Libya, a U.S. Client is a Mess Whose Anarchy Subverts the Region

By Barry Rubin

 In August 2011, 18 months ago, the regime of Muammar al-Qadhafi was overthrown. Qadhafi was a terrible dictator; he was overthrown only due to heavy NATO involvement in the revolt, including engagement in direct aerial attacks on government positions.

Under Qadhafi, Libya often subverted the Middle East and Africa because the dictator wanted to do so. Now, Libya subverts the Middle East and Africa through his successor’s inaction.

Given Qadhafi’s long, repressive rule and Libya’s lack of democratic development, the new government, installed by the United States and certified in October 2012 election, faced a tough task. At least, though, it has access to massive oil income. How well has it done?

Certainly, it is a moderate regime that seems well-intentioned. But getting control over such a turbulent country with so many arms, militias, radical Islamists, and regional disputes is difficult. Libya is also a U.S. client and scene of the September 11, 2012, attack—much of which remains mysterious—that killed four American officials.

There is no evidence that the Obama Administration has made a serious effort to investigate this attack or to bring the perpetrators to justice. In normal times, this would be shocking and a major focus of mass media coverage and political debate on a daily basis. Yet this has not happened.

Moreover, since it installed the Libyan government, nominally to protect human rights there, the United States has some responsibility for its conduct. The fact is that the Obama Administration has far more leverage over the Libyan government than it does over counterparts in Iraq or Afghanistan, when there was the massive, long-term presence of U.S. troops.

Apparently, the main uses to which the U.S. government has put its client in Libya is to contribute large sums to the (Muslim Brotherhood-dominated) Syrian opposition group abroad and to permit arms smuggling to it (though perhaps the government was helpless to stop it).

A March 14, 2013, UN Security Council resolution 10939, based on a report by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), evaluates the situation in Libya. Despite official optimism in its text, and sympathy for the difficulty of the Libyan government’s task, the conclusion is a clear one: Things are not going well.

Here is what the detailed report of the UNSMIL head, Tarek Mitri, said.  While his report praised the Libyan leadership’s efforts, he noted that there is still no constitution drawn up by the elected General National Congress. A report done by experts for the UN stated:

The National Transitional Council’s control has remained conditional, a product of continual negotiation with autonomous militia and local councils.

--A March 5 session of the Congress was disrupted by protestors threatening to use force to stop passage of legislation.

--There was an attempt to assassinate President el-Magariaf.

--A report by experts for the UN Security Council concluded: "While a national army exists, the majority of military power rests with various militias, mostly associated with local councils." These militias are largely radical Islamists and one of them was responsible for the murder of the four Americans. So one reason that the U.S. client regime in Libya cannot investigate the murder of U.S. officials is that the same regime is dependent on the murderers, both directly and through the support that militia receives through its colleagues and the Benghazi city council.

--The Al-Assima television station was stormed by armed men, kidnapping the director and five of his staff, though they were later released.

--There was an attack on a church in Benghazi and other Christian targets.

--“Significant progress was hampered by weak State institutions and security coordination mechanisms, as well as continuing mistrust of the State’s security forces by many of those who fought during the revolution, most of whom remained armed.”

--“Libya remained awash with unsecured weapons and munitions, which posed a regional security risk given Libya’s porous borders.”

--Many prisoners from the civil war were still being held by militias in private and secret facilities, in effect as hostages.

--The country’s government still doesn’t have control over the eastern and southern areas of the country allowing for cross-border attacks against neighbors.

--The Security Resolution expressed, “Grave concern at continuing reports of reprisals, arbitrary detentions without access to due process, wrongful imprisonment, mistreatment, torture and extrajudicial executions in Libya.”

--Egyptian Christian workers in Libya have been arrested and mistreated, apparently purely on a religious basis. African migrants within Libya have been seriously mistreated, apparently purely on a racial basis.

--At the earliest, work would only begin on the new constitution in the fall of 2013 and who knows when it will be adopted?

--In a remarkable use of diplomatic optimism, Mitri concluded that the government is “dealing with political isolation with wisdom and alertness.”

According to the Final report of the UN Security Council Panel of Experts for 2013, here is what’s happening with Libyan weaponry:

--Egypt is facing threats to its national security by the increased arming of [Islamist] terrorist , criminal, and anti-government groups, mostly in the Sinai but also throughout the country.

--Weapons also go through Egypt to the Gaza Strip where it reaches Hamas to use against Israel. An October 2012 military parade there displayed such acquisitions as the Belgian-made F2000 and Russian-made AK-103 assault rifles.

--Syrian rebels have received arms through Turkey. The UN panel saw both SA-24 and SA-7b MANPADS intercepted on a boarded ship as well as anti-tank missiles (Metis-M, Konkurs-M and MILAN) and a variety of other weapons and ammunition. Here's a good article on Libya's Sa-24s and why they were not previously known to be in Libyan arsenals.

Other countries affected were Mali, the Niger, and to a lesser extent Chad and Mauritania where fragile states are shaken by terrorism and criminal activity using these weapons. Al-Qaida in North Africa and Boko Haram in Nigeria have also obtained additional weapons for their terrorist activities.

This is a description of an anarchic mess. It is important for U.S. interests especially regarding Libya’s role as an arsenal for terrorist and insurgent groups. The trouble, however, is that the Obama Administration wants most of these arms to go to most of these groups. The other reason for Libya’s importance is that there is no progress being made on the Benghazi attacks on Americans. But perhaps the Obama Administration wants no progress on investigations of this incident.

This article is published in PJMedia.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

The Middle East's Main Battle is Among Muslims, Sunni vs. Shia; Arabs vs. Persians

By Barry Rubin

The Arab-Israeli conflict has been largely replaced by the Sunni Muslim-Shia Muslim conflict as the Middle East’s featured battle. While the Arab-Israeli conflict will remain largely, though not always, one of words, the Sunni-Shia battle involves multiple fronts and serious bloodshed.

Shia Muslims are a majority in Iran and Bahrain; the largest single group in Lebanon; and significant minorities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. While the ruling Alawite minority in Syria is not Shia—as almost all Sunni Muslims (but not Westerners) know, it has identified with that bloc.

The main conflict in this confrontation is in Syria, where a Sunni rebellion is likely to triumph and produce a strongly anti-Shia regime. A great deal of blood has been shed in Iraq, though there the Shia have triumphed politically.

The tension is already spreading to Lebanon, ruled largely by Shia Hizballah. In Bahrain, where a small Sunni minority rules a restive Shia majority, the government has just outlawed Hizballah as a terrorist, subversive group, even while European states have refused to do so.

By Islamizing politics to a greater degree, the victories of the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood group have deepened the Sunni-Shia battle. And, of course, on the other side, Iran, as leader of the Shia bloc, has been doing so, too, though its ambition was to be the leader of all Middle East Muslims.

Yet also, especially when it comes to Iran, the Sunni Muslim bloc is also very much an Arab one as well. Many Sunnis, especially the more militantly Islamist ones, look at Shias—and especially at Iranian Persians—as inferior people as well as heretical in terms of Islam. I don’t want to overstate that point but it is a very real factor.

This picture is clarified by a recent report by the Cordoba Foundation, a research center based in the UK and close to the Muslim Brotherhood. The name, after the Spanish city where Islamic religion and culture flourished before the Christian reconquest in the fifteenth century, may seem chosen to denote multiculturalism and peaceful coexistence. But, of course, it was picked to suggest the Islamic empire at its peak and the continued claim to every country it once ruled, including Spain.

The report is entitled Arab and Muslim National Security: Debating the Iranian Dimension and summarizes discussions among “a group of prominent and influential Islamic figures,” though no names of participants are included. The focus was to define and warn about the Shia and Iranian threat to the Sunnis and Arabs.

In the report, Iran is identified as the aggressor against the Sunni Muslim (Arab) world, pushing “its political influence through religious sectarianism.” Implicitly the discussion rejects the idea that either “the Palestinian issue” or unity as Muslims overrides the Iranian national security threat.

One concern is that of demography. ”Such demographic pockets [that is, non-Sunni Muslims and non-Arabs--BR] in some Arab countries pose a threat to society regardless of how small they are.”

Remarkably, the paper states that Iraq’s population changes “have distanced it from the Arab order.” In other words, because there are more Shia Muslims and non-Arab Kurds in Iraq, it is out of phase with other Arab states and might look toward either Tehran or Washington.

Another demographic concern is Iran’s alleged effort to convert non-Muslim Alevis in Turkey (they say they are Muslim but they aren’t really); Syrian Alawites (same story), and Yemeni Shia Muslims (of a different sect) to Iran-style Shia Islam (Twelver Shiism).

Iran has also succeeded, the paper continues, “in securing strategic victories, such as its gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bahrain, Yemen, and the eastern parts of Saudi Arabia. Actually, though these are pretty limited gains in each case.

Syria, where the pro-Iran regime is likely to be replaced by a Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood one, is a setback for Iran. And by overthrowing Syria’s regime, the sponsor of Hizballah, that will cut Iran’s sponsorship of Lebanese Shia (Hizballah), “almost thirty years of hard work totally wasted.” That’s overstated but contains some basic truth.

The paper also states, accurately, “Although Islamic movements in the Arab world may seem on the surface to be homogenous and inspired by the same intellectual sources, there is lack of coordination and total chaos.” As an example it cites the Sunni Islamist movement in Iraq which faces: “Serious challenges from expanding Turkish economic interests, Iranian cultural and sectarian influence, and Kurdish expansionism.” It then asks whether the Iranian and local Shia or the Iraqi Kurds are the bigger threat.

Usually, the paper explains, the main threats are identified as the United States and Israel. Israel “still lives in the Arab consciousness as the biggest threat to Arab Islamic culture.”

Two points here. On the one hand, a group of leading Sunni Islamists is saying that Israel is not the biggest security threat to Arabs and Muslims today! On the other hand, Israel is identified as a cultural threat. Why? Because it is a socio-economic success story and thus subverts the narrative of Arab ethnic, cultural, and religious superiority or because it is a symbol of modernism?

But here’s the key conclusion:

“Prior to the Syrian revolution, there was no consensus on what constitutes the greatest threat to our national security, but it has since become evident that the Iranian threat is much bigger than American and Israeli threats.”

This is an intellectual-political earthquake in Middle East history. It in no way implies a friendly attitude toward America or Israel--which are still seen as threats--but it is an important factor to consider in Western policymaking.

One reason why Iran is such a huge threat, the paper continues, is that all Arabs and Muslims know about the United States. But Iran operates from the “inside” and in a “hidden” manner because it seems to be Muslim, Third World, anti-American, and anti-Israel. So it can fool Sunni Arab Muslims, stab them in the back, alter their culture, and take over institutions.

Thus, in Iraq, “Iran invested a lot of money and effort destroying Iraq from within through bribery and purchasing loyalties.” Of course, the real problem for the Sunni Arab Islamist movement in Iraq is that the majority of people are either Shia Muslims or Kurds who, while Sunni Muslim, have their own nationalist identity.

The paper is equally tough on Turkey, despite that country’s regime wanting to lead the Arab Sunnis. But while it is an economic threat, it doesn’t have much political or strategic leverage and is at least not trying to alter Sunni religion and culture.

While giving passing mention to the concept that Iran is merely aggressive because it has been fooled by American imperialism, the Sunni Arab Islamists claim that Iran often acts in conjunction with U.S. policy. Although you may find this idea to be strange, remember that Tehran did go along with U.S. operations against Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks which removed two of Iran’s Sunni enemies.

They conclude, “We no longer have any choice but to defend ourselves against Iran,” which holds “a sectarian, ethnic, Persian agenda.”

While the paper claims that “The United States…actually handed over Iraq to Iran and allowed it to expand into Syria,” the fact is that the West has in effect backed Sunni Islamist control over Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria. This shows, however, that the Sunni Islamists will never credit—they cannot do so ideologically—any U.S. help they receive, much less reciprocate.

What this means is that a Sunni Islamist bloc now confronts a Shia Islamist bloc. Both accuse, with some basis, the United States of supporting their enemy. The question for Western policymakers should be not to take sides—“good” Islamists against “bad” Islamists—but how to use and enhance this conflict. The worst temptation is to believe that putting one side into power--in other words, Sunni Islamists because they may hate Iran--will counter the other.

Today, aside from the undoubtedly important nuclear weapons' issue, the main strategic threat in the Middle East is Sunni Islamism. Why? Simple. Iran cannot expand its influence successfully into Sunni Muslim majority areas yet the Arab world is overwhelmingly Sunni. Iran cannot win. Only Sunni Islamism can generate new dictatorships, repression, and conventional wars.

If you are interested in reading more about the Arab-Israeli conflict, current regional situation you're welcome to read my book Tragedy of the Middle East online or download it for free.

And here's a graphic video of what Sunni Muslims in Syria think of Iran and the Shia. For a full explanation check out the brilliant Dr. Martin Kramer's analysis of the video here.

Please be subscriber 31,373 (among more than 50,000 total readers). Put email address in upper right-hand box: http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

We’d love to have your support and work hard to earn it. See our new feature with 13 free books at http://www.gloria-center.org. Why not make a tax-deductible donation to the GLORIA Center by PayPal: click here.

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For tax-deductible donations in Canada and the UK, write us here.

--------------------

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

By Their Predictions Shall You Know Them

By Barry Rubin

"One wonders why this group, reputed to have more insight than the man in the street, needed such brutal shocks before they could recognize the true nature of the system and perceive what a simple peasant or train conductor had known for years."

--Miklos Molnar, 1956, on the failure of the Hungarian intelligentsia to denounce the repressive Communist regime.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has resigned once again. What's news, however, is that PA "President" Mahmoud Abbas has accepted it. While it's hard to believe that Fayyad will finally be ousted--the Western donors want him in power--the continuing frustrations of the only honest and relatively moderate Palestinian official shows that the PA has made no progress toward moderation, state-building, or real economic success. This is despite what might be the highest per capita foreign aid in world history. It also sheds new light on what often seems to be the world's best-kept secret: The Palestinian leadership doesn't want a peaceful solution with Israel.

In June 2010--almost three years ago--Tom Friedman wrote a column called "The Real Palestinian Revolution in which he said:

“It is a revolution based on building Palestinian capacity and institutions not just resisting Israeli occupation, on the theory that if the Palestinians can build a real economy, a professional security force and an effective, transparent government bureaucracy it will eventually become impossible for Israel to deny the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem....It is the only hope left, though, for a two-state solution, so it needs to be quietly supported.”

Well, almost three years later, there is no real Palestinian economy but only one still dependent on foreign aid. There has been no progress toward a professional security force or an effective government bureaucracy. The only thing that's happened is that without doing any of these things and without making any deals or compromises with Israel, and without reducing the incitement to terrorism and hatred toward Israel, and without recapturing the Gaza Strip or even making a deal with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority received what is called non-member state status from the UN General Assembly.

So here's the point: it isn't real state-building or a deal with Israel for peace that gets stuff for the Palestinian leadership. It's merely more gifts from the "international community." That is the Palestinian Authority's sole real strategy and that's why there's no hope for the non-existent "peace process." Until or unless this point is understood by governments, mass media, or academia there will be no serious understanding of the issues involved. President Barack Obama's revised strategy is a first step in that direction.

If you are interested in reading more about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, you're welcome to read my book The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict online or download it for free.

This article is published on PJMedia.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Snapshots: Personal Experiences in the Real Middle East

By Barry Rubin

These are all personal observations, selected from a much longer personal list:

--The Palestinian Christian man is desperate. Can I help him get out of the country? He’s scared of the Islamists. Can I help him  get his son to university in America? The situation is intolerable. Something is worked out with a little help from me.

--The Druze woman is desperate. She has  a boyfriend her family doesn’t approve of. With help from some Israelis she is smuggled to a safe place.

--The letter from the Syrian Christian tells of his desperation to get out of the country before the Islamists take over.

--The Egyptian Christian has obtained an apartment abroad and is getting out of the country to America .

--The Syrian Kurdish refugee is stuck in southern Turkey. No Western country will consider offering political asylum because for policy reasons they want the refugees to go back to Syria after it is "liberated," albeit the liberation will be done by radical, repressive Islamists. He is desperately desiring to live in what he calls a "free, secular society."

--The Turkish liberals write about how they are afraid to speak out in public, of continual arrests, of media outlets being blackmailed by the government. To curry favor with the Islamists a well-known, ambitious Turkish academic launches a failed take over bid of an academic journal edited by an Israeli professor.

--The Israeli observer describes how he watched Egyptian soldiers beat the Sudanese refugees who try to get across the Sinai to Israel. He can hear the women screaming, perhaps they are being raped.

--The United States and UN promises Israel to keep weapons from being smuggled to Hizballah into Lebanon and promises to keep Hizballah from returning to build military fortifications in southern Lebanon. They fail at both. Hizballah threatens them; mysterious gunmen attack or rob the soldiers. The UN forces commander praises Hizballah. Meanwhile, the promise to Israel is violated.

--A young Israeli who has just left the army describes how his first job in the army was to register guns given to the Palestinian forces to maintain security and prevent terrorism. His last duty before leaving is capturing Palestinian terrorists and sometimes recognizing—by checking the serial numbers—the guns he helped issue to the Palestinian police a couple of years earlier.

--The U.S. government announces that weapons it helps smuggle into Syria for the rebels will be kept out of the hands of al-Qaida. Then, You-Tube videos appear showing those same weapons in the hands of al-Qaida.

--The Palestinian terrorist from the West Bank admits, after being captured, that his sister has just had free medical treatment in an Israeli hospital.

--The editorial meeting of an Ivy League university college press that rejects a project by an author after one member remarks that they can't have Israelis writing about Arab politics.  

--The Turkish television host, after he makes sure the door is closed, relates how the government has harassed him and how people are afraid they will say the wrong thing and get arrested or persecuted.

--The American journalist is told by the Palestinian guide that some structures in Bethlehem are torture chambers put up for use by Israel’s army to question Palestinians.  On inspection, they turn out to be portable toilets.

--The Lebanese leader tells a delegation that Israel should make concessions to the Palestinian Authority and then, off the record, he adds that he would never trust them himself.

--The left-wing American peace activist lectures the Fatah man, who has told the American honestly that he wants to wipe out Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state, on how he must sound more moderate in order to gain Western support.

--The Palestinian doctor tells a journalist that Yasir Arafat is in great health and after the journalist leaves admits to a colleague that Arafat is very ill. (This, of course, relates to the claims that Arafat suddenly died, thus trying to imply he was poisoned by Israel.)

--The Iranian journalist who viciously attacks an Israeli counterpart publicly at a conference, then privately admits to him afterward that she didn’t believe anything she said but had to do it because people from the Iranian embassy were present.

--The Turkish officials who privately speak of their fear and hatred for the Islamist rulers who they angrily blame for ruining their country.

--The Iranian official who at a secret conference lays into the Arabs there and calls them “a bunch of tribes.”

--The numerous Arabs, Iranians, and Turks who decry the Obama Administration as selling them out to the Islamists or Iran.

--The future Palestinian Authority foreign minister who at dinner berates Yasir Arafat and Palestinian strategy as too radical, then the next day at the conference blames Israel exclusively for the failure to achieve peace.

--The Lebanese Christians who now support Hizballah because they are afraid of that Shia Muslim terrorist group but seek its perfection because they are even more afraid of Sunni Muslim Islamists.

--The charming Saudi prince, appearing to be the very image of the late actor Peter Ustinov, expresses  at a private, personal meeting his pleasure about meeting an Israeli for the first time. Later, after reading a specific mendacious Western mass media article, he says that it is terrible such evil people can exist. 

--The Egyptian writers who (credibly) explain privately that they don’t have anything against Israel but must be militantly full of hate in public in order to protect themselves.

--The top PLO leader who asserts that Israel has a secret map in its parliament claiming most of the Arab world. Then, when that claim is ridiculed, shrugs and smiles. Oh well, no harm in trying.

--The satisfied expressions of Islamists or PLO officials or radical nationalists on getting hold of a credulous Western academic or journalist who actually believes the nonsense they dish out. At times, they are amazed at what they can purvey in this fashion.

--The well-known Palestinian intellectual (no, not who you think) who says that the Palestinians will only achieve a state when Palestinian intellectuals denounce terrorism. Then goes on for the rest of his life supporting Palestinian terrorist groups.

--The American college students who heckle a Palestinian moderate and tell him that he doesn’t really understand the Middle East and how evil Israel is.

--The Western journalists covering Israel who privately admit to shocking anti-Jewish and anti-Israel prejudices in conversations or at parties.

--The Western diplomats who do the same.

--The editor of a major newspaper who changes the reporter's story because it said that Hanan Ashrawi voted not to change the PLO National Charter (which called for wiping Israel off the map). Since, the editor said, Ashrawi was a moderate she could not possibly have voted that way. How did the journalist know about the true story? The journalist was standing outside the hall in Gaza where the meeting was taking place and asked Ashrawi how she voted.

--The Western activists who pretend to be moderate and supporters of a two-state solution who suddenly forget themselves and make it clear that only Israel’s total destruction would satisfy them.

--The North American student who recounts that when she opposed female genital mutilation in her college class only to be told that she was a privileged imperialist. And that was by the teacher.

--The Lebanese, Palestinians, Turks, and Iranians who come up to an Israeli speaker after a lecture and complain that the West supports the Islamists who are taking over campus groups and intimidating everyone else.

This is the real Middle East. Not the imagined place of Obama and Kerry, the UN and EU, the classrooms of the West or the columns of the mass media.  These are all things that I’ve personally witnessed or known the person who did.  Unless one understands this reality one understands nothing.

And having experienced these and many other things, I simply cannot go along with the clichés and falsehoods of the Western “expert” herd no matter how popular that would make me nor how profitable that may be.

If you are interested in reading more about the Arab-Israeli conflict, current regional situation you're welcome to read my book Tragedy of the Middle East online or download it for free.

This article is published on PJMedia.

Please be subscriber 31,330 (among more than 50,000 total readers). Put email address in upper right-hand box: http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

 We’d love to have your support and work hard to earn it. See our new feature with 13 free books at http://www.gloria-center.org. Why not make a tax-deductible donation to the GLORIA Center by PayPal: click here.

By credit card: click here. Checks: "American Friends of IDC.” “For GLORIA Center” on memo line and send to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th St., 11th Fl., NY, NY 10003.

For tax-deductible donations in Canada and the UK, write us here.

--------------------

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

In Egypt, Pogroms against Christians Have Become Routine

By Barry Rubin

On April 7, Islamists threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at mourners attending a funeral at the Cairo cathedral. The funeral was for four young Copts killed in fighting the previous day and to remember victims of a church bombing in 2011. Young Christians ran outside with firecrackers, sticks, and rocks to defend their church. Soon, gunshots erupted outside. The Christians had no guns.

The police stood aside. One man ran into the cathedral and yelled, “The police are firing [teargas] at us….They’re taking the [assailants’] side.” This accusation is confirmed by the article published in al-Ahram, historic flagship newspaper of the old regime but now free (at least temporarily) of government control.

Notice a detail. The newspaper inserted the word “assailants” into the quote. Unless the young man was speaking an expletive, he was probably saying “Muslims.” The Muslim reporter or editor did not change the word to hide the truth—everyone in Egypt knows what was happening—but to avoid inflaming things further and to assert the point that not all Muslims hate and attack Christians.

As noted above, the police didn’t help the Christians. Four Christians were arrested.

As for the government, the Interior Ministry blamed them for the clash, saying that mourners had smashed cars parked by the cathedral leading to fistfights with local residents. But why would mourners randomly vandalize automobiles merely because they were parked in the neighborhood? It isn’t a credible assertion.

As the police stood aside, 29 worshipers were injured. There is not the slightest doubt that the Egyptian government, now as under the previous regime, will never, ever intervene to protect Christians, who constitute about 10 percent of the population. If the police arrest anyone, it will only be Christians; Muslims will not be charged. The courts will never or almost never rule in the favor of any Christians. Indeed, a high-ranking government official accused the Christians themselves of attacking the cathedral!

No Western protests will change this situation; statements of dismay which may appear from time to time are mere window-dressing. The Islamist regime will get big loans and continued U.S. military aid as long as it does not engage in outright massacres.

Some of the worshipers in the cathedral chanted, Down with the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood regime! The bishop urged calm, stressing three principles: justice would come from heaven; Christians would not flee the country; and bloodshed would only strengthen their religious commitment.

But what can the Copts do except resign themselves to continued persecution; Western apologies and help for their persecutors; and a choice between restraint or worse violence?

One idea of some of those in the cathedral was to march to the defense ministry after the funerals in order to demand military protection for the churches. But others pointed out that they could not depend on the army either since it had been involved in past persecutions and deaths.

This is not to say that the Coptic side was necessarily completely innocent in every case. For example, one Muslim was also killed in the clashes that led to the four Christian deaths. Some Muslim, as well as Christian, property was set on fire during the violence around the cathedral.

Yet it is unlikely that Copts, with a long tradition of survival through passivity and submission (forced by the “dhimmi” status imposed on them), badly outnumbered, and facing powerful forces backed by the authorities are the aggressor or that both sides are equally at fault.

The Brotherhood is running the government; the Salafists are running in the streets. Moderate Muslim Egyptians, like those who run al-Ahram for the time being (as a state newspaper it will soon come under Brotherhood control) are unhappy with the persecution but can do nothing.

Things can only do worse. The world is indifferent; the Western mass media is usually determined to be “even-handed” or to ignore the extent of the situation, preferring to seek alleged oppressors in other, near-by countries.

Meanwhile, a change of regime is approaching in Syria, where the Christian population is proportionately larger than in Egypt. In Egypt, Christians were very active in opposing the old regime; but in Syria they have looked to that same doomed regime for protection. In Iraq, most of the Christians have been driven out; in the Gaza Strip reportedly they have all had to leave.

If you are interested in reading more about Egypt, you're welcome to read my book Islamic Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics online or download it for free.''

  

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.