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‘ARAB FALL’ : AS CHAOS ENGULFS LIBYA, EGYPT & UAE SEND AIRSTRIKES; MEANWHILE, TUNISIAN JIHADIS FLOCK TO IRAQ & SYRIA

We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to:  Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station  H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 

 

Contents:

 

Meanwhile, in Libya …: Olivier Guitta, National Post, Sept. 4, 2014— While much of the world’s focus currently is on ISIS’ reign of Islamist terror in the Iraqi territory it has conquered, another fire is burning 3,000 km away, in Libya.

The UAE and Egypt’s New Frontier in Libya: Ellen Laipson, National Interest, Sept. 3, 2014

Tunisia Fears Attacks by Citizens Flocking to Jihad: Carlotta Gall, New York Times, Aug. 5, 2014  — The jihadi video out of Syria shows a line of prisoners bound and kneeling in a courtyard surrounded by dozens of civilians and armed men in a noisy hubbub.

The Mistaken Tragedy of the Arabs: Hussain Abdul-Hussain, Now, July 15, 2014  — “A thousand years ago, the great cities of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo took turns to race ahead of the Western world,” wrote The Economist in an article that went viral in Arab circles.

 

On Topic Links

 

Islamist Militants Party in Pool at US Embassy Compound in Libya: Chris Perez, New York Post, Aug. 31, 2014

U.S. Can’t Retreat and Still Call the Shots: Max Boot, Commentary, Aug. 26, 2014

The UAE and Egypt’s New Frontier in Libya: Ellen Laipson, National Interest, Sept. 3, 2014

What Now for Israel?: Elliott Abrams, Mosaic, Sept. 2014

Surviving in an Even Worse Neighborhood: Israel and Growing Mideast Chaos: Louis René Beres, Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2014

 

MEANWHILE, IN LIBYA …                                               

Olivier Guitta                                                                               

National Post, Sept. 4, 2014

 

While much of the world’s focus currently is on ISIS’ reign of Islamist terror in the Iraqi territory it has conquered, another fire is burning 3,000 km away, in Libya. Having intervened in 2011 to depose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, NATO powers now have a responsibility to provide what next-door Niger’s authorities have termed “after-sales service.” Libya is set to become a source of terrorism for all of Africa and beyond. And recent events in Libya continue to tilt the balance in the jihadists’ favour: Tripoli’s airport, for instance, now is mostly in the hands of Islamists. Two air raids against Tripoli in August are believed to have been the work of a joint UAE-Egypt operation. That Arab nations have become involved in this way is not surprising: Egypt’s leadership, in particular, repeatedly has warned about the Islamist threat in Northern Africa.

 

Algeria, another concerned Libyan neighbour, is believed to have its own operations underway on Libyan soil — involving as many as 5,000 soldiers tasked with rooting out jihadis. Morocco and Tunisia also are on a high state of alert. This is the result of an alleged CIA warning to the effect that jihadis are planning to use planes missing in Libya to fly into buildings or strategic sites in these countries in a local repeat of the September 11 attacks (whose anniversary is next week). These planes could be used against tall buildings such as the Twin Centre, paired 28-storey skyscrapers in Casablanca that eerily mirror New York’s Twin Towers in miniature. Almost all of this generally has been ignored by the Western media, which has been focused primarily on events in Ukraine, Iraq, Israel, Gaza and Syria.

 

The most impressive counter-terrorism deployment has taken place in Morocco, where tens of thousands of soldiers reportedly have been mobilized around the country to tackle this specific threat. Anti-aircraft batteries in Casablanca, Marrakesh, Tangiers and other strategic locations have been deployed to shoot down any incoming plane controlled by terrorists. (Algeria has deployed the same type of batteries along its borders with Libya and Tunisia.) One needs only be reminded of the deadly 2013 terrorist attack led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar against Algeria’s Tigantourine gas facility to understand the scale of Algeria’s concern. As the Egypt-UAE air strikes indicate, the region’s more stable governments are not going to sit by idly while dark clouds gather.

 

The larger question is how Libya — seen just three years ago as a model for light-footprint Western military intervention — could become one of the world’s most dangerous places. The country arguably has the largest stockpile of loose weapons in the world, most of which have fallen into the hands of terror groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Murabitun (which controls large swathes of territory in the south of the country), Ansar al-Sharia in the east, and the Dawn of Libya (which has taken control of the U.S. Embassy grounds). The situation is so dangerous and chaotic that it may soon invite a new Western intervention. It’s too late to prevent Libya from becoming a failed state — but at least some good may come of efforts to keep the threat contained within Libya’s own borders.

 

The only Western country that seems to have grasped the Libyan time bomb is France. President François Hollande stated a few days ago that Libya was his gravest international concern. His government is seeking an international diplomatic solution to the security situation. But if that does not work out, do not be surprised if France intervenes militarily — even if it must act alone, as it did in Mali in 2013.

 

Contents

THE UAE AND EGYPT’S NEW FRONTIER IN LIBYA

Ellen Laipson    

 National Interest, Sept. 3, 2014

 

The surprising news that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have carried out airstrikes against various Islamist rebels in Libya is yet another example of the scope and extent of change in the Middle East. It reminds us that many of the time-tested assumptions about how states behave have to be checked and challenged. The fact of military activism by two important Arab states is on some levels a positive development, but introduces some new practical and political variables.

 

Egypt and the UAE have been crystal clear about how they view the rapidly expanding threat from Islamic extremists in the region in general. The emergence of General, now President, Sisi in Cairo has reassured Gulf Arab leaders that the destabilizing effects of the Arab spring can be reversed. They want to reestablish state control and see forces for law and order prevail over extremist groups that have exploited the post-authoritarian moment in several Arabs states. In the Libyan case, they presumably acted to reverse the chaos and confusion of competing armed groups and a very weak central government, and to support General Khalifa Haftar, who is leading anti-Islamist factions as an independent actor, not on behalf of the Libyan state. This has led to speculation that Egypt and their purported military ally, the UAE, would like to see General Haftar in power to tame the centrifugal forces and restore some semblance of order in Libya.

 

If more information confirms the action by the UAE from Egyptian bases, the development represents a shift in tactics if not strategy that will yet again change power balances in the region. It reveals first and foremost how profoundly threatened some key Arab states feel by the rise of Al Qaeda, its affiliates and the even more extreme and lethal Islamic State. Secondly, it shows how the threat environment and increased military capacity has led the UAE and potentially other Gulf states to act independently of their key security partners, principally the United States.

 

Early signals from senior U.S. officials suggest that this show of independence has not been appreciated. But there’s a question about whether the United States was really blindsided, and whether some action in Libya was not in fact desired, even if publicly disavowed. The UAE had contributed to the coalition that ousted Muammar Qaddafi, so the return of its fighter planes to Libyan airspace reflects a genuine commitment and priority of Abu Dhabi’s rulers. There’s no guarantee that air support to the offensive by General Haftar will achieve its intended purpose, and control of the Tripoli airport remains in rebel hands. But there should be no doubt that the UAE and Egypt have a strategic interest in stabilizing Libya, and appear more willing to take risks to achieve it than Western donors who have been strangely passive as Libya unravels.

 

The United States has also urged regional states to take more responsibility for conflict management and resolution. It is a core tenet of the so-called Obama doctrine globally. This demonstration of regional ownership and leadership, therefore, in theory comports with U.S. goals. But it also raises concerns and introduces new uncertainties at a dangerous and volatile moment in the region. Most defense experts would not see the UAE and Egypt as able to sustain operations over an extended period of time, should their initial action fail to achieve desired outcomes, as occurred when EU states led the campaign to oust Qaddafi and ran into supply problems. They would also see a reluctance to coordinate with other interested and engaged parties as a serious weakness that could exacerbate regional tensions. It is possible that NATO countries nearby or other GCC states would be willing to provide support, but a political process to explore options is required, under NATO’s Mediterranean protocols or more ad hoc arrangements, if need be.

 

More information will appear in the coming days, but this latest surprise from the region is a sign of the times. The Middle East is more chaotic, with sustained violence and conflict in nearly a half-dozen states. At the same time, the rising middle powers of the region, including the financially dynamic countries of the Gulf, the UAE in particular, are increasingly willing to take matters into their own hands. For Washington, this is potentially a salutary development, but it also reveals the transition from a U.S.-led regional-security arrangement to something beyond U.S. control.

 

Contents
 

TUNISIA FEARS ATTACKS BY CITIZENS FLOCKING TO JIHAD

Carlotta Gall

New York Times, Aug. 5, 2014

 

The jihadi video out of Syria shows a line of prisoners bound and kneeling in a courtyard surrounded by dozens of civilians and armed men in a noisy hubbub. One man in fatigues paces around, jabbing his arms as he issues orders. Eventually, a burly fighter in loose, dark clothes shoots each of the half-dozen prisoners in the back of the head. Though a black balaclava obscured the face of the man giving orders, investigators were able to identify him by the neck brace he was wearing and passed his name to the police in his home country: Tunisia.

 

While Western governments have been keeping a close eye on the possible radicalization of their own citizens, the greater threat by far, analysts warn, is for Arab countries like Tunisia, in transition from autocracy and struggling to deal with incipient terrorism. For a country of only 11 million people, Tunisia has supplied a disproportionate number of fighters to the Islamist cause in Iraq and Syria. At least 12,000 foreigners have joined Islamist groups in Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, and as many as 3,000 of them are Tunisians, the Soufan Group, a New York-based organization that conducts security analysis, said in a report released in June. The great majority of the foreign fighters in Syria are from Arab countries — only a fifth come from Western countries — and most have now joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, an extremist Islamist group, the report says.

 

The man in the neck brace is a striking example of the threat. He is known as Abu Jihad and is a member of the military police of ISIS, an enforcer in an organization notorious for its propensity for violence. The Spanish counterterrorism police have photos of him, showing a man around 30 years old, wearing a pakul, a traditional wool cap worn in Afghanistan, and posing by a jeep with “ISIS military police” painted on the hood. Eventually, Tunisian security officials fear, he will return to Tunisia determined to pursue the same goals there that he fought for in Syria and Iraq as a member of ISIS.

 

In the first act of the Arab Spring, Tunisians rose up against police brutality and the stifling corruption of the government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, forcing him to flee. At first, the country seemed to be making a successful transition from authoritarianism, introducing a multiparty democracy, but deep political divisions soon threatened to tear the country apart. An Islamist party, Ennahda, won elections and formed a coalition government, and secular and left-wing parties campaigned bitterly against it. They accused the government of being soft on Islamist militancy and allowing Islamic extremists to take over mosques and intimidate people with vigilante groups.

 

Tunisians have been drawn to jihad since the 1980s, when the international jihad movement was formed in opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of the leading figures has been Seifallah Ben Hussein, better known as Abu Iyadh, a veteran of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, who trained and fought there into the late 1980s. By the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he had become one of the top 10 or 12 lieutenants to leaders of Al Qaeda. It was Abu Iyadh who supplied the two Tunisian suicide bombers who assassinated a renowned Afghan commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in order to remove the greatest obstacle to Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Abu Iyadh fought alongside Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001, before they both escaped through the mountains to Pakistan. He later made his way to Turkey, where he was arrested in 2003, extradited to Tunisia and imprisoned by the Ben Ali government, which was rigidly anti-Islamist. He was released along with thousands of other Islamist and political prisoners under an amnesty after the revolution in 2011.

 

Commentators at first suggested that the democratic ideals of the Arab Spring had dealt a perhaps fatal blow to Al Qaeda and the entire jihad movement, but that was premature. As soon as he emerged from prison, Abu Iyadh founded the movement Ansar al-Shariah in Tunisia in April 2011. Within a year, he had drawn 30,000 to 40,000 youthful followers. His movement, with its emphasis on religion, charitable work in the community and supporting jihad in foreign lands, appealed to Tunisians suddenly freed from dictatorship and forced secularity. Abu Iyadh was a Che Guevara figure to them, said Fabio Merone, a doctoral student studying the movement.

 

But his opposition to democracy and his belief in violence as a tactic soon re-emerged. Three days after the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, he staged a similar action against the United States Embassy compound in Tunis, burning 100 cars in the parking lot and looting the American school next to the embassy. After two left-wing politicians were assassinated by Abu Iyadh’s followers, Ansar al-Shariah was declared a terrorist organization. That was in August 2013. Since then Abu Iyadh has been on the run, and now the police say he is in Libya. Many of his followers have been rounded up and imprisoned in a police crackdown. The influential ideologues of the movement — among them Khattab Idriss, who runs a mosque in the town of Sidi Bouzid, and Seifeddine Rais, the charismatic young spokesman of Ansar al-Shariah — have evaded arrest but fallen silent. Their followers are buckling under the heavy hand of the Tunisian police.

 

Families in the working-class neighborhood of Dawhar Hisher in the capital, Tunis, complain of house raids, phones being tapped and the arrest of relatives of suspects. Members of Ansar al-Shariah say that they are harassed by the police and government officials and that they cannot find jobs, or even a ride on intercity buses, because of their long beards. Some say they shaved their beards after warnings from the police. Others have left the country for military training camps in Libya and, after that, for Syria. Of the several thousand who have been fighting in Syria, about 400 have returned. Most of them, trying to recover from the experience, are more “traumatized” than anything, according to one Western official. The fear, however, is that some pose dangers. “You learn to kill,” said one Spanish investigator. “That’s what you get from radicalization, and they enhance that in the training camps. It’s the cruelty of the act that distorts.”

 

Contents

THE MISTAKEN TRAGEDY OF THE ARABS                                    

Hussain Abdul-Hussain                                                                                  

Now, July 15, 2014

                       

“A thousand years ago, the great cities of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo took turns to race ahead of the Western world,” wrote The Economist in an article that went viral in Arab circles. “Yet today the Arabs are in a wretched state,” it added. The piece then refutes the arguments that explain the Arab decline: Arabs were not the only ones affected by imperialism, and Islam is the majority creed in some prosperous non-Arab states. What The Economist missed, however, is that Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo are only part of the story. During Ottoman times, cities in the Levant and Arabia were under direct Ottoman control and autonomous tribal territories were under nominal rule.  

 

The most commonly accepted historical narrative argues that Great Britain merged three Turkish vilayets – Baghdad, Basra and Mosul – to create modern day Iraq. A quick reexamination of this narrative proves it flawed. In 1917, Britain printed a brief guide to the history of Arab Ottoman territories. “Beyond the immediate vicinity of the towns, which are few in number, Mesopotamia is a tribal country,” it read. The making of Iraq, and the region, is much more complicated than the simplistic story of Sykes-Picot. Dulaim, the western province the Baathists renamed Anbar in 1968 to undermine the influence of the Sunni Dulaim tribe, was autonomous, nominally pledging allegiance to the Ottoman sultan, an arrangement similar to that in Mount Lebanon and other tribal areas. In Iraq’s Kut Province, now Wasit, the Shiite tribe of Rabiah gave the British a pounding. It took British forces two years to conquer the area.  

 

After the Ottomans, Iraq’s new rulers, the Hashemites, courted the tribes and gave them vast autonomy, which they enshrined in the constitution. Viceroy Abdul-Ilah, a Sunni, even married a Shiite woman from Rabiah in an effort to boost the monarchy’s position. Gertrude Bell, the famous British diplomat credited with creating Iraq, had instructions to create a secure route connecting Basra’s oil fields in southern Iraq to Haifa’s port in northern Palestine, both under the British mandate. This required the integration of several tribal territories into Iraq, including Muntafiq, Diwaniyah, Karbala, Dulaim and the Northern Desert. The British created Transjordan and put it under another Hashemite to link Iraq and Palestine. Bell and T.E. Lawrence were successful in winning over many tribes in the territories they needed to annex, but they could not possibly integrate all of them.  

 

One of the expanding tribal powers at the time was the Najdi Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, whose Annazah tribe defeated its rival Shammar, whose land extended from northern Arabia to Kurdistan, through the Syrian Badia. In the tribal code of that time, when a tribe was defeated, it joined the victor and conceded its land. When Ibn Saud wanted to annex Shammar land, he clashed with the colonials. Eventually, Ibn Saud relinquished the land, but kept the people. He made members of the tribes that had pledged allegiance to him Saudi nationals, who remain loyal to the Saudi monarchy to this day, even if they live in Syria or Iraq. If you ever wondered what Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Assi and Iraqi interim President Ghazi al-Yawar (both of whom are pro-Saudi) have in common, consider that both men come from the Shammar al-Jarba (as opposed to the Shiite Shammar al-Toga). Also hailing from Shammar is the mother of Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

 

The overlap in maps between Ibn Saud and the colonials created two regions: one based on kinship and loyalty in the old tradition of Arab tribalism and the other based on Sykes-Picot and the interests of the colonials and their Arab urbanite protégés. Like the Ottomans before them, the French and the British tried to urbanize Arab tribal regions by connecting them to cities and transforming their economies from subsistence to capitalism. These efforts backfired and the tribes revolted, especially the Druze in southern Syria. Eventually, a connection was established and, instead of urbanization, the tribes flocked to the cities, first forming belts of poverty and then replacing the cosmopolitan leadership and lifestyle with tribal code and tradition, including endless bloody feuds. The oil boom and the colossal revenues that resulted gave the new tribal rulers immense power.  

 

The Arabs are not in a wretched state – they are in a tribal state, and they are doing what they have been doing since time immemorial: conquering each other, demanding allegiance, and living in a state of perpetual war. The only difference now is that the Arabs are feuding in cities, and on TV and social media instead of in the desert.  

 

The cities, once connected to the center of a prosperous and modern Ottoman Empire, have been changed irrevocably. The majority of Arab urbanites have left the Arab world, many in exile, and they are the ones who read The Economist’s article and shared it. They are the ones who lament past glory, real or imagined, and assign blame for losing it. Unless they, and the world, understand the nature, history and expansion of the tribal Arab world, they will fail to understand what went wrong.

 

On Topic

 

Islamist Militants Party in Pool at US Embassy Compound in Libya: Chris Perez, New York Post, Aug. 31, 2014—They’re jihadists gone wild! Hootin’ and hollerin’ Islamic militants partied like it was spring break in Cancun on Sunday after invading a US Embassy annex in Libya.

U.S. Can’t Retreat and Still Call the Shots: Max Boot, Commentary, Aug. 26, 2014—Want to know what happens when the U.S. retreats from a leadership role in the Middle East?

The UAE and Egypt’s New Frontier in Libya: Ellen Laipson, National Interest, Sept. 3, 2014—The surprising news that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have carried out airstrikes against various Islamist rebels in Libya is yet another example of the scope and extent of change in the Middle East.

What Now for Israel?: Elliott Abrams, Mosaic, Sept. 2014 —“The status quo is unsustainable,” President Obama said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon after taking office in 2009.

Surviving in an Even Worse Neighborhood: Israel and Growing Mideast Chaos: Louis René Beres, Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2014 —Just when it seemed that matters for Israel couldn't possibly get any worse, "ordinary" security challenges are being augmented by still more complex strategic threats.

 

                      

                

                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Contents:         

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