Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East

[visionary]

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/afri...s-boom-misrata

Business boom in Misrata

From the rooftop where I'm standing right now, the view across Misrata's docks is nothing short of stunning.

In the heat of the early afternoon, I can see the ships of a dozen different countries tied up along the waterfront. There's a bulk carrier from Istanbul, a Zanzibar-registered livestock transporter, and a huge vehicle transporter sailing under the flag of Gibraltar.

Out beyond the breakwater, along the near horizon, I count nearly 20 other huge vessels making their approach. Behind me, cranes and heavy lifters are shifting and sorting metal cargo containers ready for export.

Business is clearly booming.

It's a dramatic change to the desperate days of April and May 2011. Then, under heavy shelling and rocket attack, only humanitarian boats were brave enough to race into the port to deliver emergency supplies and evacuate casualties. Now, millions of dollars of trade is passing through this port every month.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-p...735535285.html

Protests mar Chinese leader’s Hong Kong visit

Police have fired volleys of pepper spray against protesters denouncing Chinese President Hu Jintao as he visited Hong Kong to mark the 15th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters, demanding an investigation into the recent death of a well-known mainland dissident, rallied near the hotel where the Chinese leader was staying.

The incident underscored tensions surrounding the anniversary of the financial hub's handover from British control on Sunday.

Police unleashed riot-control measures to keep the demonstrators back with eye-stinging pepper spray and arrested two protesters.

As the standoff developed, other protesters chanted anti-Beijing slogans and unfurled a huge banner with the Chinese character "injustice" written on it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...ce=twitterfeed

New Hong Kong leader takes office amid swirling discontent, unease over China’s influence

HONG KONG — Chinese President Hu Jintao was interrupted by a pro-democracy heckler Sunday at the swearing in of Hong Kong’s new leader, an incident underscoring rising tensions between Beijing and the semiautonomous territory 15 years after it returned to Chinese rule.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets later in the day in an annual protest that is an occasion for ordinary people to air their grievances over a range of issues. There is rising public discontent over widening inequality and lack of full democracy in the southern Chinese financial center.

Self-made millionaire Leung Chun-ying became Hong Kong’s third chief executive on the 15th anniversary of China regaining control of the city after more than a century of British colonial control. There were sporadic scuffles between demonstrators and police outside the convention center where his inauguration took place.

[visionary]

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_268743/con...tguid=zSnARdBW

Kuwait: Ruler accepts resignation of government

Kuwait's ruler has accepted the resignation of the prime minister and his Cabinet, the OPEC nation's official news agency said Sunday, laying the groundwork for a new government to be formed.

The decision is the latest step aimed at breaking a political stalemate in that has pitted Kuwait's Western-backed ruling dynasty against conservative Islamists and other opposition lawmakers.

An order from the emir, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, called for the government to continue on a caretaker basis until another is chosen, the Kuwait News Agency reported.

[visionary]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/0...8630P120120704

Sudan opposition calls for strikes, protests

Sudan's main opposition parties on Wednesday called for strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations to topple the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, throwing their weight behind anti-austerity protests.

The main opposition groups on Wednesday signed a pact calling for "collective, peaceful political struggle in all its forms... to overthrow the regime" including "strikes, peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins and civil disobedience".

If Bashir - in power since a bloodless 1989 coup - and his ruling National Congress Party were deposed, a ceasefire would be declared on all fronts against the multiple armed insurgencies Sudan is facing, the document said.

The parties also agreed to cancel laws restricting freedoms, hold a national constitutional conference, prepare the country for free elections and carry out a variety of other reforms.

[visionary]

Some Libya news


https://twitter.com/#!/martinvogl

In Libya training journalists before first free elections (tomorrow!) Haven't had time to tweet - series of first impressions follow.
7:34 AM

In three Libyan towns I've moved around - Tripoli, Gharyan & Zawiyah few armed men about. Seems calm to my untrained eye.
7:41 AM

See black sub Saharan Africans sitting on side of main roads in the mornings. They're waiting to be picked up as day workers, manual labour.
7:52 AM

Really surprised Libya isn't more developed. Many roads & buildings in a shocking state. Gaddafi obviously had other uses for the oil cash.
7:54 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/martinvogl

Amazed by the enthusiasm still in Libya some months on from the revolution. Flags everywhere. Everyone I meet so happy Gaddafi is gone.
8:45 AM

People I meet aren't especially excited about tomorrow's vote in Libya. Most excited by concept - first free elections post Gaddafi.
8:49 AM

Life seems back to normal in Tripoli. The bullet holes in strategic buildings all around the city little reminders of last year.
9:04 AM

Visiting Zarwiyah, 1hr west of Tripoli, where there was intense fighting. Whole floors of buildings knocked out by heavy weapons.
9:30 AM

One reason I'm so surprised by poor infrastructure in Libya is Malians who visited told me how great Libya is. Everything relative it seems.
10:13 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/EmadDlala

So the constitution will be formed by an elected committee that made of 20, 20, 20. Will this concession shut the mouths of the separatists?
9:31 AM

Also other cities have offered to give up seats to Benghazi to offset discontent from some in the east over percieved unfairness in seating# allocation.

[visionary]

http://www.libyaherald.com/exclusive...t-for-victory/

EXCLUSIVE: Jibril’s National Forces Alliance looks set for victory

Mahmoud Jibril’s National Forces Alliance (NFA) looks set for victory in Libya’s historic National Conference elections, the Libya Herald can reveal.

Early indications from both Tripoli and Benghazi suggest the NFA is comfortably ahead of any of its 130 rivals, including major contenders such as the Justice & Construction Party, the Nation Party and the National Front.

In spite of early disruptions in eastern Libya, voter turnout was also high. Late today HNEC head Nuri Al-Abbar said total voter turnout was 60 per cent, with 1.6 million of Libya’s 2.8 million electors having cast their vote.

said he believed voter turnout across the country had exceeded 60 per cent. Out of a total of 1554 polling centres across the country, 24 were unable to operate, including two in Kufra, six in Sidra and eight in Benghazi.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa...657668246.html

Libyans hold historic vote amid tensions

Tripoli, Libya - Polls have closed across much of Libya, where voting in the country’s first free national elections in more than four decades took place amid violence by federalist protesters who disrupted the vote in several districts.

Voting ended officially at 8pm (1800:GMT), but delays in starting has caused the polls to stay open later in some areas of the country.

In Benghazi, Libya's second city, they closed on Saturday night after staying open for an extra hour; in Ajdabiya and other places further from the capital, where voting did not start until the afternoon, voting will continue as late as 7am on Sunday. Voting in Brega has still not yet started.

Turnout was 60 per cent, the electoral commission said, citing preliminary figures. "We are continuing to receive reports, but the number of voters has reached 1.6 million," said Nuri al-Abbar, the head of the commission.

Acts of sabotage, mostly in the east of the country, prevented 101 polling stations from opening on Saturday, the electoral commission said, although 94 per cent of stations managed to open.

On Friday, a helicopter carrying election material from Libya's eastern city of Benghazi was shot at in mid-flight, fatally wounding a member of Libya's High National Election Committee (HNEC) logistics team onboard.

The 2.8 million registered voters are electing a 200-seat General National Conference (GNC) that will replace the unelected interim government that has ruled the country after the revolution against Libya’s ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Al Jazeera's David Poort, reporting from Tripoli, said that Nuri al-Abbar, the head of the electoral commission, brushed off most incidents that took place on Saturday and said that the elections overall have proven to be a success.

"Only seven polling stations could not open this morning because of protests in the east of the country. There were no violations reported in the west," said Abbar, speaking a press conference on Saturday evening.

"Some polling stations had some delay in receiving the voting material, but all these problems were solved in the course of this morning."

https://twitter.com/Libyan4life

JUST got back from Meydan Shuhada. Today was the best day of my life. I dont care if I get married, have kids, get an oscar.
6:46 PM

You just CANT understand the feeling on the ground in ‪Libya‬. Tears,laughing,hugging horns,whistles,flags waving. SENSORY overload.
6:47 PM

https://twitter.com/EmadDlala

All Libyans must unite 2 serve Libya, pro-federalism, anti-federalism, and even pro-Gaddafi supporters. We are all Libyans after all.
6:39 PM

New Libya has no future for tribalism. Proven today in LyElect
6:49 PM

More updates and pictures:
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/...elections-7096

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/wo...nted=1&_r=2&hp

Party Led by Pro-Western Official Claims Lead in Libya

A coalition led by a Western-educated political scientist appeared on Sunday to be beating Islamist parties in Libya’s first election of the post-Qaddafi era, standing apart from an overwhelming Islamist wave in other Arab Spring countries like Egypt and Tunisia.

Several estimates indicate that in the portion of the planned national assembly that will be decided by the contest among parties, Mr. Jibril’s coalition, the National Forces Alliance, had won as much as 80 percent of the vote in the western region around Tripoli and more than 60 percent around Benghazi in the east. Mr. Jibril’s Warfalla tribe, which accounts for roughly a million of Libya’s six million people, is most heavily represented in both those critical regions.

The alliance is widely described here as liberal, and part of its success is likely because of the lasting suspicion of Islamist groups that was instilled during Colonel Qaddafi’s rule. Still, the coalition shares with the Brotherhood the idea that Libya’s government and laws should be based on Islamic law and tradition, and how it handles human rights concerns will be closely watched internationally.

The party that appeared to be running second, the bloc established by the Muslim Brotherhood, appeared to received only about 20 percent or less in both the Tripoli and Benghazi regions, the parties and election monitors said, indicating a trend that is likely to carry over into the competition between individual candidates.

Another loosely Islamic party founded by Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a former leader of an armed insurgency here who became the head of Tripoli’s military council, also fell short. It was expected to be a major competitor but appeared to end up with even less support than the Brotherhood’s bloc.

Reports from Misurata on Sunday indicated that it was one of the few major cities to reject Mr. Jibril’s party. Instead, early results indicated that the city had favored a new party founded by Abdurrahman Sewehli, a prominent descendant of that slain hero. Islamists did not appear to dominate there either.

Of 200 seats in the planned national assembly, about 80 will be allocated to a competition between the party lists, mainly in the major cities. The other 120 seats will be decided by races between individual candidates. Given the cursory nature of the campaign, local prominence or tribal connections are expected to play a more decisive role than ideology or party affiliation in deciding those seats.

I always was dubious of media panic attacks about islamists or Muslim Brotherhood taking over Libya.
The main islamist politicians are viewed by most in Libya as buffoons and extremists.
Also there have been recent attacks and idiocy by some salafis in the east that has made people in Libya even more cautious about them.
On the other hand Libya is a moderately conservative islamic country.
Most Libyans support the idea that islam has a role to play in the law.
Alcohol has long been banned in Libya, and Polygamy is legal though rarely followed.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ent?CMP=twt_gu

Libyan plan to build parliament on ruins of Gaddafi's compound

It was once Libya's most forbidding place, the sprawling family compound where Muammar Gaddafi and senior regime figures lived behind impenetrable concrete walls. The Bab al-Aziziya complex in the centre of Tripoli was a city within a city, housing a network of underground tunnels, barracks and camouflaged villas.

Now Libya's transitional government has come up with a plan to build the country's new parliament building in the heart of Gaddafi's collapsed empire. Officials have suggested that the complex could house the country's new national congress. They are also planning a museum and a library.

"I'm going to propose this. It's very urgent," Othman ben Sassi, general secretary of the outgoing National Transitional Congress (NTC), told the Guardian on Saturday night, shortly before polls closed on Libya's first election for nearly 50 years. A 200-strong national congress, currently homeless, will replace the NTC next month. The congress will write a new constitution, and debate whether Libya's fledgling post-Gaddafi state should have a parliamentary or presidential system.

For the moment, Libya's elected representatives will meet in an opulent conference centre next to Tripoli's Rixos Hotel. Ben Sassi said he wanted the new parliament building to be ready by late 2013, when fresh national elections are due to take place.

[visionary]

http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/top-...ction-day.html

Top Ten Surprises on Libya’s Election Day

Most Western reporting on Libya is colored by what is in my view a combination of extreme pessimism and sensationalism. It has been suggested that because most reporters don’t stay there for that long, many don’t have a sense of proportion. It is frustrating to have faction-fighting in distant Kufra in the far south color our image of the whole country. Tripoli, a major city of over 2.2 million (think Houston), is not like little distant Kufra, population 60,000 (think Broken Arrow, OK)!

In the run-up to the elections held on Saturday, a lot of the headlines read ‘Libya votes, on the brink’ or had ‘Chaos’ in the title. But actually, as the Libya Herald reports, the election went very, very well (which did not surprise me after my visit to three major cities there in May-June). The NYT post-election headline of ‘Libyans risk violence to vote’ is frankly ridiculous; in most of the country that simply was not true, though it was true in parts of Benghazi.

Even then, how many people died in violence in this election? I count two, but in any case it is a small number. In Tripoli, the election was described as a big family wedding, with lots of loud celebration and tears of joy. Here are the top ten surprises of the election for Libya watchers:

[visionary]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...pTW_story.html

How 1 man derailed 2 decades of democracy in Mali and helped create haven for terrorism

SEGOU, Mali — On the morning three months ago when the fate of Mali was irrevocably changed, Mamadou Sanogo awoke in the house here where he and his wife had raised six children, including a 39-year-old son, now a captain in the nation’s army.

It was still dark outside. The elderly man got up and turned on the TV, setting the volume to low so as to not disturb his sleeping wife, according to relatives and friends. What he saw next made him shake her awake. “Come see what your imbecile son is doing,” he yelled.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...561763436.html

Shia cleric arrested in Saudi after shootout

Security forces in eastern Saudi Arabia have cracked down on a large demonstration in the eastern city of Qatif, killing two people and injuring at least 20, after a Shia leader was shot and arrested, activists said.

Hundreds of protesters were reported to have taken to the streets on Sunday after Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric and anti-government activist, was chased, shot and arrested while driving earlier in the day, human rights activist Hussain al-Alk told Al Jazeera.

Alk, a Qatif resident and staffer at the Adala Center for Human Rights, said the arrest took place at around 4pm and that organisers called for mass demonstrations after the evening prayer.

The protests were the largest in the city since November and December, when at least six demonstrators were shot and killed, Alk said. He said that he believed the government was prompted by influential Sunnis to escalate its pressure on the Shia opposition.

"During all this period ... the speeches of Sheikh Nimr were very hot, and he's always attacking the government, but it seems that in the last month the government became too worried. The Sunnis have started saying, 'Why when the Sunnis are talking against the government you are arresting him immediately, while Shias, you are not doing anything to him,'" Alk said.

The official Saudi Press Agency said Nimr was arrested after he and his followers exchanged fire with security forces and crashed into a police vehicle. It said Nimr was shot in the thigh and faces charges of instigating unrest in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

Nimr has been wanted by authorities after making calls for more rights for Shias, a minority denomination in the strictly run Sunni monarchy. In 2009, he suggested forming a movement for succession unless the government released political prisoners, end discrimination against Shias and take steps against corruption.

Alk said Shias, who number at least 2 million according to the International Crisis Group, are prevented from obtaining high-ranking positions in the government and security forces.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8680D720120709

Life without Gaddafi: Finding my voice and my vote

Ali Shuaib is a Libyan news reporter who has worked for Reuters in Tripoli since 2007.

I was 15 years old the last time Libya held a parliamentary election - too young to vote, but old enough to remember that Arab nationalism was sweeping the region, inspiring calls for social reform and independence from the West.

As I excitedly followed the fiery election campaigns that dominated the airwaves and filled the myriad independent newspapers, little did I know that my first chance to vote would not come for another 47 years - until July 7, 2012.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa...115559794.html

DRC rebels seize more towns in North Kivu

Rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have taken control of more towns in the country's eastern North Kivu province, forcing government troops to retreat.

The rebels, known as the M23 movement, had captured the town of Rutshuru on Sunday, forcing thousands of civilians from their homes. This development opened the way for a possible advance on Goma, the provincial capital about 70km to the south.

The rebels said that they did not face any opposition from the FARDC, the DRC's national army, as they captured the towns of Ntamugenga, Rubare and Bunagana, an important mineral town, siezed two days earlier.

Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, reporting from the town of Rumangabo, 50km north of Goma, said that the morale amongst the government troops was very low.

"We only found two government soldiers here. There is no running water and the conditions are absolutely appalling," Greste said on Monday.

"M23 have surrounded this place, but not occupied it. The main focus for now seems to be on Goma."

Colonel Sultani Makenga, the head of the M23 rebels, told reporters hours after they took Rutshuruon Sunday, that they planned to leave all the towns they've taken except Bunagana.

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa...=MasterAccount

DR Congo rebels retreat from strategic town

DR Congo rebels have retreated from the strategic town of Rutshuru in North Kivu province, a day after taking it from government forces without a fight, rebels and the United Nations say.

Congo's UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, said M23 fighters on Monday had pulled out of Rutshuru as well as the town of Kiwanja and the village of Rubare, also taken by the rebels on Sunday.

"[The rebels] abandoned their positions in town and moved to the surrounding mountains," Rutshuru resident Lucien Amoli said.

An M23 statement warned the army against returning to the towns, saying any attempt to do so would be "immediately and energetically repressed" by the fighters.

The rebels withdrew into the mountain gorilla haven of Virunga National Park, where an official said heavy bombing was preventing rangers from protecting the critically endangered primates.

The movement take its name from a March 2009 peace deal that ended a previous rebellion in North Kivu and led to the rebels' integration into the national army. They deserted the government ranks earlier this year, accusing the government of not respecting the agreement.

Rebel leader Sultani Makenga said they were retreating from Rutshuru as they waited to hear if the government was ready to negotiate their demands over the March 23, 2009 peace deal.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8690TB20120710

Hamas condemns announcement of Palestinian elections

The Palestinian Authority on Tuesday announced it planned to hold local elections in October in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, angering Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers.

"The Palestinian cabinet approved during its meeting today ... conducting local elections on 20 October 2012 in all local councils in the homeland," The PA said in a statement.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri responded: "Hamas regards this unilateral step as undermining reconciliation and a decision of escalation that would further complicate the file of reconciliation and therefore, Hamas holds the Fatah movement responsible for the consequences that may result."

Hamas suspended voter registration in the Gaza Strip last week in a major setback to the reconciliation effort.

The PA's announcement and Hamas's rejection of it may lead to the polls only being held in the West Bank, further deepening the two territories' political divorce.

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/wo...ster.html?_r=2

Angry Throngs at a Funeral in Saudi Arabia

Thousands of people attended a funeral in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a man killed during protests in a restive region of the country’s Eastern Province, a show of popular anger that came amid fears of a renewed crackdown on dissent.

Videos posted on social networking sites on Tuesday night showed an avenue filled with rows of chanting mourners. Other videos showed youths throwing incendiary devices at what appeared to be a police car, and rocks at a government building.

Activists said the man, Muhammed el-Filfil, had been protesting the shooting and arrest on Sunday by government security forces of a prominent Shiite cleric in the Qatif region. Mr. Filfil was one of at least two people killed when security forces fired live ammunition at the protesters in the village of Awamiya, the activists said. A government official denied that any such clash had occurred.

The oil-rich Eastern Province, the stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, has long been a focal point of anger at the rigidly conservative Sunni monarchy, and for Shiite complaints about a policy of entrenched, official discrimination.

[jpyaks3]

Pretty funny, I love the SHHH over Bahrain.

[visionary]

Funny picture. I think I saw that on twitter a few weeks ago.


http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog...d-arab-spring/

How Morocco Dodged the Arab Spring

Since the Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself and the Arab world aflame in December 2010, young men all over the Middle East have tried to imitate him. In no country have they done so more often than in Morocco, where some twenty men, with many of the same economic grievances, are reported to have self-immolated. Five succeeded in killing themselves, but none in sparking a revolution.

It is not for want of causes. Morocco’s vital statistics are worse than Tunisia’s. Its population earns half as much on average as its smaller North African counterpart. One of every two youth are unemployed, and the number is rising: failed rains have cut the country’s wheat harvest in half and have compounded a mounting budget deficit hiked by rising fuel prices and a downturn in tourism and exports to Europe, Morocco’s beleaguered main trading partner. In late May, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Casablanca to protest the government’s failure to tackle the country’s social ills.

But whereas Ben Ali, Tunisia’s policeman, pigheadedly sought to keep power when the streets erupted in late 2010, Morocco’s po-faced but retiring King has kept one step ahead by offering to share it.

On March 9, 2011—just weeks after Ben Ali’s exile—King Mohammed unveiled a new constitution that gave up his claim to divine rights as sovereign, but left him as Commander of the Faithful, much—said palace advisers—as Britain’s Queen remains head of the Anglican Church.

And while other Arab monarchs, like Jordan’s, dithered about whether to risk parliamentary elections, Mohammed held them quickly and fairly last November; when an Islamist party won the most seats, the King declared its leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, the prime minister.

But while Benkirane’s government has for the time being stayed any prospect of a broader upheaval, Morocco is not yet out of the woods. The carping, which Benkirane’s election initially silenced, has returned with renewed vigor as Moroccans ask themselves whether their new constitution was merely cosmetic. Most recently, this view has been confirmed in a battle over who gets to make senior government appointments. Unsurprisingly, the King seems to have won.

“I appoint five hundred of the country’s most senior positions,” Benkirane had insisted to me in March. “The king appoints only thirty-seven.”

But those thirty-seven are the most important. King Mohammed remains head of the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Security Council, and the Ulama Council, which runs the mosques. He runs the military, the security forces, and the intelligence. The targets of the February 20 protests—including the interior minister at the time, Ali al-Himma—are firmly ensconced as advisers in the King’s shadow government.

Tellingly, when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to the kingdom in March she met the King’s foreign affairs adviser ahead of the foreign minister. “The King returns to Morocco, business resumes,” ran the headline in the official newspaper, Le Soir, on June 13, after the King returned from an absence of several weeks in Europe. It was clear who it thought called the shots.

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa...043395108.html

UN troops shell rebel positions in DR Congo

UN and Democratic Republic of Congo government troops have bombarded rebel positions in the country's strife-torn eastern region of North-Kivu.

Three helicopters belonging to the United Nations DR Congo mission - MONUSCO - and two gunships of the DR Congo army (FARDC) were seen and explosions were heard around the villages of Nkokwe and Bukima, where rebels from the M23 group are thought to have some positions.

Officials from the UN and the army confirmed attacks were underway, as did the mutineers.

"The FARDC are currently attacking our positions, but they don't know where we are. There's no problems," a colonel from the mutiny told AFP.

Nkokwe and Bukima are about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the Nord-Kivu capital Goma.

The deployment came on Thursday as Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, urged the presidents of DR Congo and its rival Rwanda to "defuse tensions" over the rebellion.