Inkwell Institute
Middle East Desk
The dipsticks are on break so let us change the tone for awhile……
I know…..now that the protests in the Middle East are waning and more important stuff takes on the media……no one really gives a crap about the happenings in the Middle East…..that is the sort of thinking that has us up to our butts in problems in the region…..what’s the old saying? “You snooze….you lose”…..but what you do not know can and will hurt you……
OK, to be honest I went to college for International relations and have spent time working in the ME….so it may mean a bit more to me than most Americans….this whole Arab Spring thing has people like me jerking off in the corner because finally we get to analyze something other than who was right or wrong in the latest wars of aggression……if I can help someone understand what is happening in the ME then there may well be one more person that will help protect the US from making stupid decisions in the area…..
Let us start with Libya……I talked earlier about the possibility of a stalemate in the fighting between Qaddafi forces and the rebels….that was not a stretch…..the rebels have zero training and that is disastrous…..I even said there could be a partitioning of the country into East/West…….hello!
The Libyan rebels insist they want one state, with Tripoli as its capital, but as the fighting drags on, Benghazi is starting to look an awful lot like the capital of a separate state, with its own government and even its own oil business, the Washington Post observes. “We don’t like it, we don’t want it, but this scenario might happen,” says the rebels’ head of international affairs.
Qaddafi and his sons will not go for this….but the way things are going he may have NO choice……NATO bombs and all…..the rebels are NOT capable of ousting Qaddafi…..period!
And now…Syria. Assad is doing what ALL despots do….give in a bit on some meaningless reforms and pray the people bite……Syria is suffering from the same thing as most of the other nations…..a deterioration of the middle and lower classes……but Assad has a heavy hand when dealing with the people…..but….
What we are seeing today in Syria is the direct result of the adoption of the market economy, and although this maybe incomplete as yet, it has been enough to cause the conditions of the middle and lower strata of society to significantly deteriorate. Prices of basic goods have doubled and tripled in the recent years, and the prices of real estate have sky-rocketed to astronomical levels. The objective conditions are ripe but the subjective conditions within society as a whole remain unclear.
Revolutions have their own dynamics and certain processes can accelerate greatly under revolutionary conditions. The lies of the regime are only a manoeuvre to win some time and diffuse the movement, but this cannot be sustained for long. If the movement manages to keep the pressure on long enough, then it is more likely that more and more layers of society will be joining. Things are changing by the day and hour now. And even if the movement should be defeated in the short term, such a defeat would only serve to prepare a more widespread and more powerful movement in the future. The regime will not be able to meet any of its promises in any significant way, and any reforms it may concede in these conditions will merely be cosmetic.
Assad is making deals right and left to hold on to his seat of power….he is giving in to Islamists, and to protesters in general……he will hold on to power….for now….but his days are numbered…..
Bahrain…….it is a religious conflict…..only depends on who is more serious about change……Saudis will always prop up the ruling class….after all they are brothers of the sunni….and the US will look the other way…..
Egypt—now the US is taking grief for their stance on the most recent protests that brought down Mubarak and from Glenn beck’s greatest devil….the Muslim Brotherhood……
The spokesman of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Essam El-Erian accused the United States of interfering in the Egyptian revolution and warned that the people who were able to say “enough to Mubarak…are ready to say enough to everybody.”
“America is still making fatal mistakes as America, and you know what I mean. It must review its strategy, and listen to the people, not listen to the regimes. You are biased till now, biased. You are hypocritical,” El-Erian said in an interview with the Cairo Review of Global Affairs…….
The principal tenets of this “culturalist” concept, as summarized and refuted by Gilbert Achcar, were that “the degree of emancipation of the Orient should not and cannot be measured by western standards and values, such as democracy, secularism and women’s liberation; that the Islamic Orient cannot be grasped with the epistemological tools of western social sciences and that no analogy with western phenomena is relevant; that the key motional factor in Islamic history, the primary factor setting Muslim masses in motion, is cultural, ie religious, taking precedence over the economic and social/class factors that condition western political dynamics; that the only path of Muslim lands toward their renaissance is through Islam; and that the movements that raise the banner of the ‘return to Islam’ are not reactionary or regressive movements as they are perceived through western lenses, but indeed progressive movements prompted by western cultural domination”
By viewing the happenings in the Middle East through the prism of western culture is just ignorant and dangerous……..Americans need to keep one eye on the ME…your sons and daughters may be asked to intervene and to fight….and that NEVER ends well……
