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- Daniel Greenfield: The Afghanistanization of the Middle East
- Khaled Abu Toameh: After Abbas
The Afghanistanization of the Middle East
by Daniel
Greenfield
October 2, 2012 at 5:00 am
October 2, 2012 at 5:00 am
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After the
Arab Spring, we can pick and choose from new Afghanistans popping up all over.
The Salafist militias are providing order for a price while carving their own
little private Afghanistans out of formerly stable countries.
Eleven years after September 11, Afghanistan is nowhere near being stable;
instead it is the Middle East that is becoming Afghanistanized. Forget about
having only one Afghanistan, after the Arab Spring we can pick and choose from
new Afghanistans popping up all over.Islamist militias are imprisoning unveiled women, mutilating thieves and destroying Sufi shrines in Mali. In Libya, Islamist militias started out by destroying Sufi shrines and, when the authorities made it clear that they would do nothing, escalated their campaign to an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. These Talibans-in-waiting also happen to be the true arbiters of power in a country where the bulk of the firepower rests in their hands.
The proliferation of militias and mobs is undermining already shaky governments and has the potential to turn the region back to a place ruled by warlords and raiding parties. A North African Afghanistan growing out of the Libyan War across Libya and Mali will not be the last barbarous Islamist emirate. The Salafist mobs that attacked American embassies across the Middle East are all Talibans-in-waiting and they may not have to wait much longer.
Not too long ago an Arab Islamist fighter had to travel all the way to Afghanistan for a properly Halal conflict. Today he can find plenty of them right in his own backyard. The Salafist militias are the chief beneficiaries of the fall of the old Arab regimes, and are providing order for a price while carving their own little private Afghanistans out of formerly stable countries.
When Bin Laden went to Afghanistan, effective militias and terrorists still had nationalistic links and regime backers. Unlike the Palestinians or the Kurds, the Salafists are free of nationalistic ties, and much less dependent on regime backers. All they need are a few armed volunteers and some ruthlessness to take over a piece of a war-torn country.
Western attempts to stabilize the situation by giving the Palestinian militias their own state failed, and unlike the Palestinians or the Kurds, the Salafis do not want a specific piece of land. They want the world, and trying to buy them off with Palestine or Kurdistan has no hope of succeeding.
No one expected Libya and Mali to go the way of Somalia, but the tidal wave of Talibanesque militias creating their own brutal Islamist states is not likely to end there. Next door to Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are looking rather shaky with Salafists of the non-Brotherhood variety enforcing their own freelance Islamic law with mob violence and intimidation.
All it would take is a further meltdown of the already melted political situation for the Salafists to move from terrorizing neighborhoods and villages to making a play for entire cities. The ruling Islamists of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia's Ennhada have already shown that, as in Libya, given a choice between letting the Salafists burn churches and beat tourists and authorizing their military rivals to carry out a domestic crackdown, it is safer and easier for them to let the mobs do as they please.
"Egypt Is becoming way too much like Pakistan for comfort. We are slowly becoming a dangerous, broken rogue state, just like them," Mahmoud Salem, the Egyptian blogger and activist wrote. And if that is true of Egypt, what real hope is there for Libya, Tunisia or Yemen?
As a new Afghanistan begins forming in the Sinai where the Bedouin tribesmen have proven an ideal mold for recreating the conditions of Afghanistan, the formerly stable North Africa is beginning to resemble Islamic Asia.
The Muslim Middle East is facing a choice between two paths. One leads ahead to a Westernized society and the other back to the barren deserts of the 7th Century. The Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islamists claim that it is possible to have the best of both worlds, combining high tech and desert morals in a society where every woman is covered and every man is an engineer. But that illusion is under siege as Islamist militias begin fragmenting countries into tribal encampments.
The Middle East that we have grown used to is a colonial legacy. Its corrupt regimes with the derivative structures of modern states are being torn down by the Arab Spring. The Islamists can have democratic elections where they are the majority, but what they cannot have are strong militaries, and that leaves them with few options but to rely on Islamist militias to fight Islamist militias; turning the region back to before the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
Islamists saw Afghanistan as the future of the Middle East and they were right. Saudi Arabia and the oil states that backed the Arab Spring are Afghanistans with oil. Egypt, Tunisia and Syria are on the way to becoming Afghanistans without oil.
Related Topics: Daniel
Greenfield
After
Abbas
The End of the PLO's Old-Guard
Monopoly
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
October 2, 2012 at 4:00 am
October 2, 2012 at 4:00 am
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"[Abbas's]
resignation would actually be the most positive thing he has ever done for the
Palestinians." — PLO representative.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas apparently believes that the
Palestinians would not be able to survive for one day without him.That must be why whenever he faces criticism from Palestinians, Abbas resorts to his old-new threat to resign.
Abbas is convinced that if he steps down -- as his critics and a growing number of Palestinians are demanding -- the Palestinian Authority will collapse and his people will face a new "nakba" [catastrophe].
But the truth is that the Palestinians would be better off in the post-Abbas era. His departure from the scene would mark the beginning of the end of the PLO's old guard monopoly over the Palestinian issue.
At a recent meeting of the PLO leadership in Ramallah, Abbas once again threatened to resign when he told participants that they should start searching for someone else to head the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas's threat to quit came after a number of PLO representatives criticized him for failing to make any achievements in the economic and political arenas.
The PLO officials said that instead of directly addressing their concerns, Abbas kept threatening to resign and dismantle the Palestinian Authority.
The officials said that Abbas appeared to be particularly enraged by the recent street protests demanding his resignation and the abrogation of the Oslo Accords.
Although the protests were initially directed against Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the high cost of living, later the demonstrators started chanting slogans also against Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, prompting the Palestinian leadership to exert pressure on the organizers to halt their protests.
"President Abbas seemed to be very tense during the meeting," a PLO official said. "He was even panicking."
This was not the first time Abbas had threatened to resign. Over the past few years, he has made similar threats each time he comes under pressure from the US or the EU to resume peace talks with Israel or implement major reforms in the Palestinian Authority government and his Fatah faction.
This time, however, the PLO leaders who heard Abbas once again threaten to quit did not seem to be moved. In fact, some told reporters later that they wish Abbas would finally carry out his threat.
"The Palestinians can survive without Abbas," said another PLO representative. "His resignation would actually be the most positive thing he has ever done for the Palestinians."
The official said that Abbas was mistaken in believing that the Palestinian Authority would collapse and life would come to a standstill after he stepped down. Such a move would pave the way for the emergence of new and younger leaders who would be able to serve the Palestinians better, the official, who asked not to be identified, added.
Many Palestinians point out that Abbas has a long record of not fulfilling his promises. In Ramallah, it is hard these days to find a Palestinian who takes Abbas seriously.
Abbas, they say, has failed to fulfill his pledge to reform Fatah and get rid of icons of corruption who were responsible for the rise of Hamas to power in 2006. He has also failed to fulfill his promise to end the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas and bring democracy and freedom of speech to Palestinians.
Abbas is a leader who has never assumed responsibility for anything. Instead, he has always chosen to blame others for his failed policies. One day he blames Hamas, another day he blames Israel, and then he blames his critics and political opponents for everything that goes wrong in the Palestinian territories.
Abbas's supporters have defended him by claiming that he is facing a "big conspiracy" to remove him from power. Although it is true that as long as the Israelis are in the West Bank, Hamas will not be there, Abbas's supporters have even gone as far as making the ridiculous claim that Hamas and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are working together to topple Abbas.
If Abbas really wanted to step down, he could have done so many years ago. But Abbas is interested only in one thing -- staying in power until his last day. His threats are only aimed at sending the following message to his followers: "If I go, the Palestinians will have no future."
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
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