Jordan Analysis: A Regime Running Out of Time? (Yom)

King Abdullah IIThe Jordanian regime now faces a crucial juncture. Bloggers and journalists warn of the possibility of civil conflict unless the palace shifts course and negotiates with, rather than patronizes, its critics. However, King Abdullah has only offered another open-ended promise for considering reforms through the National Dialogue Committee, whose remaining members are bitterly arguing whether to take the king's word seriously anymore. Bakhit seems to be in little danger of losing his job, and parliament has predictably rejected any initiative to review, much less curtail, the crown's constitutional supremacy. At the same time, pro-government loyalists will assuredly attack opposition groups again, who now have little incentive to moderate their position and put faith in dialogue. The March 24 Shabab have already promised to return to the streets this Friday, heightening social tensions. If they are assaulted once again, tragedy could ensue.

Click to read more ...

Bahrain Feature: Saudi Arabia's Slap in the Face of the US

The Saudi intervention, however small, is therefore a major step backward for the region. It represents a major slap in the face to the United States, a defeat for the liberal Shiite and Sunni elements in Bahrain, and ultimately a catastrophe for the entire Khalifa family, both the liberal and conservative wings, who may have just surrendered their power to the giant next door.

Ultimately, this may also be a defeat for Saudi Arabia as well. The Saudis have long tried to avoid overt interventions in their neighbors' affairs. They intervened once during the 1994 upheavals in Bahrain and in the past two years have been active on the Yemeni border -- but under King Abdullah they have tried to arbitrate, rather than dominate, events on the Arabian Peninsula. Their decision to intervene directly in Bahrain's affairs suggests a weakness in the Saudi leadership and Riyadh's surrender to the more conservative elements in the country.

Click to read more ...

Egypt in Pictures: The "War Zone" in Suez

From Suez today (hat tip to Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy for most of these):

Click to read more ...

Tunisia and Algeria: How Protests Put "Arab Regimes on Edge" (Lynch)

It's very clear that most Arab regimes are on edge over the possibility of the spread of the protests in Tunisia and Algeria. Arab columnists and TV shows have been excitedly debating the real causes of the protests and what they might mean, while in country after country warnings are being sounded of a repeat of the "Tunisia scenario."

Click to read more ...

Algeria: How a "Fundamental Political Deficit" Leads to Demonstrations (Roberts)

It has been widely suggested that the riots have been food or hunger riots, in that they were supposedly triggered by the steep increases in the prices of staple goods, notably sugar and olive oil. These increases were not decreed by the government; the private sector traders appear to have raised prices of their own accord, in reaction to the government's attempts to impose new regulations on their transactions. The government's decision was, in principle, part of the necessary and long overdue attempt to curb the rampant informal sector of the economy by subjecting the trade in foodstuffs to basic regulation and so bring it back into the formal sector. But if so, the government has clearly had no conception of the political difficulty and magnitude of this task and seems to have supposed that it could effect changes of this nature by simple ministerial fiat.

But there can be little doubt that the price increases were simply the last straw. The greater part of Algerian society has been in a permanent state of moral revolt against the regime for the last four or five years. In particular, riots have been a frequent -- one might well say a regular -- feature of the Algerian political landscape for the last decade, since the massive and protracted riots in Kabylia, the main Berber region, in 2001. Since 2005, scarcely a fortnight has gone by without a riot somewhere in the country.

Click to read more ...

Terrorism Weekly: What is Behind Britain's Transportation Alerts?

This is undoubtedly a reminder to the travelling public to be vigilant (although authorities have to be careful: frequent alerts arguably have the opposite effect). However, there is another audience for this alert. In this case the threat is posed not by known terrorists  under surveillance --- about 2000, according to the British intelligence service MI5 ---  but the terrorists who are, in the parlance of Donald Rumsfeld, the “known unknowns". It is a small group or even an individual who has managed to remain under the radar that create concern for obvious reasons.

The message to them is “we are on to you”. Although some terrorists may not be terribly bright, they generally tend to be rational and  thus can be deterred from their plans by a superior show of force or greater vigilance.

Or so the state may hope.

Click to read more ...

US Foreign Policy: Why Obama's Outreach to Muslim World is Still Valuable (Lynch)

President Obama's visit to Indonesia this week has received relatively little attention in the US. While --- somewhat ironically --- opponents such as Bret Stephens and Charles Krauthammer have hailed the Obama speech in India for promoting the free market and an alliance to "face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China", the President's address in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world came and went.

Marc Lynch, writing in Foreign Policy, tries to fill in the gaps and provide a wider context for the Obama speech....

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan: The US Military v. Obama, Again (Cohen)

The simple fact is that ever since the president announced a July 2011 deadline for commencing withdrawals the military has chafed against what its views as an arbitrary deadline for pulling the plug on the operation. Rather than following Obama's admonition to not send troops into areas that could not be realistically handed over to the Afghan security forces by 2011, NATO and U.S. forces have engaged in a "clear, hold, and build strategy" in places where there is limited chance of turnover any time soon. It's hard to square that approach with a White House that seems desperate to embrace political reality and find the Afghan exit ramp.

But by spinning an optimistic tale of progress -- and pushing stories to journalists that suggest success is just around the corner -- the military could see only a nominal decrease of troops in July 2011. At the very least, it will put more public pressure on the White House to stay the course and fudge the troop withdrawal deadline.

Click to read more ...

Lebanon: Hezbollah, the Special Tribunal, and the Power of the Multitude (Khatib)

On Wednesday, two male Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigators --- an Australian and a Frenchman --- visited the office of gynecologist Iman Sharara in Southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after making an appointment with the purpose of examining the records of at least 14 people who had visited her clinic since 2003. The investigators, accompanied by a female translator, were subsequently mobbed by 150 women who surrounded them, violently attacked them, and snatched a briefcase that one of them was carrying which contained a laptop and official STL documents.

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan Newsflash: US & Peace Talks Far from "Victory" (Exum)

For the past two weeks, reputable U.S. and British newspapers have been filled with articles touting progress in negotiations between the government in Kabul and Afghanistan's major insurgent groups. On Oct. 20, for example, the New York Times reported that Afghan reconciliation talks "involve extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders from the highest levels of the group's leadership." These articles have been accompanied by optimistic reports that the United States and its NATO allies have decimated the Taliban's leadership in southern Afghanistan.

As someone who has fought in Afghanistan on two occasions and served briefly as a civilian advisor to the NATO command group there in 2009, I hope the reports are true. The idea that an end to the fighting in Afghanistan and the involvement of the 100,000 U.S. troops in the country might be just around the corner is seductive. However, there is good reason to be skeptical of the reporting coming out of Kabul and Washington.

Click to read more ...