loves to talk to people."

Despite the appearance of calm, with each passing hour, their fate was growing more and more tenuous. The Syrian military was drawing nearer; the explosions growing louder. "There was a drone just in front of us overhead," Daniels says. "It made us crazy, we could hear it above, all the time, all the time. We wanted to kill this little mosquito and we were dreaming of using anti-mosquito spray."

The regime was closing in on Bab Amr, determined to crush what had become a stronghold of the rebel Free Syrian Army. Daniels had determined he would not abandon Bouvier. He says he was consumed instead by the fear that she would lose her leg. "I kept having three thoughts: Save Edith's leg. Get some of Rémi's things home. Get out of there," he says.

There was no easy way to get out of there. And living conditions were growing worse. The Syrian Army had bombed rooftop water tanks, so the taps ran dry after a few days. The only light was from candles and a gas lamp. Locals supplied blankets an oil heater for the bitter cold. Food was running low; one day, all they ate was a bowl of rice. The residents of Bab Amr were heartbreakingly kind, plying the journalists with candies and cigarettes, even hunting down imported Winstons for their guests. When a two-hour truce on Feb. 24 allowed Daniels and Espinosa a chance to retrieve a few possessions from their first bombed-out hideout, Daniels grabbed the energy bars from his dead friend Rémi Ochlik's bag. Then he picked up Ochlik's wallet, computer, passport and bomb-blasted camera, which "looked like a cauliflower," Daniels says. "Javier and I worried maybe it would upset his family too much. But I knew I had to bring things of Rémi's for them and his girlfriend."

It was during that ceasefire that Daniels finally shot photos of Bab Amr's devastation, and was taken to see Colvin and Ochlik's bodies in a makeshift morgue which residents had set up in a nearby apartment. The shrouds were marked in Arabic 'woman' and 'man.' So Daniels wrote their names in block letters, fearing the bodies would be lost in the turmoil. Three days later, hospital workers buried the corpses, having run out of fuel to continue the refrigeration process.

By the time Daniels returned to Bouvier after the brief ceasefire, five ambulances from the government-run Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) were parked outside their hideout. "We aren't here for you, we are here to get wounded Syrians," an ambulance worker told Daniels. "The ICRC is just outside Bab Amr, 500 meters away. You can talk to them."

Daniels borrowed the ambulance's radio set and raised the ICRC representative to Syria, Marianne Gasser. "You have to get us out!" he **SAID into the crackling handset. "Don't worry, we're negotiating to go into Bab Amr, and it should be fine," she told him.

Minutes passed. The Syrian ambulances offered to take Daniels and the others out of Bab Amr, but they would have to meet security forces first — a likely path to arrest. On the radio, Gasser assured Daniels that one ambulance would stay with them while another returned soon with an ICRC representative. Then, suddenly, one of the Syrian paramedics said, "We all have been ordered to leave now."

"You can't leave us!" Daniels pleaded desperately.

"We'll pick you up later. We have to leave now," he said, driving off. Soon after, government forces unleashed several rockets, seeming to aim directly at the journalists' hideout. "Here a rocket, here a rocket, here a rocket," Daniels says, marking crosses on a hand-drawn map as he retells the story. The journalists had been uncovered, and now, they were sitting ducks. Both in the blast which killed Colvin and Ochlik and now, Daniels believes the Syrian Army deliberately targeted them. The blasts continued for hours through the night and well into the morning. "We were really scared," he says, drawing a breath as he relives the terror. Despite the risk of capture or worse, he says, they received word from French authorities to leave as soon as possible. "We decided the very next ambulance that came we had to go with them."

But none came.

By the morning of Sunday Feb. 26, the Syrian Army had reached the edge of Bab Amr, and was poised to smash through the cordon. Time was running out. The four colleagues made a decision: they would escape the way they came, through the 2.5-mile tunnel. They taped Bouvier to a stretcher, and four Syrians took turns carrying her in twos. But the tunnel, a water pipeline, was only 5'4" feet high, so they had to crouch as they walked, dragging the heavy load. They fell further and further behind Conroy and Espinosa, who were ahead of them with several Syrian activists. Several people rode on motorbikes, which the opposition used to transport supplies into the besieged area and to take wounded people out. Suddenly there were explosions: The Army had attacked the tunnel's far end. People fled, screaming.

In the darkness, Daniels found himself alone with Bouvier, breathless and terrified. Finally,a rebel fighter approached, mumbled "no problem, no problem," then placed his Kalashnikov rifle across Bouvier's slender body, and ran. At first, Daniels and Bouvier thought he had left to bring help. But he had fled.

In the desperate darkness, Bouvier pleaded to her friend, "We have to move from here." In his mind, Daniels thought she was simply too heavy. Fighting to remain calm, he tried dragging the stretcher, but couldn't move it. Then he heard the buzz of a motorbike, and saw a dim headlight. He ran towards it, shouting for help. He and the driver cut Bouvier loose from the stretcher and placed her on the motorbike, Daniels behind her. They bumped through the darkness, back into the siege of Bab Amr, toppling over several times and once knocking Bouvier's head hard on the tunnel roof.

Back in their one-room hideout, the activists warned them that the army would launch an offense at dawn. Worse, the conditon of Bouvier's leg was deteriorating. This time the doctor said an operation was essential to save her foot, which had been bound tightly for days by the jerry-rigged traction. He inserted a metal pin through her knee. The two colleagues lay fitfully through the night, listening to explosions close by.

Meanwhile, Conroy managed to make it to the Lebanese border. Espinosa, like Conroy, fled from the tunnel during their escape and made it to Lebanon days later. But perhaps 13 Syrian activists were killed in the attack in the tunnel.

Back in their hideout, Daniels and Bouvier were out of options. At sunrise on Feb. 27, a Syrian activist laid out another escape plan for them: Disguise Bouvier in Islamic dress and try the most hazardous back route out of Bab Amr, one in which survival was far from sure. "He said, 'yesterday my friend was killed on that road.'" Daniels and Bouvier agreed to try nonetheless. Bundled into a car by combatants from the Free Syrian Army, they drove them through treacherous terrain held by government forces. "I cannot give the details but it was very, very dangerous," Daniels says. "We were very, very scared."

When they finally stopped at a safe house, they were overwhelmed by the smell of food cooking on the stove. They bathed and were given fresh clothes, Everyone wanted their photo taken with Bouvier, who'd gained fame in Syria because of the YouTube video. "She was like the icon of the revolution," Daniels laughs. It was the first good moment in five days." After two days, their FSA escorts told them it was safe to continue, and they slept the following night in a second safe house, before finally crossing into Lebanon along a smuggling track late on Thursday, having waited their final hours in Syria for a snowstorm to end. It had taken them four days to traverse just 25 miles. They were then driven by ambulance to a French hospital in Beirut. On the way, they turned on their mobile phones and sent ecstatic messages to friends. "It was over!" Daniels says, dropping his head in his hands and weeping as if the totality of the experience was only now sinking in.

The following evening — nine days after the blast killed Colvin and Ochlik — Daniels and Bouvier touched down at Paris's military airfield of Villacoublay, in a French government Falcon jet. Speaking to reporters on the tarmac, President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Bouvier, and "the knightly spirit of her companion William Daniels, who at no point abandoned his colleague, even though he was not injured and could have escaped."

Minutes later, Daniels bounded out of the plane, grinning and pumping his fist in the air, in a green bomber jacket and black ski cap, followed by Bouvier on a stretcher, this time carried by French paramedics. Daniels had not heard Sarkozy's words — he learned of them from text messages from friends. He was already thinking about how to deliver Ochlik's battered camera and to his girlfriend. In another coda, Red Crescent officials recovered the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik from Baba Amr and repatriated them to the U.S. and France for burial.

But Daniels remains troubled. Until Bab Amr, the most dangerous assignment he'd live through was the Libyan revolution last year. There, a mortar exploded 100 feet from where he was walking with his friend and colleague, Rémi Ochlik. Trapped for days in Bab Amr after Ochlik's death, Daniels says he vowed to himself that this would be his last war. "I was sitting there, with Rémi dead, Marie Dead, and Paul and Edith wounded," he says. "I felt, if I get out of here, I am done with this." And then, after a pause, he admits he might change his mind.

Above all, Daniels remains most troubled that the ghastly suffering they witnessed might be getting lost amid the story of six western journalists. He says he feels deeply uncomfortable that their ordeal has gripped world attention while hundreds of Homs residents had been killed in the four-week siege. The people they'd left behind could well have been slaughtered by the advancing Syrian Army. Each person Daniels met in Bab Amr had lost loved ones — their unremembered names joining the close to 8,000 people who have died so far in the conflict in Syria. And while the people of Bab Amr treated the journalists with extraordinary care, Daniels and Espinosa had seen 150 locals huddling in a single basement, with minimal food and water, struggling to survive the siege. "The real story is not us, it's the Syrian people," Daniels says. "You must write that. What we experienced was 10% of what these people experienced in Bab Amr." They might never know what retribution those who cared for them in Bab Amr or helped them out of Syria, might suffer. As for the Syrian activists who died in the chaotic process of rescuing the western journalists, no one is likely to know their names for a long time. The very revelation of their identities is likely to put their loved ones who remain in Syria at risk.

-This report was published in Time Magazine’s blog on 08/03/2012

Five Surprisingly Good Places To Be A Woman

We're always hearing about how swell it is in Sweden -- but how about Lesotho and Latvia?

BY DAVID KENNER & URI FRIEDMAN

When we think about the best places in the world to be a woman, northern Europe typically springs to mind. And, indeed, countries such as Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are perennial heavyweights in rankings of gender equality. Sweden, for goodness sakes, offers women (fine, men too) 480 days of paid maternity leave -- at 80 percent of salary -- which can be taken at any point until the child is 8 years old. But the picture is more diverse than you might think. As the Independent recently pointed out, Rwanda is the only nation on the planet in which females make up the majority of parliamentarians, while Burundi is the only country where women make up more of the labor force (92 percent of working-age females) than men (88 percent).

During the 101st International Women's Day on Thursday, March 8, there will no doubt be much talk of the work that must still be done to achieve greater gender equality. Women, Oxfam notes, earn only 10 percent of the world's income but clock two-thirds of the world's working hours. They hold a mere 14 percent of the world's parliamentary seats (see this great visualization of women in politics), and make up more than two-thirds of the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty across the globe.

Yet the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s 2011 ranking of 135 countries by the economic, educational, health, and political gaps between men and women also surfaces a handful of nations that are doing surprisingly well when it comes to narrowing gender disparities. Here's a look at five that jumped out to us.

PHILIPPINES

Not only does the Philippines appear eighth overall in WEF's list, but it ranks first in "educational attainment" and "health and survival" and was the only Asian country to close the gender gap in those categories in 2011. Just this week, the country's Senate passed a bill aimed at ending gender discrimination in the workplace. A 2009 "Magna Carta of Women" promises that the state will "provide the necessary mechanisms to enforce and guarantee the realization of women's rights."

Childbearing, however, remains a contentious issue among Filipinos, 80 percent of whom are Catholics. Abortion is illegal, and access to contraception is not widespread. The World Bank estimates that 20 percent of Filipino women who want contraceptives can't get them.

SPAIN

Seven out of WEF's top 10 countries are in Europe, so perhaps it's no surprise to see Spain in the 12th slot. What is surprising, however, are the rapid strides Spain has made in recent years to get to its current position. Back in the 1970s, after all, the Spanish government did not allow women to serve as witnesses in court or open bank accounts by themselves.

Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who governed from 2004 to 2011 and proudly proclaimed himself a feminist, made women's rights one of the central concerns of his government. At the start of his second term in 2008, his cabinet featured nine women and eight men -- making it the first government in Europe to be made up of a majority of women. But despite these impressive improvements, much work remains to be done: Spanish women still earn, on average, 30 percent less than men.

SOUTH AFRICA/LESOTHO

South Africa and Lesotho, a kingdom completely surrounded by South Africa, are the only two countries in sub-Saharan Africa that make it into WEF's top 20. South Africa fares particularly well on political empowerment -- women currently comprise 45 percent of Parliament. Two South African women are also represented on Forbes's list of most powerful women: Absa Bank CEO Maria Ramos and Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita, who runs Arcelor Mittal South Africa, the largest steel producer in Africa.

Lesotho actually scores better than South Africa in gender equality, boasting no gap between men and women in WEF's education and health indicators. But while it may be more equal, Lesotho is also in much worse shape: Its annual per capita income hovers around $1,000, according to World Bank figures, about one-sixth that of South Africa. Meanwhile, life expectancy in Lesotho is only 47 years -- a full five years less than its larger neighbor.

LATVIA

Latvia has its problems -- it took some hard hits during the global financial crisis, for example -- but it continues to boast a strong record on gender equality. As of 2010, women constituted 71 percent of the Baltic state's university graduates, 50 percent of its Supreme Court judges, and 45 percent of those employed in its research and development sector. Latvia's first female president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga oversaw Latvia's entrance into the European Union in 2004.

Latvia scores particularly high marks on education and health equality, but still suffers from significant income inequality between the genders. According to the World Bank, Latvian women make roughly 80 cents, on average, for every dollar that their male counterparts take home.

CUBA

In 2011, Cuba finished 20th on WEF's index, securing the top spot in Latin America and the Caribbean on the strength of its large proportion of women in the professional and technical workforce (60 percent of these workers are female) and parliament (43 percent), and high enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. 

Yet there are some troubling realities behind the numbers. Cuba scholar Ilja Luciak has pointed out that there's an inverse relationship between the power of Cuban political institutions and women's presence in those organizations (the meek Cuban National Assembly, for instance, is 43 percent female, while the influential Central Committee and Politburo are less than 15 percent female). A 2009 Oxfam report noted that two cultural models are colliding in Cuba: "a machista or male chauvinist model, which discriminates against women and still persists in society today; and a new model that values women's right to equal opportunity."

-This article was published in Foreign Policy on 07/03/2012
-David Kenner and Uri Friedman are associate editors at Foreign Policy

Arab Spring And Iran Tensions Leave Palestinians Sidelined

By ETHAN BRONNER from Ramallah, West Bank

The funeral of 23-year-old Talat Ramia, a Palestinian who died during a clash with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank  last month.

In the 14 months since revolution has spread across the Middle East and tension has soared over Iran’s nuclear program, the Palestinian leadership has found itself orphaned. Politically divided, its peace talks with Israel collapsed and its foreign support waning, the Palestinian Authority is sidelined, confused and worried that its people may return to violence.

“The biggest challenge we face — apart from occupation — is marginalization,” Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, said in an interview. “This is a direct consequence of the Arab Spring where people are preoccupied with their own domestic affairs. The United States is in an election year and has economic problems, Europe has its worries. We’re in a corner.” For decades, as autocrats ruled their neighbors, the Palestinians were at the center of Middle Eastern politics, their struggle with Israeli occupation embodying the Arab longing for post-colonial freedom and dignity. The Obama administration came into office asserting that a state in the West Bank and Gaza was the key to regional progress.

But when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington this week, the conversation was dominated by Iran, not peace talks or occupation.

In the region, the Arab Spring may have increased popular attention to the Palestinian cause, freeing Egyptians and others to express anti-Israel sentiments. But that has actually made things harder on the Palestine Liberation Organization, which negotiated with Israel. Popular affection has shifted to the Islamists of Hamas. They too have difficulties, however, abandoning their political headquarters in Syria, facing reduced help from Iran and contending with their increased divisions.

The result is a serial splintering of the Palestinian movement, a loss of state sponsors and paralysis for those trying to build a state next to Israel. As momentum for a peaceful two-state solution fades, and the effort for recognition at the United Nations remains stymied, no alternatives have emerged and attention has focused on other conflicts.

Zakaria al Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security at Al Quds University in Jerusalem, said he recently joined dozens of other foreign scholars for a series of lectures on his specialty in the United States. Not a single one mentioned the Palestinian issue.

“I don’t see Palestine on the agenda of the United States or Israel,” he said. “It is on the shelf. The Palestinians don’t have the ability to impose themselves on the world and they can’t mobilize their people. The Arab world is busy. The Palestinians are becoming secondary.”

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, known for indecisiveness, seems especially torn on how to proceed. He and his lieutenants have been working for weeks on a multipage letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, laying out all the reasons they believe that Israel has stood in the way of peaceful progress.

He plans to deliver a copy to American and European leaders as well, explaining why he thinks he must abandon the Israeli peace track and reconsider the Palestinian Authority’s relationship with Israel. And while diplomats are sympathetic with his frustration over Israel’s refusal to stop settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they suspect that Mr. Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, feels politically unable to compromise with Israel at this time of upheaval.

“The political price Abu Mazen pays for being in negotiations with Netanyahu is too high right now,” a top Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “People in this region believe that you are either protesting or being protested against. He has decided it is better to protest.”

The problem is not only a Palestinian one, however. Mr. Netanyahu’s government and its supporters also say that the regional tumult makes it harder for them to yield territory.

“Israelis have always been concerned that if they make difficult and strategic concession in the peace process, what will happen if the regimes with which they signed an agreement are overthrown?” noted Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a longtime adviser to Mr. Netanyahu.

“Israel has to be extremely cautious and ratchet up its security concerns. Will the Palestinian Authority be the Palestinian Authority one year from now? When European diplomats come to Israel and ask it for new territorial concessions, it is like asking us to put up a tent in the middle of a hurricane.”

Others argue that as Palestinian frustration grows the chance of an explosion in the West Bank increases. Rock throwing and confrontations with Israeli troops have picked up in recent months.

“We don’t want to be employees of the occupation,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an interview. “Israel has left the Palestinian Authority with responsibility but no power. At the same time, Israel has gotten the international community to pay the bill. It has a cushy occupation.”

The end of the Israeli track has pushed Mr. Abbas to pursue reconciliation with Hamas. But that too has faltered. Announced in a flourish last May, the plan for a unity government that would ready the Palestinians for elections has stalled largely over internal Hamas divisions on the plan.

Khaled Meshal, the political chief of Hamas who was based in Syria, agreed that Mr. Abbas would become the prime minister in the interim government. But his colleagues in Gaza objected to the way he negotiated without consultation. There are divisions among them and within the military wing of Hamas. Few Palestinians believe that elections are imminent; many suspect that they are a long way off.

Meanwhile, the distractions in the Arab world along with Israeli maneuvers have contributed to a worsening fiscal crisis for the Palestinian Authority even as the private sector here builds a modern infrastructure, creating a small but impressive business class.

Economic growth for the West Bank, which from 2008 to 2010 averaged 10 percent, slowed to 5.7 percent in 2011 with unemployment remaining at 17 percent, according to Oussama Kanaan, of the International Monetary Fund. Last year, Arab countries together gave only $340 million dollars to the Palestinian Authority, leaving it with $200 million less than expected.

The authority has been unable to pay its debts to private companies and the public pension fund, leaving it some $500 million in arrears, in addition to its debt of $1.1 billion to private banks.

Agreements between the Palestinian and Israeli finance ministries to improve Palestinian revenue collection have not been implemented because the Israeli government has not signed off. Prime Minister Fayyad said that unless those measures go into effect, he may not attend a donors conference planned for Brussels this month.

At the same time, Israeli troops have stepped up their nighttime raids on West Bank cities, recently shutting down two television stations and contributing to the sense of impotence.

“We need attention to our finances, our security and to the violence from the Israeli Army,” Mr. Fayyad said. “What the army has been doing is both wrong and dangerous. It makes us look like a weak authority. They don’t know when there will be one incident too many, when things will simply spin out of control.”

-This report was published in The New York Times on 07/03/2012

Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Problem

By Toby Matthiesen

                                                                   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud El-Faisal

At least seven young Shiite Muslims have been shot dead and several dozen wounded by security forces in Eastern Saudi Arabia in recent months. While details of the shootings remain unclear, and the ministry of interior claims those shot were attacking the security forces, mass protests have followed the funerals of the deceased. These events are only the latest developments in the decades-long struggle of the Saudi Shiites, which has taken on a new urgency in the context of 2011's regional uprisings -- but have been largely ignored by mainstream media.

The events of the Arab Spring have heightened long-standing tensions in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. Just three days after large-scale protests started in Bahrain on February 14, 2011, protests began in the Eastern Province, which is a 30-minute drive across the causeway from Bahrain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Saudi interior ministry vowed to crush the protests with an "Iron Fist" and has unleashed a media-smear campaign against protests and the Shiites in general. While protests subsided over the summer, they started again in October and have become larger ever since, leading to an ever more heavy-handed response from the security forces.

This repressive response, with distinct rhetorical echoes of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, poses an awkward challenge to recent Saudi foreign policy. The protests of the people in the Eastern Province are as legitimate as the protests in Syria. If Saudi Arabia does not respond to these calls for reform at home how can it seriously claim to rise to the defense of democracy in Syria? The crackdown in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain has given the Iranian and Syrian regime, as well as Shiite political movements in Lebanon and Iraq, a useful rhetorical gambit to push back against their regional rivals.

The Eastern Province is home to virtually all of Saudi Arabia's oil and to a sizeable Shiite minority, estimated at between one and a half and two million people or around 10 percent of Saudi Arabia's citizen population. The Wahhabi creed of Sunni Islam that the state sponsors in Saudi Arabia has developed a special hostility toward the Shiites. Saudi Shiite citizens in turn have long complained of discrimination in religious practice, government employment, and business, and overall marginalization.

For decades, opposition groups formed by Saudi Shiites, both leftist and Islamists, as well as hundreds of petitions by Shiite notables, have had the same demands: an end to sectarian discrimination in government employment and representation in main state sectors including at the ministerial level; more development in Shiite areas; the strengthening of the Shiite judiciary; and an end to arbitrary arrests of Shiite for religious or political reasons. None of these demands would significantly undermine the position of the royal family, or otherwise threaten the integrity of Saudi Arabia. They would rather cement the current political system and buy the allegiance of two million people living on top of the kingdom's oil.

Since last year, the demands have also included the release or retrial of nine Shiite political prisoners and a withdrawal of Saudi forces from Bahrain, or at least a negotiated solution to the conflict there, as well as more general political reforms in Saudi Arabia. The government promised youth activists that their grievances would be addressed in April 2011, so following a call from senior Saudi Shiite clerics to halt protests, they did so. But the government did not follow through, and answered with repression over the summer, even though it released some prisoners that were arrested during the February to April 2011 protests. Therefore, the situation remained tense, and when four Shiites were shot dead in November their funerals turned into anti-government rallies with up to a 100,000 participants.

The perception of systematic discrimination has led some Saudi Shiites to embrace revolutionary ideologies over the decades. While pro-Iranian groups still exist amongst Gulf Shiites, they are not the most powerful amongst Saudi Shiites and had largely renounced violence as a political tool since at least the mid-1990s. But Saudi Arabia's repressive response to the protests and the zero-concessions policy are providing fertile breeding ground for future opposition groups. A repetition of post-1979 Shiite politics, when hundreds of young Shiites left Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province to become active in regional revolutionary movements, seems possible.

As the protests in Bahrain and particularly in Qatif receive only limited attention on Gulf-owned channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, local Shiites are forced to watch the Iranian-sponsored Arabic-language Al Alam channel, Lebanese Hezbollah's Al Manar, Iraq's Ahlul Bait TV, or increasingly other pro-Assad channels to receive updates on the situation in their areas. The new cold war in the Middle East has turned into a fully-fledged media war, in which media outlets are either with the protests in Bahrain and Qatif and for Assad's regime, or with the protests in Syria and against the allegedly sectarian protests in Bahrain and Qatif.

The situation for Saudi Shiites in the Eastern Province is no secret. The U.S. State Department's Annual Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom for the second half of 2010, the period immediately predating the Arab Spring, records arbitrary detentions, mosque closures, and the arrest of Shiite worshippers. U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks revealed that U.S. diplomats, and particularly the staff at its consulate in Dhahran, have an incredible amount of information on the local Shiite communities and seem almost obsessed with grievances they deem legitimate. But the specific problems of the Saudi Shiites almost never come up at high-level meetings with Saudi officials.

This is not only due to the close Saudi and U.S. alliance. Americans sometimes share the suspicion of the Gulf Shiites, which permeates some of its allied regimes. This suspicion is partly to do with Iran, but also has its roots in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 U.S. servicemen. Nine Shiite prisoners have been incarcerated since 1996 for their alleged membership in Hezbollah al-Hijaz and their involvement in the bombings. They were indicted in the United States in 2001, but as U.S. foreign policy priorities changed after September 11 they became "forgotten," the name they are known by amongst Saudi Shiites. The indictment hints at the involvement of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran but no evidence has ever been made public. At the time some Americans called for retaliation against Iran as a response to this bombing. But after September 11, fingers began to point toward al Qaeda as involved in the attack, raising questions about the guilt of these prisoners.

The secrecy surrounding this issue has contributed to mistrust toward the state and suspicion on parts of family members of the detained and the wider Saudi Shiite communities. Saudi Shiite protesters this year have adopted the cause of the nine prisoners. Their pictures were held up at rallies demanding their release, where their family members played a significant role. They were the Shiite counterparts of a simultaneous protest campaign in front of the ministry of interior in Riyadh by family members of political prisoners arrested on suspicion of membership in al Qaeda. But contrary to those prisoners, the Shiite prisoners cannot hope ever to be "rehabilitated" in one of the government's much advertised de-radicalization programs. It seems to be justified to at least ask for a public trial, a move repeatedly endorsed by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. But such a trial does not appear to be on the foreign-policy agenda of the United States.

The behavior of the Saudi leadership only allows the conclusion that repression of the Shiites is a fundamental part of Saudi political legitimacy. The state does not want to change the position of the Shiites and Shiite protests are used by the state to frighten the Sunni population of an Iranian takeover of the oilfields with the help of local Shiites. Similar narratives have been propagated in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) media for months, at the cost of further deepening the sectarian divide in the Gulf States. The GCC intervention in Bahrain has severely worsened sectarian relations in the Gulf and beyond to levels not seen since the Iranian Revolution. But this open Saudi sectarianism has already had negative repercussions in Iraq, as well as in Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Bahrain looks set for years of sectarian conflict, community relations have broken down completely, and the state is conducting a campaign of what Shiite activists call "ethnic cleansing." Rather than completely alienating the Shiites, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain should negotiate a social contract with them. Failing to do so will lead to years of instability with uncertain outcomes. And it is far from certain that other Saudis will not be encouraged by the Shiite protests, as a recent statement by liberal Saudis from all over the kingdom denouncing the crackdown in Qatif has shown.

The West should press its allies, above all Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, to stop simply shooting and arresting their Shiite citizens and brandishing them as Iranian agents and traitors. The alienation of Shiite youth foments a perfect breeding ground for a new Gulf Shiite opposition movement and plays into the hands of the Iranian regime. Even without external help for the local Shiite protesters, the area looks ripe for a return to the tense sectarian politics of the 1980s. The United States should in its own, and in the Gulf States', interest push for a real reconciliation between the Shiites of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and their governments. Otherwise, sectarianism will come to dominate the Gulf, to the detriment of all.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 07/03/2012
-Toby Matthiesen is a research fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Cambridge

The Life Of An Iraqi Legislator Is Profitable But Perilous

By Paul Mutte

                                                                                                        Iraqi Parliament

"In a late-night vote with little scrutiny, [the Iraqi] parliament last week approved spending $50 million on … armored cars out of the $100 billion Iraqi budget for 2012," according to the Associated Press. With some quick math, I figured that if all 325 members of the Iraqi parliament halved their monthly salaries ($22,500, according to the AP) for a year and pooled the money together, they'd only be about $6 million short of being able to afford the cars without needing to  increase to the budget. Perhaps halving their salaries would be seen as a goodwill gesture, even though the Wall Street Journal  (WSJ) notes that most of the budget is fed by oil revenues.

It probably won't work, though. The 40 Sadrist legislators in the parliament wouldn't likely participate in such an effort because Muqtada al-Sadr says that any legislator who buys an armored car is "a traitor for his nation and homeland, and moreover, disobedient to God." Although in theory, 40 fewer members means 40 fewer cars, so I don't think the calculations would change (if we assume that for $50 million, every member would have gotten their own car).

The AP report said nothing about the possibility of legislators carpooling, unfortunately.

Iraqi legislators certainly feel they need this protection given the fact that car bombings -- blamed on "al Qaeda in Iraq" -- continue to hit Iraqi cities, and the parliamentary building itself was bombed in 2007 (by a suicide bomber, though, not a vehicle bomb). At least five parliamentarians have been assassinated in office since the body formed, and more have been wounded by failed attempts on their lives. However, the way they've chosen to respond to the attacks -- by voting themselves money to buy bullet-proof Mercedes -- has upset many Iraqis, since there hundreds of people who can't afford gated compounds, sniffer dog details or armored cars and pay a huge price for continued sectarian violence, which some Iraqis increasingly believe the government itself is complicit in, either through incompetence or worse.

And considering that at $22,500 a month, the average Iraqi parliamentarian would have a higher annual salary than the Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress, it's hard to disagree with the assessment of a Mr. Abdul-Wahab of Baghdad that the legislators are "addicted to privilege."

Perhaps Washington could provide the cars, though, as a gesture of good faith to "reengage" with Baghdad? The Washington Post op-ed went to print urging the U.S. to reassert itself in Iraq by not reducing the number of staff in the U.S.'s bloated Baghdad Embassy and finding a way to redeploy U.S. soldiers to Iraq (some Members of Congress had hoped that we'd be able to keep at least 10,000 soldiers there; the Obama Administration did try to renegotiate the "status of forces" agreement with the Iraqis, though ultimately the White House followed through on the withdrawal schedule set by George W. Bush). "Iraq could be the linchpin of a new U.S. strategy for the Middle East at a time when one is desperately needed," the authors write, evoking the moment in 2003 and 2004 when we were told that Ahmed Chalabi was a new George Washington.

If George Washington was ever investigated for corruption and providing false intelligence, that is. Matt Duss's pithy Twitter riposte to this editorial was simply "Former Chalabi boosters blame Obama for Iranian influence in Iraq."

While from a neoconservative perspective the authors -- who are both from the AEI, a strong booster for regime change in Iraq -- make sense, as the neoconservative model for influence via occupation equals postwar South Korea and Japan, they're advancing a losing argument. There is no political will in the U.S. to redeploy thousands of soldiers back to Iraq, and except for some Iraqi Army officers and parliamentarians, the Iraqis wanted the U.S. to adhere to the agreement. Moreover, there's little leverage Washington could bring to bear against Baghdad, since the Bush-Maliki relationship was never a partnership: it was an occupation.

Essentially, the only way the U.S. would regain that leverage is if sectarian violence becomes much more widespread (say, a series of attacks precipitates the Sadrists or the Badr Organization or Sunni tribal militias in Anbar Province to quit the electoral process and return to fighting). Then an unequal relationship could be built in to the bilateral relationship -- which would prove that 1) a permanent military presence is what the U.S. desires most and 2) Iraq has made little progress despite nine years of occupation. The latter would rather discredit the former, I feel, but as the National Interest pointed out last year, none of those who endorsed the occupation want to admit that "the United States has paid a terrible cost -- some $850 billion and more than 4,400 dead American soldiers -- to make Iran the most influential power in Iraq" (to say nothing of Iraqi lives lost).

An anonymous Iraqi quoted by WSJ put it best: "They told us in the last elections that our vote is gold. Where is the gold? My vote has become rust."

Your vote, and the neoconservative Project for a New American Century both, though I imagine many Iraqis do not mourn the latter.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus Blog on 06/03/2012

Obama Administration Moves To Aid Syrian Opposition

By Josh Rogin

                                            US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

The Obama administration is moving to provide direct assistance to the internal opposition in Syria for the first time, marking a shift in U.S. policy toward a more aggressive plan to help oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Last week, a group of senior Obama administration officials met to finalize a package of options for aiding both the internal and external Syrian opposition, to include providing direct humanitarian and communications assistance to the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable. This meeting of what's known as the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council set forth a new and assertive strategy for expanding U.S. engagement with Syrian activists and providing them with the means to organize themselves, but stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition.

For now, riskier options, such as creating a no-fly zone in Syria, using U.S. military force there, or engaging directly with the Free Syrian Army, are all still off the table. But the administration has decided not to oppose, either in public or in private, the arming of the rebels by other countries, the officials said.

"These moves are going to invest the U.S. in a much deeper sense with the opposition," one administration official said. "U.S. policy is now aligned with enabling the opposition to overthrow the Assad regime. This codifies a significant change in our Syria policy."

The package of options will be debated by cabinet-level officials at what's known as a Principals Committee meeting as early as this afternoon, the two officials said. The principals could endorse the entire package or make some changes, the officials said, although the package does have the consensus of the interagency coming out of last week's Deputies Committee meeting.

The administration is planning to greatly expand its interactions with the external Syrian opposition, led by the Syrian National Council, as well as with internal opposition bodies to include Syrian NGOs, the Local Coordinating Councils, and the Revolutionary Councils that are increasingly becoming the de facto representation of the Syrian opposition. The Free Syrian Army works with these councils, but the administration is not ready to engage the armed rebels directly out of concern that they are still somewhat unaccountable and may have contacts with extremist elements.

As part of the new outreach, the State Department and USAID have been tasked with devising a plan to speed humanitarian and communications assistance to the internal Syrian civilian opposition, working through State's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) office. There is no concrete plan yet as to how to get the goods into Syria if the Assad regime doesn't grant access to affected areas.

"We're leaving State and USAID to work that out. That's the million-dollar question. We're working on that now," the official explained.

Meanwhile, the administration wants to bolster the new defense committee established by the SNC last week, hoping to solidify that body's prominence as the contact point for coordinating military and technical assistance to the rebels, if a decision is taken later to move in that direction. The FSA has rejected the SNC's defense committee as being part of its chain of command, but for now the Obama administration sees the SNC as a more credible organization with which to explore options to potentially provide military aid.

"The prevailing narrative is enabling the transition while keeping options open for reaching out to the armed opposition," the administration official said. "There is recognition that lethal assistance to the opposition may be necessary, but not at this time."

At last month's initial Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said that arming the Syrian rebels was "an excellent idea," though there are conflicting reports as to whether and to what extent Saudi weapons and cash were already flowing into the country.

In preparation for the next Friends of Syria meeting in Turkey later this month, the Obama administration has decided not to openly oppose direct military assistance to the rebels as long as it comes from another country, not the United States, one of the administration officials said.

"The decision has been made at the next Friends of Syria meeting to not oppose any proposals to arm the FSA and we're not going to publicly or privately message on that," the official said. "We're not going to publicly or privately tell the Friends of Syria not to do this."

Inside the administration, there is still a consensus that U.S. military intervention in Syria is not wise at this time and there are still voices expressing hope that political transition could take place in Syria without all out civil war.

"It's more about what could be accomplished by intervening. So many questions haven't been answered," another administration official said, expressing the widespread internal uneasiness about involving the U.S. military in yet another war in the Middle East. "There's a chance we could get embroiled in a conflict. What does that do to our preparedness for other contingencies?"

Some in the administration still hold out hope that the Russians can be persuaded to play a more helpful role in Syria. But two officials confirmed that Russian arms deliveries to Syria are ongoing and one administration official said that the latest shipment included large amounts of advanced anti-aircraft missile systems, which are meant to help Syria repel any attempt to establish a no-fly zone.

"What that says is that the Russians are doubling down on Assad. They're preparing for the next step, which is the internationalization of the conflict," one administration official said.

For the critics of Obama's Syria policy, these moves represent a step in the right direction but still fall short of what is needed for the United States to halt the violence.

"I am encouraged the Obama administration is exploring steps to provide direct assistance to Syrians inside their country, but the incremental measures reportedly under consideration still do not come to grips with the fundamental reality in Syria, which is that Bashar al-Assad, equipped and resupplied by Iran and Russia, is now waging an outright war against the Syrian people, who are outmatched, outgunned, and urgently in need of decisive international intervention," Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) told The Cable today.

Lieberman, along with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) came out Monday in favor of a U.S.-led intervention in Syria to begin immediately.

"To me this should begin with medical and military assistance for the opposition, including tactical intelligence and weapons, and ultimately should include targeted airstrikes against Assad's bases and forces," Lieberman said. "The United States should help organize such support for the Syrian opposition, but it should be international and include our concerned allies in the Arab League, the GCC, NATO, and the EU."

Lieberman, McCain, and Graham will all have a chance to question the administration on these new moves Wednesday when the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a hearing with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joints Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment on the administration's internal deliberations.

-This article was published in Foreign Policy on 06/03/2012

Tunisia's Challenging Future

Its people must work to overcome counterproductive polarisation and to find solutions to their country's problems

By Tariq Ramadan

I last travelled to Tunisia almost 25 years ago. Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali and his regime had forbidden me entry; the Swiss authorities warned that: “an accident might happen at any time.” Now, as my flight winged south, my feelings swung between pleasure and apprehension. Pleasure at returning to a country I’d come to love and appreciate; pleasure, most of all, at visiting the very place where mass uprisings and public courage had first unseated a dictator and brought down his regime.

But I was apprehensive as well: Tunisia had made great strides toward democratic transition but tensions between secularists, Islamist reformers and Salafists remained strong and conflict-ridden.

The basic issues have not changed, and nothing has yet been definitively won in the struggle for transparency, democratisation and the end of political cronyism and corruption. Still, in the Arab world, Tunisia enjoys pride of place, and its role has been and will be decisive in the years to come.

My return to Tunis took place at a crucial juncture in the nation’s history: I wanted to see, to listen and to learn, while delivering the only message that seemed to me appropriate in today’s period of transition: that of responsibility, of listening in a spirit of reason, and of reconciliation.

In Tunis I heard voices of sincere concern, of women and men shaken by doubt, moved by emotion and yet fearful. What can the future hold for Tunisia, trapped in the throes of conflict between secularists, Islamist reformers and Salafists?

Meanwhile others, behind the scenes, were doing their utmost to manipulate these fears, depicting Islamists of whatever stripe as dangerous fundamentalists certain to plunge the country into the dark depths of theocracy; at the opposite extreme, Salafists painted all secularists ‘opposed to religion’ as stooges of the West, dangerous by virtue of speaking French.

Both categorisations as simplistic and dangerous as they are clear-cut; both are recorded, reported and broadcast in the media. They grab the headlines, and create a mistaken impression of Tunisian reality. For, in listening to what people, from the elite and from students to the man on the street, it was clear to me that most Tunisians of both genders are not caught up in this unhealthy attempt at polarisation; that they have a reasonable and open attitude toward what the country’s future identity should be.

The elections to the Constitutional Assembly provided the first indicator. The three principal parties all agree that secularists and Islamists should work together, and that the future of their country depends on it. Tunisians, despite foreign and domestic attempts at manipulation, remain vigilant, and continue to demonstrate a political awareness of which the Arab world is sorely in need today.

Still, people today are impatient; domestic political currents and foreign interventions are attempting to muddle the picture. I met numerous Tunisians who seemed slightly disoriented, who did not know what to think, who to believe in and to follow. Not only does the situation in Tunisia remain uncertain, but also developments in other countries that found themselves at the heart of the Arab Spring provide little cause for optimism.

Just next door, Libya totters on the brink of civil strife; Egypt remains in the hands of the military, a veil of silence has fallen over Bahrain, while in Syria civilians are shelled daily and die as the world looks on. What can be expected when yesterday’s would-be allies today become suspect in their calculations and their true intentions? What is Iran and Lebanon’s strategy in the region, and in Syria; what is Saudi Arabia attempting to achieve; what role is Qatar playing? What will be the outcome of the face-off between Russia and China on the one hand, and the western countries on the other hand, given the crucial importance of the Israel-Palestine conflict? What will be the impact of these tensions on relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims? These are critical questions, and Tunisia, which on February 25 hosted a conference on Syria, finds itself at the centre of these uncertainties and of the events that will have a decisive impact on its own future.

Instead of suffering the consequences of regional developments, Tunisians can wield the tools necessary to create their own destiny as the vanguard of the popular uprisings that have galvanised the Arab world. Tunisia’s responsibility, and especially that of its political and intellectual elites, is enormous.

All the protagonists of the nation’s social, cultural, economic and political life must work to overcome useless and counterproductive polarisation, and to find solutions to domestic, regional and international problems.

The political system must be reformed, and the judiciary — and the independence of magistrates — restored. Pride of place must be given to the fight against corruption, cronyism and insecurity. Tunisia has discovered its endemic poverty and a failed and discriminatory school system.

The newly elected representatives must make it their priority, and go beyond pitting Arabisation against instruction in French. Language instruction should be oriented toward mastering several instead of imposing an exclusivist policy in the name of an inward-turning and reductive approach to Tunisia’s cultural and linguistic identity.

On both the regional and international level, Tunisia must find new partners in today’s multi-polar world. It is not simply a matter of playing China or India against France or the United States, but of taking advantage of multiple alliances in North Africa, in the Maghreb as well as in the Middle East, or of managing the Israel-Palestine conflict that must remain a central issue.

The uprising, which was nationalist in nature, must now adopt an international and universal dimension, both in terms of the opportunities it holds out, and the values it defends.

On my return flight, I meditated on Tunisia’s historical moment. The tasks ahead are immense, and no one can evade their complexity. Lucidity, determination and hope continue to be the most reliable weapons in the hands of a people determined to build its future.

I encountered numerous women and men of great intelligence, alert and wise: in times of trouble and doubt, they constitute the promise that something indeed can be changed in North Africa and the Middle East. The fact of this promise is proof that something has already changed. Even as I write, Tunisia is on the move, heading toward a future that remains wide open.

-This commentary was published in the GULF NEWS on 06/03/2012
-Tariq Ramadan is professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University and a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar. He is the author of Islam and the Arab Awakening