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Protests-Revolts
Democracy Now! Interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor on Syria
![[Image from Democracy Now interview]](/content_images/3/sm_amybasssyria.jpg "[Image from Democracy Now interview]")
Scores of protesters have been killed in Syria during 10 days of protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. In an attempt to appease protesters, Assad’s administration has reportedly vowed to lift the emergency law, which for nearly 50 years has allowed the government to detain people without charge. "For more than 40 years, people have been politically suppressed,” says Bassam Haddad, the director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University. “That suppression was coupled more recently in the past 20-some years with neoliberal-like economic policies that have created huge gaps between different segments of Syrian society.” Watch the ...
Keep Reading »Is Bahrain Back to Normal?
![[One of the Friday March 25th protests in Bahrain. Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_197524_149809001749112_100001600397940_306991_2568804_n.jpg "[One of the Friday March 25th protests in Bahrain. Image from unknown archive]")
“Your remarkable and unflinching efforts have protected the lives of innocent people, restored order and maintained security and stability across Bahrain,” Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa praised security forces on Friday March 25th for bringing life in Bahrain back to “normal.” As he thanked his dedicated forces for “creating conditions that are favorable for a national dialogue,” riot police were being deployed to put down some twenty-five small, peaceful protests that took place across the country on what may be the last Bahraini “day of rage.” One man, 71-year old Issa Mohamed, was killed inside his home due to asphyxiation caused by teargas fumes being used ...
Keep Reading »Conflict Risk Alert: Syria
![[Syria protests and casualties. Image from google.com]](/content_images/3/sm_725px-2011_Syria_protests.png "[Syria protests and casualties. Image from google.com]")
[Below is latest from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on Syria] Conflict Risk Alert: Syria Syria is at what is rapidly becoming a defining moment for its leadership. There are only two options. One involves an immediate and inevitably risky political initiative that might convince the Syrian people that the regime is willing to undertake dramatic change. The other entails escalating repression, which has every chance of leading to a bloody and ignominious end. Already, the unfolding confrontation in the southern city of Deraa gives no sign of quieting, despite some regime concessions, forceful security measures and mounting ...
Keep Reading »Kidnapped, Tortured, Killed: the 19th Victim of Police Brutality in Bahrain
![[A photo of Hani Abdul-Aziz Abdullah Jumah. Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_habi.jpg "[A photo of Hani Abdul-Aziz Abdullah Jumah. Image from unknown archive]")
Hani Abdul-Aziz Abdullah Jumah, 32, is the nineteenth victim to fall prey to the Bahraini security forces' brutal attack on peaceful bystanders and protesters. Hani was killed on Saturday March 19th, 2011, but his family, who had been looking for him since, were only informed of his death on the evening of Thursday March 24th when security forces contacted them to pick up his body the next day. Hani was buried in Boori on Friday afternoon. Human Rights Watch called on the Bahraini government to investigate the killing of this young man and hold those responsible accountable for his death. HRW also provided a clear description of the attack against ...
Keep Reading »Organizing for Change in Yemen
![[Protesters in Yemen. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_givingvoice.jpg "[Protesters in Yemen. Image from unknown archive.]")
Much of the media attention has rightfully focused on the violence of the Saleh regime in the face of mass protests and various defections. At the heart of these dynamics, however, are everyday people that are out in the streets articulating their demands and organizing communities. Below are a number of videos highlighting such activities and hopefully providing a platform to those with the most at stake in what is transpiring in Yemen. For an analysis of recent developments in Yemen at the level of elite politics, see Jadaliyy's "Saleh Defiant" and "Of the Elites, By the Elites, and For the Elites: An Update on Yemen's Revolution."
Keep Reading »Of the Elites, By the Elites, For the Elites: An Update on Yemen's Revolution
![[Image from European Press Photo Agency]](/content_images/3/sm_president7.jpg "[Image from European Press Photo Agency]")
As the clock ticks closer to Friday, Yemenis and observers of Yemen are bracing themselves for the unknown. Reports of a prospective deal between Ali Saleh and Ali Mohsen for a mutual resignation flooded social networking sites, Yemeni homes and Taghyir Square today, speculating hopefully on its potential to spare the country further bloodshed. Saleh dispelled those rumors in a TV appearance Thursday night, looking haggard and worn and declaring he would not be stepping down. However, it is not clear that negotiations behind the scenes have really terminated, and if they have, what the reasons for the failed deal were. What terms did Saleh find unacceptable? Or was it ...
Keep Reading »Saleh Defiant
![[President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_71506619-yemeni-president.jpg "[President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Image from unknown archive.]")
In the face of popular protests as well as defections by Yemeni diplomats, government ministers, and military leaders, President Ali Abdullah Saleh yesterday invited the Yemeni youth to participate in a “transparent and open dialogue.” He also announced that he would step down as president by the end of this year, and not—as he had promised earlier—when his term expires in 2013. It is tempting to understand Saleh’s obstinance as detached from reality given the protests and defections. However, a closer examination of these developments might offer a different take on both Saleh and the nature of his regime. Studying the context in which protests and defections are taking ...
Keep Reading »في الثورة; الحرية السياسية لا تكفي [In Revolution; Political Freedom is not Enough]
![[Referendum Voting in Egypt. Image from AP]](/content_images/3/sm_fo30no-egypt-elect.jpg "[Referendum Voting in Egypt. Image from AP]")
استحوذ الجدل حول تعديلات الدستور والاستفتاء الذي جرى أمس على عقل وحركة المصريين خلال الأسبوعين الماضيين ليتراجع كل شيء آخر أمام تلك القضية السياسية الدستورية الهامة. ومع اتخاذ المصريين قرارهم بلا أو نعم يتوقف مستقبل الثورة على أن يجسد هذا الموقف نفسه في صورة موقف واضح من باقي مطالب الثائرين، التي لا يمكن فصمها عن السياسة، وهي المطالب التي طرحوها تحت شعار العدالة الاجتماعية. توصف الثورة بأنها ذلك الدخول القسري للجماهير إلى عالم الحكم، عالم تقرير مصيرها. وفي هذا فإن اهتمام جماهير الثائرين بالدستور وما يرتبه من قواعد للعبة السياسية ليس هدفا في حد ذاته، وليس تعبيرا عن رغبتها في الفوز بمسابقة الدستور الأكمل قانونيا، وإنما يفترض أن يكون ذلك مجرد خطوة على طريق ...
Keep Reading »Preliminary Historical Observations on the Arab Revolutions of 2011
![[Image from la.indymedia.org]](/content_images/3/sm_2011-arab-revolution-tunisia-egypt-bahrain-libya.jpgmid.jpg "[Image from la.indymedia.org]")
Towards the end of his long, eventful life, in 1402, the renowned Arab historian Ibn Khaldun was in Damascus. He left us a description of Taymur’s siege of the city and of his meeting with the world conqueror. None of us is Ibn Khaldun, but any Arab historian today watching the Arab revolutions of 2011 has the sense of awe that our forbear must have had as we witness a great turning in world affairs. This juncture may be unprecedented in modern Arab history. Suddenly, despotic regimes that have been entrenched for fourty years and more seem vulnerable. Two of them – in Tunis and then in Cairo – crumbled before our eyes in a few weeks. Others in Tripoli and Sanaa are ...
Keep Reading »Friday Protests in Syria (Videos)
![[Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. Image from hurriyetdailynews.com]](/content_images/3/sm_Asad.jpg "[Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. Image from hurriyetdailynews.com]")
Below is some video footage of four different protests in Syria that took place on Friday March 18, 2001.
Keep Reading »The Saudi Women Revolution Statement
![[Image from Mona Kareem's Blog]](/content_images/3/sm_13.jpg "[Image from Mona Kareem's Blog]")
[The following statement in English and Arabic (below) was written by Mona Kareem on Friday March 18th, 2011, and can be found on her personal blog.] After the recent importance of Social Media in creating change in our societies, a lot of Saudi women have been active on Twitter through the hash tag #SaudiWomenRevoltion to write their demands of applying social equality in Saudi society, giving examples and telling stories on the injustice they are facing in their society. Media has talked about this hash tag but did not care to push this cause forward. Saudi Women, however, have created a page for their revolution on Facebook and talked to several media means to ...
Keep Reading »How it Started in Yemen: From Tahrir to Taghyir
![[Image from the open source, New Yemen Photo collection]](/content_images/3/sm_IMG_8314.jpg "[Image from the open source, New Yemen Photo collection]")
On February 11 after the Friday noon prayers Yemeni students and activists organized a demonstration in the capital city of Sanaa in solidarity with Egyptian demonstrators frustrated with Mubarak’s refusal to resign. At about 1 PM they met in front of the small roundabout by the new campus of Sanaa University and marched through town chanting slogans and carrying pictures of Gamal Abdel Nasser the Egyptian hero of Arab nationalism. Less than 200 people took part and only two were women. Slogans chanted included: “Awaken! Awaken oh youth!” “Long live Egypt!” “Down Hosni Mubarak!” “Egypt mother of the free! Mother of the revolutionaries” And they sang an ...
Keep Reading »ثورة يناير وتأسيس شرعية جديدة [The January Revolution and Establishing a New Legitimacy]
بينما ما زالت بقايا النظام السابق تطلق على ما حدث في مصر لفظ «حركة» أو «فورة»، نجد أن الإعلام الرسمي قد طور خطابه ليصفها بأنها ثورة، ولكن دائماً ما يضيف إليها لفظ آخر مثل الشباب، الانترنت، أو كما حلا لبعض المحللين أن يصفوها بثورة الطبقة الوسطى. مع التقدير الكامل لكل هذه الفئات والطبقات والأدوات ودورها البارز في ثورة يناير، إلا أن هذه الإضافة - لتكون الثورة مكونة من مضاف ومضاف إليه - فيها انتقاص شديد من حق الكثيرين ممن شاركوا فيها، والذين عملوا لسنوات طوال من أجل هذه اللحظة. وإذا كان سر نجاح هذه الثورة ...
Keep Reading »Jordan's March 24 Youth Sit-in Violently Dispersed (Videos)
Though unclear as to the exact date of their formation, a group of young Jordanian men and women came together some time ago calling for a sit-in at Amman's Dakhilliyyeh Circle (also known as Gamal Abdul-Nasser Circle) to be held on Thursday March 24, 2011. Dubbed "The March 24 Youth," organizers and participants advocated a reformist agenda (see below) while affirming their loyalty to both the Jordanian nation-state and the Hashemites as its royal family. Initially organized through ...
Keep Reading »The Bidun of Kuwait: A Look Behind the Laws
In Kuwait, some young Bidun men and women often wonder what more they could offer the country to get accepted as one of its own. Their fathers had lost their lives liberating Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion in the 1990 Gulf War. Their ancestors had settled in Kuwait for three consecutive generations but Bidun today have yet to be afforded any state recognition. Other Bidun question when they will become “pure enough” in the eyes of the Kuwaiti state and society to get recognized as equal humans, if ...
Keep Reading »Video Interview (#2) with Ali Ahmida on Libya and Intervention
[This interview was conducted by Jadaliyya Co-Editor, Noura Erakat, on March 24, 2011] In this second interview, Ali Ahmida (bio here) discusses the balance of power on the ground in Libya. On March 18th, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 and effectively imposed a no-fly zone over Libya's airspace in response to what many anticipated would be a bloodbath in Benghazi. The next day, French and British air forces began aerial bombardment of Libya with broad international support including ...
Keep Reading »Is the 2011 Libyan Revolution an Exception?
After the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the strong man of the Middle East on February 11, 2011, the Arab Spring appeared to be an unrelenting force. In the week following his downfall, three theaters of major rebellion—Libya, Yemen, Bahrain—quickly emerged, with Iran’s suppressed Green revolution resurfacing for a while as well. In the weeks that followed mass demonstrations demanding significant political reforms continued or sprang up in countries such as Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti, ...
Keep Reading »All Sorts of Interventions
The focal point of the “Arab Spring” has shifted from the successful uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt to the bleak developments in Bahrain and Libya. As the military forces of Britain, France, and the United States are taking “all necessary measures” to topple the Qaddafi regime, troops from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Peninsula Shield Force continue to “stabilize” the al-Khalifa regime in the face of a peaceful democratic uprising in Bahrain. The discrepancies between intervention for regime ...
Keep Reading »Missing: Agency and Alternative in the Anti-Intervention Critique
The Libyan people’s revolution against Muammar al-Gaddafi has been called the February 17th revolution. It has been named – like Egypt’s January 25th revolution – after the day on which protests were called for demanding freedom and an end to a brutal and long-standing regime. In Libya, however, the protests erupted before schedule. They began two days ahead of time in response to the arrest and imprisonment of Fathi Terbil – the lawyer representing the families of the victims of the Abu Salim prison ...
Keep Reading »The Alternative Opposition in Jordan and the Failure to Understand Lessons of Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions
In Jordan, no one seems to have learned from the lessons of Tunisia and Egypt. Especially not the “opposition,” which can be divided into the “official” opposition and the “alternative” opposition. The "official" opposition—comprised of the legalized opposition parties and professional associations—still seeks weak reformist goals that constitute a continuation of its collapsing course that began in 1989 (the year marking the end of martial law in Jordan and the onset of the so-called ...
Keep Reading »Bahraini Response to al-Qaradawi's Sectarian Accusation
[The below letter in Arabic was issued in the name of "The People of Bahrain" on 20 March 2011. It responds to Shaykh Yusef al-Qaradawi's accusation that the uprising in Bahrain was a Shi'a sectarian movement targeting Sunnis. While the letter criticiszes and counters al-Qaradawi's portrayl of the uprising as a sectarian one, it invites him to oversee the formation and implementation of an independent committee to "meet with all groups in order to discover the truth." For more on the ...
Keep Reading »When Petro-Dictators Unite: The Bahraini Opposition's Struggle for Survival
For at least several decades, geopolitical, economic, territorial and ideological considerations have led to serious tensions, if not outright feuds, between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states. In recent weeks, however, the regimes of GCC states have shown their citizens that when their authoritarian rule is at stake, they will put aside their differences and put up a united front. Exceptional times, it seems, do call for exceptional measures. As such, the GCC endorsed NSC Resolution ...
Keep Reading »Regional "Contagion" in the Arab World: For "Good" or "Worse?"
Although predicted by few, the current upheavals in several Arab countries reinvigorate commonplace perceptions of the countries and peoples in the Arab world and the Middle East at large as constituting a densely intertwined, interconnected and bounded region. When Tunisian protestors expelled their dictator, parallels were quickly drawn with Mubarak’s rule in Egypt, prompting mass mobilization there and causing a similar exit of this country’s long-standing ruler. In their wake, anti-regime protestors ...
Keep Reading »Saudi Arabia's Week of Shame
Since King Abdullah returned to Riyadh last month, members of his ruling family have resorted to myriad political, economic, and personal measures to prevent public expressions of dissent against the Al Saud. The Ministry of Interior issued a statement warning that any act of public protest is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and punishable by law. The country’s senior ulema were quick to legitimize this criminalization of protest with religious justifications, reminding everyone that “conspiring” against the ...
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