Mid East & North Africa Observer

Davos 2012 - Al Arabiya - The Complications of the Arab Spring - YouTube

2012-01-28T16:49:00.001-05:00

Davos 2012 - Al Arabiya - The Complications of the Arab Spring - YouTube

2012-01-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

Davos 2012 - Al Arabiya - The Complications of the Arab Spring - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

Post-Arab spring talk

2011-10-27T21:41:00.001-04:00

Amidst the prolonged struggle to get rid of tyrants and establish democracy in the Middle East, sometimes I thought the Arabic spring was turning into a frosty fall. I love the fall especially in Vermont, but the change of seasons in the Arabic spring context could be very bad news for millions across the MENA region. Even if it is against the rule of the natural cycle, I want this spring to last for a while and inspire other springs around the globe. And I think it did already, right? How about Occupy Wall Street? Though there is no explicit connection between Occupy Wall Street and the Arabic Spring, I do think there are underlying causes that led to both. It is simply the masses rising against the dominating minority that controls everything. Anyways, back to the Middle East! As I watched Tunisians hitting the polls and freely selecting their representatives in the first free elections in the history of the country, my hope for change in the Middle East has been restored. There have been so many attempts to establish reliable democratic systems in the Arab world, but those attempts were aborted by the same people who spearheaded the liberation and democratization movements. So when I see something starting to lean towards those models I start to panic. Tunisia is where the Arabic uprising started and whatever happens there will affect what happens elsewhere in the Arab world. Morocco is trying to emulate the Tunisian model by holding legislative elections in November. I am not excited about the electoral outcome there. The same figures and rules that dominated the political game for decades are still in place. In Egypt, the situation got really scary at times as the country approached the civil war zone and the conflict between the military and the revolutionists almost got out of control. Now Egyptian political parties are marshaling their forces for parliamentary elections next month, the country's secularists have found themselves outmanned by Islamists whose political machines have been poised at the ready for generations. The Islamic movements in Egypt are expected to dominate the next elections, which is the worst nightmare of the current military leadership, the West and of course Israel for the obvious reasons. Speaking of Islamic movements in the Middle East, most of them gained a lot of leverage, even among the non-religious folks, thanks to the good reputation the Turkish Justice and Development Party gained in the region. This may seem a little off-beat at first, but not so much if you learn that polls across the Arab world placed Rejeb Tayeb Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, on the top. The efforts that Turkey made to enlarge its influence in the Middle East region, after it was unofficially denied membership in the European Union, have paid off. International relations experts call this Neo-Ottomanism. All in all, the next elections in the Arab world will produce governments dominated by parties with Islamic ideologies and are not necessarily anti-western. My next posts will be about something along those lines. Stay tuned!

Obama’s ratings plummet in Arab World (Poll)

2011-07-19T23:03:00.005-04:00

President Obama giving a speech in June 2009 in Cairo, Egypt to announce a new start for US Muslim relations

After the poor approval ratings Obama received in the recent polls on the domestic front, a poll conducted by James Zogby for the Arab American Institute Foundation found that the Perceptions of the U.S. and President Barack Obama have nosedived in the Arab World to levels lower than during the Bush administration, a remarkable reversal for Obama, who made a speech promising a new era of relations with the Arab world shortly after being elected. The response of the US government to the Arabic spring, the Palestinian Israeli conflict and the war in Iraq seem to be the main issues that negatively affected the opinion of people in the Arab world about Obama and the US.
In Saudi Arabia 30 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the United States, compared with 41 percent in 2009, while roughly 5 percent said the same in Egypt, down from 30 percent in 2009. In addition to Obama and the United States, the report has some interesting findings about the Arab world. You can find the full report below. Please use the tools at the bottom of the post for a better view of the report.

Obama Rating

Is Morocco a Dictatorship or a Democracy ( video presentation)

2011-07-17T11:29:00.000-04:00

The video below is a presentation by Ahmed Benchemsi in Oslo Freedom Forum about the Moroccan political system. This is a 19 minute presentation, but it is one of the best about political reforms in Morocco . It is in English too!

Here is a short biography of the speaker. I recommend you read it before watching the presentation.

Ahmed Benchemsi is a Moroccan journalist who was the founder, the publisher and editor of two best selling Moroccan weekly magazines TelQuel and Nishan. He is a graduate of the Sorbonne and the Institut d’Etude Politique in Paris where he respectively received an MA and MPhil in political science. Throughout his career, Benchemsi served as a correspondent and an editorialist for many international newspapers and magazines such as Jeune Afrique, Le Monde and the Guardian. After a long legal battle with the Moroccan authorities, he was forced to close his weekly magazines in Morocco, Nishan & TelQuel, and left Morocco for the United State where he became a researcher at Stanford University.

At the age of 22, Ahmed Benchemsi received the “investigative story award,” granted by Morocco’s journalists union. In 2005, he received in Brussels the Lorenzo Natali prize, granted by the European commission to "journalists who contribute to the cause of democracy”. In 2007, he received in Beirut the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, granted by the European Union. Under Benchemsi's supervision, many TelQuel and Nishan journalists received international awards, notably the RFI-Reporters without borders prize and the Press Now prize. Ahmed Benchemsi completed fellowships in Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times. He was a speaker in conferences around the world, especially in the Middle-East, Europe, the United States and India on freedom of speech in Morocco, Islam and Secularism.

For more information about Ahmed Benchemsi go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Benchemsi

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Oslo Freedom Forum is a prestigious human rights forum that hosts advocates for human rights, innovators, public intellectuals, and survivors of tyranny and oppression who share their stories and expertise in their respective fields. For more information go to http://www.oslofreedomforum.com/

Morocco: New Constitution Same Challenges (Part 2)

2011-07-16T00:02:00.000-04:00

I have been often asked about my opinion in the new constitution in Morocco, and my answer came as a surprise to many. While I realize how important a constitution is to build a real democracy, the problem in Morocco has never been purely constitutional. Lack of credibility and trust in the existing political and governmental institutions is the real problem. It is true that Morocco, by implementing constitutional reforms, introduced an alternative model to the bottom-up approach for political and social change as seen in Tunisia and Egypt, but many people in Morocco, myself included, are skeptical about the prospects of the proposed reforms. Had Morocco adopted the most progressive constitution in the world, my skepticism would remain the same simply because I don’t think the problem is constitutional. Currently Morocco has a parliament with two houses, a “seemingly” independent judiciary, a prime minister from the party that received the majority of votes in the last legislative elections and more than 30 political parties. While all these democratic-looking institutions are in place, they are dysfunctional and their work is characterized by lack of transparency. Additionally, these institutions are not held accountable by citizens, so the majority of Moroccans have very little support for them. The old constitution has never been a document of reference for the work of the government or any other entity, and many Moroccans even forgot they have a constitution. So now Morocco has a new constitution which is supposed to be implemented and respected by the same people who used to ignore it and even openly violate it... as recent as last month (before July 1).

There are councils and committees for all funcions of the Moroccan government, including human rights, women, environment, children, animals, sustainable development, renewable energy and all kind of good-sounding words one could possibly imagine, but they all lack one thing: credibility. Most Moroccans don’t even know that some of these institutions exist because many of them are used as marketing tools to show the outside world an image of Morocco that locals don’t even recognize because it is so far removed from their daily reality. Speaking of credibility, the Moroccan government claims that the unemployment rate is 9.8, compared to 9.1 in the US and 9.8 in France. If you see daily protests of thousands of unemployed doctors, PhD and master degree holders in a country with around 40% illiteracy rate you would question the government statistics. Two days ago, scores of unemployed citizens besieged the headquarters of the ruling party, the Independence Party, and asked to negotiate directly with the prime minister because the government didn’t honor an earlier agreement to start integrating some of the unemployed in the public sector if they meet certain criteria.

Unemployed university graduates besieging the headquarters of the Independence Party, ruling party in Morocco, to demand jobs in public sector

While the debate about political reforms is intensifying in Morocco, hundreds of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are still detained in prisons some of them without a trial since 2003, following the suicide attacks in Casablanca. In the peak of Arabic revolutions and protests in Morocco, a prominent journalist, Rachid Nini, was sentenced to one year in prison because he wrote in his daily editorial that the Moroccan intelligence services should be monitored by the parliament.

The irony in Morocco is that the striking majority of Moroccans support the king but have very little respect for the government of his majesty and some of his entourage, like his secretary; Mounir El Majdi and Fouad Al Al-Hima, the king’s childhood friend. The latter was the direct target of pro-democracy protestors for spoiling the democratic transition in Morocco, by establishing a political party and using the name of the king as leverage to recruit members and intimidate opponents.

A poster asking for the release of the emprisnned journalist, Rachid Nini

The new constitutional reforms will be significant only if the Moroccan government takes serious steps to establish legitimacy and build people's confidence in the existing institutions by involving civil society in national debates, establishing checks and balances in the branches of government and freeing political prisoners. Many politicians in Morocco argue that the political reforms are more advanced than what the political elite can handle; therefore, the reform has to be gradual to allow political parties to mature to cope with the changing political environment, which seems to me like a malicious excuse to delay much needed political reforms in the Norther African kingrdom.

(to be continued)

Morocco: New Constitution Same Challenges (Part 1)

2011-07-10T14:06:00.001-04:00

20 Fevrier activists protesting in Morocco, a youth movement that spearheaded anti-government, anti-corruption protests in Morocco

It's a bit ironic that I haven't posted anything about Morocco, my birth country, while writing about many ongoing events in the Middle East. This is not by any means an attempt to downplay the significance of the current events in the North African kingdom, which were inspired by the "Arabic Spring", but rather this was due to the ambiguity of political change in Morocco. After the eruption of the recent protests in Morocco, there was a big confusion and division among pro-democracy protestors and the political elite as to what needs to be changed and who is to blame for the current economic and political stagnation in the country. So I took some time to monitor the ongoing debate and gather my thoughts. Now that my understanding is clearer, I have formulated some opinions that I would like to share in the next posts.
Here is the chain of events that led to the constitutional reform in Morocco on July 1st, 2011.

Like other Arab countries, Morocco had its share of demonstrations asking for reforms that started on Facebook and ended in the streets on February 20 which witnessed the birth of a youth movement bearing the same name "20 Fevrier." The frequency and the scale of protests were shocking to most Moroccans, myself included, because they were unprecedented in the recent history of Morocco. On March 9 the Moroccan monarch, Mohammed VI, gave a historic speech in which he promised wide constitutional reforms. The King appointed a committee to draft a new constitution that will limit the powers of the king and guarantee the separation of the three branches of government, legislative, executive and the judiciary in the kingdom with the longest-serving monarchy in Africa. The "20 Fevrier" movement wasn't pleased with the king's appointment, and they criticized the methodology and the exclusive deliberation process the committee used to review the current constitution. Meanwhile Moroccan streets were flooded by pro-democracy protesters and debates intensified in public media and online forums about the content of the new constitution and the powers of the king. The question that was in the mind of many Moroccan was; how much power was the monarch willing to relinquish with his promised reforms?

King Mohammed VI (middle), his son Prince Moulay Hassan (left) and his brother Prince Moulay Rashid (right) standing for the national anthem before the historic speech of March 7, promissing to give up some of his powers to a democratically elected government

The answer came four months later, on June 15, when the King gave a long-awaited speech about the new constitutional reforms. The constitutional reforms the king outlined in his speech didn’t meet the minimum expectations of the pro-democracy activists who labeled the proposed draft “a semantic face-lift of the previous constitution”. The points of contention between the 20 Feverier activists and the Moroccan authorities remained unresolved. The protestors expected that the prime minister would be promoted to the rank of the head of the executive branch, which didn’t happen according to them. According to the new draft of the constitution, the king is to choose the head of the government in the party that comes out on top in the legislative elections; however, he can still appoint or dismiss ministers at will. The draft suggests that the king may "consult" the chief of the government before such decisions are made, but nothing requires him to act upon that advice. The constitutional reforms also allows the king to reshuffle or sack the whole cabinet, declare a state of emergency and rule by decree, all of which are vehemently opposed by the 20 Fevrier activists. The prime minister may dissolve parliament, but this is subject to the approval of the Ministerial Council, a body chaired by the king, with a veto power over all decisions made by the Government's Council. Furthermore, the 20 Fevrier activists are opposed to the idea of the king presiding over the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, the Supreme Security Council, the Higher Council of Ulema (the highest religious authority with the power to issue religious edicts, or fatwas), and the role of the king as a Commander in Chief of the Royal Armed Forces.

The proposed constitution was put to popular vote on July 1, 15 days after announcing the draft, which irked many pro-democracy activists who thought two weeks are not enough to discuss and explain the implications of the new constitution to citizens. The 20 Fevrier movement ended up boycotting the constitutional referendum which received a remarkable 98.5% approval rate. While many Western countries, including the United States, congratulated the Moroccan king on the new constitutional reforms, the 20 Fevrier movement took to the street to protest the new constitution, which they describe as “imposed.”

Please read about my opinion in the new constitution and learn more about Morocco after reforms in the next post ( Wed, Jul 13).

Bin Laden and Arabic Revolution: State Department

2011-06-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

This is the latest video posted by the State Department to keep up with the Middle Eastern revolutions. I am not sure what message the State Department was trying to send to people in the Arab world by posting this video, but whatever that message is it wasn't well received or welcomed by the Arab online community. This video was widely circulated in Middle Eastern blogs and forums, and this is why I thought it would be interesting to share it with the readers of my blog. Most of the comments I read were sarcastic remarks about how the American government links everything that happens in the Arab world to Bin Laden even after his death.

Translation of the Arabic text in the video.

Line 1: "Arab peoples were revolting...."
Line 2: "But there was one puzzling question...."
Line 3: "Where was Osama Bin Laden?"
Crowd shouting "the people want to topple the regime"

PS: The State Department has a youtube channel in Arabic to communicate the vision of the US government to people in the Arab world. The channel has 1028000 videos, 354 subscribers and 38544 views ( as of 6/11/11). More details here.

www.youtube.com/user/StateDepartment

Showdown in Morocco | The Middle East Channel

2011-05-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

Showdown in Morocco | The Middle East Channel

Thoughts about Osama & Obama

2011-05-21T16:58:00.000-04:00

Note: As events unfold in the Middle East and North Africa, my attempts to write and comments on these events have been challenged due to the interconnectivity of these events and the time they require to unravel their implications on one hand, and the shortage of blogging time, dictated by my work and other life commitments on the other hand. For that, I extend my apology to my friends and readers everywhere for the irregularity of my postings.

Let’s start with Osama:

Last time I promised to discuss the assassination of Osama Bin Laden unless something more significant happens. Certainly, Obama’s speech about the US foreign policy is an important event that has temporarily overshadowed the assassination of the mastermind of Al Qaeda, due to its long term implications. Before discussing Obama’s speech, I would like to briefly point out few things concerning Osama's death. Enough has been written and said about the rise and fall of Bin Laden, so I am not going to discuss his notoriety or assassination, rather I would like to respond to a widespread statement made by top America political analysts on national news media about the symbolism of Bin Laden’s death in relation to the Arabic uprisings. These analysts stated that “the death of Bin Laden marks the beginning of an era when people in the Arab world could achieve their freedom and dignity by using peaceful means instead of violence and terror.” I wouldn’t have commented on this statement if it wasn’t linked to the death of Osama Bin Laden. As well-intentioned as this statement sounds, it is based on some dangerous implications. Firstly, not only this statement implies that Arabs have been violent to demand their freedoms, but also it suggests that Bin Laden was using terror to defend freedoms in the Arab world, and when he was chased and assassinated people in the Middle East switched to peaceful means. No one would disagree with the fact that Osama’s agenda was antithetical to anything that revolutionists in the Arab world are demanding now, except ousting pro-western dictators, something Osama has always advocated for and praised in the tapes found in his complex after his assassination. Arab youth are asking for jobs, social equality, democracy and justice, including equality between men and women. Obviously this was Osama’s nightmare, because his goal was the exact opposite of this.

Secondly, this statement implies that Osama Bin Laden was supported and somehow “appointed” by Arabs and Muslims to speak and use terror in their name to defend them against the brutality of their dictators and the self-centered policies and interventions of Western countries in the region. I lived in a Muslim country for more than 20 years, and I haven’t met one Muslim or Arab who supports the Agenda of Osama Bin Laden and his plots to kill innocent civilians. True, many of the things that Osama was demanding such as ousting of dictators and stopping the Western intervention in Muslim countries, aligned with the demands of public opinion in many countries in the region, but it was part of Bin Laden’s tactic to echo these demands and dictate how they should be achieved to make himself look like a defender of the oppressed, and thus, populate his training camps.

On the other hand, I met many Arabs and Muslims who believe that Osama Bin Laden is America’s problem. One fact that has always been overlooked by American media is that Osama Bin Laden started wearing his camouflage-print jacket and carrying his Kalashnikov in 1984, when he was sponsored by the CIA and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to launch Jihad against the Soviets. Bin Laden didn’t show up out of nowhere in 2001, as the media is trying to portray. If there is any symbolism to Osama’s death, then it is the fact that he, either directly or indirectly, reshaped international relations as we know them. No one can deny that Bin Laden, and his network have been one of the most influential non-state actors in the international arena for the last ten years. The influence of Al Qaeda didn’t only reshape international relations, but it has also affected the lifestyles of millions around the world. For people in the Middle East and North Africa, the death of Bin Laden holds a special symbolism because they are finally liberated from the “eternal sin” of having to pay the price for Bin Laden’s misconduct in the world simply because they happen to share the same religion and ethnicity.

Thoughts about Obama’s foreign policy speech next.

Libya: New Strategy

2011-05-05T19:11:00.000-04:00

Since my last post two weeks ago so much has happened, and it has become extremely overwhelming to keep up with world news, especially those coming from the Near East. All the events that we have been witnessing suggest that the wheel of history is spinning at a faster pace. Whether we realize it or not, we are witnessing history in the making. In this post I will focus on the situation in Libya in the light of an event that went slightly unnoticed; that is the assassination of Gadafi’s son Saif Al-Arab and three of Gaddafi’s grand children by the NATO forces. This incident indicates a major shift in the NATO’s strategy in handling the crisis in Libya.

The NATO and Western countries want to send a message to Gaddafi that there is no way back and there is no way out except stepping down. So far Gaddafi has kept a soft tone dealing with Western powers regardless of the air strikes against his militias, while stepping up the fight against the opposition and the rebels. It seems that Gaddafi learned that turning against the West could bring his reign to an end. NATO is taking the war against Gaddafi to a whole new level by pushing him to the edge, and assassinating his son Saif Al-Arab last Saturday April 30 is part of the new strategy. The success of the NATO forces and Libyan opposition is if Gaddafi reacts violently against Western interests within Libya or in the broader region. This will justify direct military intervention by the NATO and the United States, a situation Gaddafi is trying to avoid. After the assassination of Saif Al-Arab, the spokesman of the Libyan government Moussa Ibrahim stated that there is still hope for a political resolution of the conflict, and Gaddafi declared on state television that he is not leaving his country and he will not be forced to do so. Gaddafi and his regime know what NATO and the opposition want him to do, and he is far from making their wish come true. Here is an array of possible scenarios that are likely to take pace in Libya.

In my opinion, there will be no political resolution to this conflict involving Gaddafi or anyone from his family or entourage for two reasons. Historically, no world leader who has been disavowed by the international community to this extent was able to make a comeback. Domestically, too much Libyan blood has been shed by Gaddafi militias, and taking into consideration the tribal nature of the Libyan society, such atrocities will not go unpunished. Since the coup d’état that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969, Libya hasn’t had a real civil society, because Gaddafi wanted to sustain the tribal culture to extend his control over the country and not allow any civic or non-governmental structure or entity to develop within Libya to challenge or hold him accountable. This very tribal culture that Gaddafi sustained over the years is now playing somehow against him. At the beginning of the Libyan uprising, Libyan youth were asking for freedom, now they are going after freedom and Gaddafi’s head.

Another important variable that should be taken into consideration is the fact that Gaddafi will not leave Libya dead or alive. Gaddafi comes from a military background, just like Mubarak and Saddam, and he will not accept to live in Exile. The most likely scenario in my opinion is that Gaddafi will be targeted by the NATO forces to try to assassinate him, and they have already started heading in this direction. “Cutting the head of the snake” policy seems to be the new imminent strategy that NATO is and will try to carry out in Libya, after it has been tested successfully in Cote d’Ivoire when French troops captured Laurent Gbagbo after refusing to leave office following his defeat against Alassane Ouatara in presidential elections, which prevented a bloody civil war in the country. The situation in Libya is more complicated than Cote d’Ivoire, because the snake has many heads. Gaddafi’s sons, Saif- Al-Islam and Al-Mou’tasim are the strong men of the Gaddafi regime. Al-Moatassim is the president of Libya’s Security Council, and Saif is the second most important figure in Libya after Gaddafi. The NATO is aware that assassinating the father and leaving the sons free could set Libya and the whole region in fire. The other scenario that may take place in Libya is a long term civil war. This is the best case scenario for Gaddafi because the rebels will not be asking for his head anymore, instead they will be busy fighting other tribes, and he will get away with staying in power for few more years. Obviously, the NATO and the United States will not allow this to happen because they won’t keep wasting their resources on rebels if there is no end in sight and no promising payback. According to a report published by Agence France Press (AFP), the US Air Force spent $4 million a day during the first airstrikes at the beginning of the crisis. Even with the NATO involvement, the US still spends $40 million a month on the war in Libya according to the same source. As the debate about cutting national budget intensifies in the US and other European countries, especially the UK, these countries will not allow the Libyan crisis to go any further. The Libyan rebels can’t survive for a day without the support of the West and the air cover of the NATO. Therefore, we should see lots of action in the days to come to bring this crisis to an end.

The last resort scenario is a long term truce between Gaddafi and the opposition with oil embargo and strict international sanctions imposed on Tripoli just like the Iraqi scenario in 90’s. This is a very unlikely due to all the above-mentioned reasons. We won’t have to wait for long to see which of these scenarios will take place. These are just few pointers that crossed my mind, and wanted to share with the readers of my blog. Your thoughts are always welcome.

My next post will be about the assassination of Osama Ben Laden unless something more significant happens between and now and then.

Mass Bullying

2011-04-16T08:47:00.000-04:00

If you are someone who follows news media, you may wonder sometimes why people are so umbrageous in the Arab world. All you see these days is crowds burning photos of their rulers and calling for their government to be ousted. When you see this happening in more than 10 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, a curious mind would ask the banal question; what's going on? I was planning to discuss mass bullying as experienced by people in the MENA region on a daily basis, but I learned that my college friend, Zainab Al Khawaja, is on hunger strike to protest the illegal arrest of her father Abdelhadi Al Khawaja. This is someone I know very well, and to see her on hunger strike saddens me, so I felt compelled to share her story and the suffering of the Bahraini people. Zainab comes from a family known for their human right activism for decades. Her father, Abdelhadi Al Khawaja, a prominent human rights activist in Bahrain, is currently in captivity. He was beaten up by masked men, Bahraini special forces, and aggressively kidnapped from his apartment and his whereabouts is still unknown. Zainab is on her 5 day of hunger strike (at the time of writing this post) and she has a 18-month daughter who she said she would leave with family if she dies. Zainab lived in exile in Denmark for 18 years because of her father's human rights activism. Today I am going to use the case of Bahrain to discuss the idea of mass bullying and how a whole nation is suppressed to preserve and protect the ruling elite, a family in this case. Here is some background information about Bahrain. More than 80% of Bahrainis follow a branch of Islam called "Shi'ia" or chi'isim, which is the Iranian version of Islam, on the other hand Al Khalifas, the ruling family follow Sunni Islam, the Saudi version of Islam. Currently more than half of the cabinet ministers in Bahrain are from Al Khalifa family. The people of Bahrain are deprived of basic human rights like adequate representation in the government, freedom of expression and employment opportunities . The people of Bahrain are caught in the middle of major regional and international conflicts of interests. Bahrain is the epicenter of the conflict between the sunni Saudi Arabia, which supports the ruling family, and the shiite Iran which has historic and religious ties with the people of Bahrian. The US has its 5th fleet in Bahrain, so they have been supportive of the ruling family to counter the influence of Iran in the country and the Gulf. Most Bahraini human rights activists distance themselves from Iran, and they constantly reiterate that their goal is to defend the rights of the Bahraini people not to import the Iranian Islamic revolution to Bahrain. Al Khalifa's use Iran as a boogeyman to suppress their people and gain the support of the West. Video Footages and pictures of security forces using live ammunition to target peaceful demonstrations have been seen by millions around the world, but no significant support has been given to these human right activists. All revolutions and uprisings in the MENA region have gained traction due to the foreign support, but this is not the case in Bahrain. Whenever the Bahraini revolution and human activists are mentioned in Western media they are associated with Iran to discredit their pursuit of freedom and civil liberties. News media fail to show the world the suffering of the Bahraini citizens who are killed, tortured and humiliated in their own country on a daily basis under the watch of the whole world. Here is a hypothetical analogy that would best explain this situation in Bahrain to an average American. Imagine a Mexican family( nothing against Mexicans) ruling the United States and the members of that family dominate all branches of government ( legislative, excutive and judiciary). The majority of Americans will be at rage because Mexicans are placed in higher ranks of government and have the good jobs. Average Americans are not happy with this injustice, so they start demonstrating against this tyranny. The Mexican ruling family has no support at home, so they invite Mexican troops, from Mexico, to come to the US to suppress and shoot at peaceful demonstrators. This sounds so grotesque and surreal, but this is exactly the situation in Bahrain. You've got a ruling family from the minority using Saudi and UAE troops to suppress and kill Bahraini citizens. Now when you see rage and mass demonstrations in Bahrain you know where it is coming from. There was an uproar in the international media about the atrocities of Gadafi in Libya, but not the same focus and attention were given to the situation in Bahrain. Why? I am certain the answers lay in the reasons I mentioned above. Here is an unfortunate fact when it comes to international relations, it is not about justice or ethics but vital interest of powerful players. I don't want to turn this post into international relations 101, but if you want to find out more about this, just type realism in international relations theory in any search engine and you will see what I am referring to. I am not an advocate of conspiracy theories, but it feels that there is something fishy happening here. This is mass bullying in its worst forms. Please use the links below to support Zainab and learn more about the suffering of the Bahraini people. Your opinions and thoughts are always appreciated. Thank you for reading and watch out for my next post.

Read more about Zainab's hunger strike in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/13/bahraini-woman-willing-to-die

Zainab is documenting her hunger strike on twitter. Please follow her @angryarabiya

Sign a petition to support women human rights activists in Bahrain.

http://www.change.org/petitions/solidarity-with-bahraini-pro-democracy-women-and-condemnation-of-violence

Read more about Zainab's hunger strike and the situation in Bahrain on CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/04/16/bahrain.hunger.strike/

Thank you for your support.

Arabic Revolution: Tales Beyond the Mainstream Media.

2011-03-28T22:40:00.000-04:00

In my wildest dream, I wouldn't have thought that events in the Middle & North Africa could take this turn and escalate to the level of a cross-continental revolution. Before January 2011, just hinting to the word would have led to long term service in the penitentiary, torture or even the gallows. We owe it all to a 26 year old street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia who sets himself and the Arab dictatorships in fire. My point is not to narrate what happened because there is an abundance of resources about this out there, but rather I want to analyse the significance of what happened from the eye of someone who lived, and thus, somehow acquainted with the socio-economic environment where the Jasmine Tunisian revolution started. I am hoping to share a more realistic personal perspective about what instigated the revolution in the Arab world different from what has been presented to us in the mainstream media. I was watching news reports from the Middle East after the fall of Mubarak and one question kept coming up; why did the world fail to predict what was happening in the region. The straightforward answer is they either ignored or misinterpreted the symptoms, which were obvious and felt by millions in that region. Well, now that it is happening it is time for know-it-all pundits and media connoisseurs to tell us why all this is taking place. After all, it is always easier to explain and describe a phenomenon than trying to predict it. Some arguments presented about the causes of the revolution were good and some were not, but I find most of the explanations given somewhat esoteric and not attempting to reflect the personal, realistic perspective of the people in the region. Ask anyone in the whole Middle East & North Africa region (MENA) why they revolted and you will unanimously hear the same answer: BECAUSE OF BULLYING & HUMILIATION. This may sound surprising especially to those who haven't experienced these two in their life on a massive societal scale. Please read my next post, entitled Mass Bullying, to see what forms of humiliation that people in the Arab world have endured for so long. I am hoping to finish it by April 15th. See you soon.