And now the ripples
While Iraq remained the centre of attention in Egyptian and Arab newspapers this week, some of the limelight was also given to other hot topics of the day, finds Amina Elbendary
Click to view caption |
In Al-Akhbar Mustafa Hussein shows two Iraqi women whispering that rumor has is that whenever a coalition soldier feels a bit dizzy they make him sniff some oil
|
The war on Iraq seems over, though President Bush has yet to make the official declaration, and the war for Iraq is in full sway. Newspapers in Egypt and the Arab world last week registered this, but while news of and from Iraq continued to take centre stage, front pages and opinion pieces found space for other issues and concerns.
Special Iraq pages and logos have begun to disappear as newspapers reverted to their traditional sections. Though regional politics remained important, they also redirected their attention to local politics.
Most notably, however, the announcement of the new Palestinian cabinet headed by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and reports concerning the as yet undeclared Roadmap to peace received a lot of attention, with the Egyptian daily Al- Akhbar publishing on 28 April what it claimed was the complete text of the Roadmap. On the Iraq front, the efforts of various Iraqi political forces, formerly the "opposition", to gain a share in power remained the topic of the day.
IRAQ AFTER THE WAR: The rise of the Shi'ite voice in post-Saddam Iraq received a lot of attention on the pages of Egyptian and Arab newspapers this week, especially given the processions and demonstrations at Karbala commemorating the martyrdom of Al-Imam Al-Hussein.
In the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar on 25 April Jihad Al-Zein analysed the transmutations of the political scene in Iraq after the war with particular reference to resistance. Under the title "Opposition or Resistance," Al-Zein began by suggesting that Ahmed Chalabi's symbolic weight had become an impediment to democratic transformation in Iraq, tarnished as his image is with charges of financial corruption. Suggesting that Chalabi step out of the political arena, Al-Zein outlined three types of opposition to the US occupation of Iraq.
Al-Zein's first type was opposition from within, namely from people who had cooperated with the coalition forces in their invasion of Iraq but who now wanted them to leave. The second type was political opposition that refuses to cooperate with the coalition forces, but restricts this opposition to the political arena by refusing to join administrations connected to the occupying forces. This group could take shape over the coming months. Finally, there was possible military opposition to occupation, and the future of this would be related to the restructuring of Iraqi society and decisions taken by Iran vis-à-vis the American presence in Iraq.
In the London-based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat on 27 April, Khaled Al-Dakhil asked what the future held for secularism in Iraq. Despite differences between various political forces in the country, there seemed to be signs, both from within Iraq and from without, that cooperation with the Americans would continue, if only to speed the establishment of a national Iraqi government acceptable to all. The establishment of such a government, Al-Dakhil argued, would in turn speed up the evacuation of American forces.
There was also a growing willingness, Al- Dakhil argued, to separate religious beliefs from political goals, especially among the leaders of religious organisations. The former kinds of belief were necessarily exclusive, he argued, while the latter should become general, inclusive goals that all could agree to. What was even more important, Al-Dakhil wrote, "is that there seems to be a general perception that not insisting on a sectarian identity for the Iraqi state would grant that state a greater degree of independence than if it were tied to this or that sect -- an independence it has lacked throughout most of its history."
The multiplicity of political voices coming out of Iraq was something to be praised, according to Amir Tahiri in the London-based Saudi daily Al- Sharq Al-Awsat on 26 April. "Finally the Iraqis speak up," he said, and they should have a right to choose whatever policies they like, "and, should they wish to raise the banner of the Ba'ath again, they should have that right."
On 26 April, Al-Hayat's front-page banner quoted US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referring to Shi'ite opposition to US occupation: "Rumsfeld: A minority is making a lot of noise and we will not allow a pro-Iran regime in Iraq."
Iraqi voices were increasingly to be heard in Arab newspapers. Also on 26 April in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat the Iraqi writer Samira Al-Tamimi sarcastically wrote, "Our Arab brethren, we are sorry, we haven't heard your cries well enough." Responding to the rhetorical question of whether Iraq had let the Arabs down, Al-Tamimi gave details of every Iraqi city's resistance to the invading forces, as well as of its population's repression by the former regime.
She then posed the question of whether it was not the Arabs who had let Iraq down: "We say frankly and honestly that Arabs have disappointed the hopes of Iraqis. They watched them on television screens carrying coloured pictures of red blood and tears mixed with dust and the smoke of burning oil. The thirst of the people of the south was killing and painful... but our Arab brethren wanted these remnants to raise the banner of victory, to achieve for them what they have failed to achieve in the history of their modern wars. I tell our Arab brethren whom we have loved and still do: you have watched and cried, but we are sorry, because we couldn't hear your wails; the sounds of airplanes attacking us from every direction was louder than that of crying and wailing."
In Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on 25 April Mohieddin Amimour argued that Iraq should quickly come under the protection of the UN. "Humanitarian concerns should not be an excuse to grant legitimacy to occupation," he wrote.
"Yes, it is occupation... but of a special nature," wrote Mahmoud Al-Rimawi in Al-Hayat on 26 April. While the priority in Iraq since 9 April has been to end the occupation, reaching that goal required parallel if not prior actions to be taken. These included the definition of a nationally recognised authority that represented the majority of Iraqis, he wrote. This was complicated because the opposition movement to the former regime had developed outside Iraq and had not gained real recognition as a national alternative. Therefore, the special nature of this occupation meant that resisting it should also employ its own special means and discourse.
In the Egyptian cultural weekly Akhbar Al- Adab on 27 April, Editor-in-Chief Gamal El- Ghitani wrote on "The general in Baghdad" in a reference to Jay Garner, lamenting what he considered to be a historical humiliation for the Arabs. "This is the first time in the history of the Arab Muslim world that the colonialist power has ruled directly through one of its generals and not through local proxies. The US is not following the example of its old ally Britain, which used to maintain a military presence and yet act behind political curtains, as it did in Egypt, the Hijaz and the Gulf."
Also in Akhbar Al-Adab, Hassan Abdel- Mawgoud drew attention to what he called "A new cultural catastrophe". Under the title, "Iraqi curricula in the manner of Sesame Street: the Yankees write a new history for Iraqi children," Abdel-Mawgood reproduced the findings of interviews with several political analysts who have highlighted the dangers relating to heritage and cultural identity inherent in any programme of rewriting Iraqi school history curricula on an American model.
The next American target would be Iraq's scientific community, warned novelist Abdel- Rahman Mounif in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir on 25 April under the headline "Save Iraq's scientists." Mounif pointed to the pressures that Iraqi scientists have already been placed under: even during the inspections process the US pressured the UN inspectors to investigate Iraqi scientists and to have some of them investigated outside Iraq where they would have been tempted, or blackmailed, not to return to their country. Thus far, Iraq's scientists have refused this, only to have become the targets of American forces seeking them out. Mounif urged the Arab world to provide a favourable environment for the Iraqi scientific establishment, in order to prevent its co-option by the US.
The destruction that befell Iraqi museums and public libraries, including the National Library and Archives, in the wake of the US- led invasion continued to be a cause for horror this week. In the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on 28 April Gaber Asfour wrote that he could not fathom why Iraqis had destroyed, pillaged and plundered their own heritage in museums, libraries and universities. That suppressed public anger would be unleashed at the palaces of Saddam Hussein and the ruling clique was understandable. But it was astonishing that the same should have happened to the Iraqi cultural heritage.
Asfour found a comparison with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258 compelling. In Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on 24 April, Jalil Al-Attiya reported that 40,000 manuscripts had been pillaged in Baghdad, including 400 rare diwans of poetry.
OIL AND HEGEMONY: In her regular column in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom, weekly edition of Al-Akhbar, on 26 April Maha Abdel-Fattah exposed the nuances within the battle for Iraqi oil. Under the title "The oil curse," Abdel-Fattah reviewed an oil policy paper issued in 2000 by the White House which showed how in the future the world would more and more rely on Saudi Arabian and Iraqi oil. Whoever controlled Gulf oil would have hegemony over Western Europe, Japan and East Asia. She pointed out that many among neo-conservative elements in the US are now calling for the privatisation of Iraqi oil.
In Al-Hayat on 29 April, Hassan Nafaa argued that the war had not been for oil, even though oil interests were quite blatantly followed. "This is a war for Israel first and foremost. It has been made and planned by the extreme right wing in the US, which is very well-connected to the even more extreme Israeli right wing," he wrote. This had been a war the US had fought by proxy for Israel in order to draw up a new strategic map of the region. Though the US hawks might be tempted to replay the Iraqi model elsewhere, he warned, Syria and Iran were not Iraq.
However, the American administration could put paid to such interpretations of its actions, Nafaa concluded, by quickly withdrawing its troops from Iraq and asking the UN to send in peace- keeping forces to oversee free elections. It could also announce the Roadmap for Palestine without allowing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to alter it in advance.
The neo-conservative elements in the US administration were also the subject of Mohamed El-Sayed Said's article in Al-Ahram on 28 April: "The world needs to stand firm and courageously against the dangerous personalities in Washington who want to control the world through perpetual war. Yet it is better for the world to wait until a courageous, honest force appears, one that is truly powerful and truly courageous, than to rush to declare its willingness to stand up to this challenge through people who are quick to hand themselves over to authorities occupying their countries," he concluded.
On 28 April, Abdel-Wahab Badrakhan, writing in Al-Hayat, outlined a number of errors of judgement committed by both the US and the Arabs. The US had underestimated the strength of Shi'ite activism in Iraq, he wrote, and it was increasingly uncomfortable with the Shi'ite presence in politics, mixed as this was with opposition to the US occupation. Most of the errors of the Arabs, on the other hand, had been committed against their own people, societies and nations and not against the US. "The Americans will fail to convince anyone if they continue to believe they came to liberate the Arabs from the errors they committed against themselves."
LOCAL RIPPLES: Political analysts and commentators continued to be acutely aware of the ramifications the war on Iraq and its subsequent recolonisation were having on the Arab world. The imperative to "democratise now" continued to be a dominant theme.
In the Egyptian weekly Al-Arabi, mouthpiece of the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party, Amin Youssri wrote a statement to the nation on 27 April: "Change now... or the flood will swallow us." Youssri analysed the causes for the Arab predicament, looking at the relationship between political despotism and aggression, Arab unity as deterrence, and economic and human development as a further deterrent to aggression. He proceeded from this to outline a programme for reform and resistance that would remove the causes of the predicament, ensuring that disasters such as what had happened in Iraq did not recur.
In the Lebanese daily Al-Safir, Mustafa Al- Husseini wrote on 23 April that this was a time of "no retreat". What has befallen Iraq was not another defeat, but rather it was "total defeat", and the Arab world needed to ponder this state of affairs with cold rationality.
Al-Safir's Editor-in-Chief Talal Salman embarked on something like this on 25 April, analysing the effects the fall of the Iraqi regime had had on Arabism. Salman criticised attempts to interpret political realities in terms of binary oppositions: the Arab East versus the Gulf, Arabism versus Islamism, or Sunni versus Shi'ite, for example. Such struggles weakened the Arab nation, granting legitimacy to the political status quo, including to the realities of occupation.
Now that Syria no longer seems a likely next target for the US military, on 25 April Al-Safir published an interview with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he expressed US satisfaction with some of the decisions Syria had made, while pointing out that other core issues, such as the country's alleged support for terrorism and WMDs, still needed to be discussed.
Writing in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on 24 April, Saleh Al-Qallab assured his readers that Syria would not face the same fate as Iraq, since it would not fall into the same traps. The Syrian leadership was flexible and would meet the Americans half way, he said. It was in Syria's interest not to remain isolated from the peace process in the Middle East, and therefore Al-Qallab expected the country not to oppose the US Roadmap when it was published, advising Palestinian organisations based in Damascus, particularly Hamas and Al-Jihad Al-Islami, to practice restraint and to review their strategies.
In his editorial on 25 April Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi Abdel-Bari Otwan blamed the Arab political, intellectual, economic and cultural elite for the defeats of the Arab world, "because most of them have allied with dictatorships and empires of corruption and despotism. These elites have sided with corruption and despotism for their own safety and benefits." Otwan attacked the "gloating" of some within the Arab press at the fall of Iraq, while saluting the steadfastness of the Iraqis in the face of aggression and occupation.
On 23 April, the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahali, mouthpiece of the Tagammu' Party, carried a long feature by Medhat El-Zahed asking various political analysts "What should Egypt do after the occupation of Iraq?" The answers differed from a call to focus on the Palestinian struggle to allowing the freedom of political parties and the press and abolishing the emergency laws in place in Egypt. Other analysts called for a comprehensive development effort in industry, agriculture and education, or, as Ahmed El-Naggar put it, "confronting America begins by confronting ourselves: we must have a battle against corruption."
ME AGAINST MY BROTHER: The challenges facing the Arab League and the furore surrounding the role of its Secretary-General Amr Moussa continued to reverberate in Egyptian and Arab newspapers this week.
In the independent Egyptian weekly Sawt Al- Umma Editor-in-Chief Adel Hammouda on 28 April described Moussa as a "super star in a time of collapse". He discussed the pros and cons behind the idea -- floated since the beginning of the US-led war on Iraq -- that the secretary-general ought to resign in protest at the Arab League's failure to deal with the conflict. Some -- in particular the head of the Kuwaiti parliament -- had thought Moussa should resign because of his pro- Iraqi, anti-war stance.
"All those who love Amr Moussa ask him to resign, but all those who love this nation more ask him to stay," Hammouda wrote, summarising his position, as well as that of countless others, in hoping that Moussa would complete his term in office. This would be a statement of Arab unity and an opportunity to reform the league and joint Arab political cooperation, he said.
Al-Arabi also rose to the defence of Moussa against the Kuwaiti attacks. The attacks, the newspaper explained, were not just directed at Moussa, but they were also directed at the league and at the Arabs in general. Having latched themselves to the American bandwagon, some in Kuwait felt they did not need the Arabs anymore, the newspaper said. The independent Egyptian weekly Al-Usbou' also came to Moussa's defence on 28 April, criticising other Egyptian newspapers for ignoring the attack on the secretary-general.
In Asharq Al-Awsat on 25 April, Tarrad bin Said Al-Umari seconded the call for Moussa's resignation and for the league's reform even as he asserted his respect for Moussa personally. The writer criticised the league for adopting tough political causes, such as the Palestinian cause, without being able to do anything to solve them, while ignoring economic, social and environmental issues of mutual concern.
Al-Umari suggested that the league be "frozen" for a period of two to three years while a new charter was drafted. He also questioned the need to have the league housed in Egypt. "When the league was established, Egypt was one of the richest Arab countries with administrative and political minds that other Arab countries lacked. But today things are different. Some of the smaller countries have graduates with higher degrees in strategic studies, political science, economics and modern management that surpass the expertise in some of the bigger Arab countries," he wrote. Furthermore, Cairo, with its large population and many visitors, was not the appropriate choice for the headquarters, given the political and security implications of Arab League meetings.
The fate of the league was also of concern to the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian newspaper Al- Wafd, Abbas El-Tarabili, in his editorial in this mouthpiece of the Al-Wafd Party on 24 April. He called for the reform and rejuvenation of the "League of Arab States," rather than its assassination, for it should be "the league of people not just states."
Dawoud Al-Shuryan in Al-Hayat on 27 April pointed to the fact that the Arabs tended to transcend the Arab League in times of crisis. The two main regional conferences held to discuss the Iraq conflict before and after the war had included some Arab states, in addition to Iran and Turkey, but the league itself had been absent. Nevertheless, the Arab world needed the league, Al- Shuryan argued, albeit in a reformed fashion. Challenges such as the occupation of Iraq, the changing concept of resistance, the fact that the interests of some Arab states coincided with those of Iran and Turkey, and that these interests collided with those of other Arab states, as well as the need to find a mechanism to deal with Israel after the establishment of a Palestinian state, all needed to be addressed in a flexible, transparent fashion, he argued. If not, the Arab League would face a slow death, and this should not be allowed to happen.
PACK OF CARDS: The whereabouts of the former Iraqi president continued to puzzle commentators this week, while not stopping them from attacking his legacy and despotic rule.
In Akhbar Al-Yom on 26 April, Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Se'da republished the introduction to a book he had written in 1991 outlining the atrocities committed by the Saddam regime and the incalculable suffering it had imposed on the Iraqi people. The essay read as if it had been written today, argued Se'da, proving that the Iraqi president had been incapable of learning any lessons.
The surrender of Tariq Aziz, former Iraqi foreign minister, to the US occupying forces in Iraq also spurred a number of articles and commentaries on this surrender and on that of other senior Iraqi officials. Al-Usbou' devoted a page on 28 April to theories surrounding Aziz's surrender, Mahmoud Bakri asking whether there had been "a negotiated deal with the US".
While Iraq remained the centre of attention in Egyptian and Arab newspapers this week, some of the limelight was also given to other hot topics of the day, finds Amina Elbendary
