The Joint Chiefs of Staff, says its chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has a “physics problem.”
According to a 2008 accord between the United States and Iraq, the US military is to be evacuated from Mesopotamia — down to the last tank mechanic and dishwasher — by the close of the calendar year. Lately, there have been hints that Iraq might want a “residual force” of as many as 12,000 troops to stay, but nothing firm.
Hence Mullen’s dilemma: How does the Pentagon plan for withdrawing its personnel and equipment when it doesn’t know for sure how many soldiers will be leaving? There are only so many C-130s to load and so much time in which to load them.
Pakistan’s generals are besieged on all sides. Like never before, they are at odds with their own rank and file. According to the New York Times, the discontent with the top brass is so great as to evoke concerns of a colonels’ coup. The army also is losing support from its domestic political allies and subject to the increasing hostility of the Pakistani public. The generals are even at risk of being dumped by their oldest and most generous supporter, the United States.
2011 has been a year of unprecedented political tumult in Morocco. As neighboring North African regimes collapsed under the weight of popular pressure, demonstrators have convened in Moroccan cities as well, naming their uprising after the day of their largest initial gathering, February 20, and calling for greater democracy.
Back in 2004, three years into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 Commission report made its debut to the gushing admiration of the Washington press corps. The report was everything that the mainstream media adores: bipartisan, devoid of divisive finger-pointing, full of conventional wisdom.
Take this pearl: “One of the lessons of the Cold War was that short-term gains in cooperating with the most brutal and repressive governments were often outweighed by long-term setbacks for America’s stature and interests.”
Abdulhadi, Rabab, Evelyn Alsultany and Nadine Naber, eds. Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011).
Allen, Roger and Shawkat M. Toorawa, eds. Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011).
Ambrosetti, Elena. Égypte, l’exception démographique (Paris: INED, 2011).
Bein, Amit. Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Bröning, Michael. The Politics of Change in Palestine: State Building and Non-Violent Resistance (London: Pluto Press, 2011).
In the city of Lahore, Pakistan on January 27, 2011, a 36-year old American CIA contractor named Raymond Davis was charged with double murder in the deaths of two Pakistani men, Faizan Haider and Fahim Shamshad. Newspaper accounts describe Davis firing his gun at two men on motorcycles whom he believed were armed and attempting to rob him as he stopped his vehicle at a traffic signal. At the same time, reports place another US employee driving a truck nearby; in his rush to rescue Davis, this American hit and killed a third passing motorcyclist. The driver of the truck somehow managed to leave the country but Davis was unable to disappear from what escalated into a tense international and legal incident between Pakistan and the United States.
Many expected the Obama administration to slow or altogether stop the growth of the national security state that its two predecessor administrations brought into being, but just the opposite has occurred. Prisoners are still held without charge at Guantánamo Bay; the Patriot Act is still the law; the administration has retained the use of rendition and protected state secrets with punitive vigor. President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all others combined. In key respects, indeed, the Obama administration has expanded and institutionalized the national security state.
On July 9, 2011, South Sudan will officially become independent. When southern Sudanese voted in the January 9 referendum on independence, they sought to affirm their African identity and shed the Arab identity that they felt had been imposed upon them by successive regimes in Khartoum. They also signaled their desire to be masters of their own destiny, displaying their lack of trust in the north’s ability to meet their demands for fair sharing of wealth and power. But Africa’s newest state will continue to share characteristics with the “old” Sudan that, if they are not addressed, bode ill for its prospects of a peaceful, democratic future.
On February 12, 2011, thousands of Egyptians flooded Tahrir Square to celebrate the previous night’s ouster of Husni Mubarak, their country’s dictator of 30 years. It was an unusually bright and clear-skied Cairo Saturday, full of promise of a new Egypt. From atop the October 6 bridge that spans the ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Riyad portion of Tahrir, where just nine days earlier government-paid attackers had rained down ammunition upon pro-democracy demonstrators in the most brutal battle of the revolution, one could see dozens of crews of young people cleaning the square.
The complex Muslim-Christian relations of post-Mubarak Egypt are perhaps best glimpsed through five distinct reactions to the May 7, 2011 attacks on two churches in Imbaba, a poor quarter of Cairo, that left 15 dead and over 200 injured. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced that those responsible would be tried in special security courts.
While Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation will undoubtedly remain the iconic image of the 2011 Tunisian revolution, another set of pictures has also stuck in the minds of Tunisians. On the evening of January 14, despite an army curfew, a man staggered across Avenue Habib Bourguiba, shouting, “Ben Ali fled — the Tunisian people is free! The Tunisian people will not die! The Tunisian people is sacred!”
As the waves of protest inspired by Tunisia continue to roll across the Middle East and North Africa, analysts have remained puzzled by the mysterious timing, incredible speed and cross-national snowballing of these uprisings or intifadas. In the six months following the electrifying scenes of thousands occupying Avenue Habib Bourguiba in downtown Tunis, directing the imperative Dégage! (Get out!) at President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian “virus” has spread across the region, unleashing apparently similar moments of resistance and revolution. Yet a “back-door” view of the intifadas reveals wide variations.
The revolts sweeping the Arab Middle East and North Africa in early 2011 have been characterized as uprisings against neoliberal economic policies as well as authoritarian rule. But while there is widespread agreement on the political dimension of the revolts, there has been some confusion regarding the role played by economic grievances. The confusion is due not merely to the pace of events, but also to the fact that the region’s actual economic record is somewhat contested.
A Beltway bromide that will not die is, “No one ever went broke betting against peace in the Middle East.” Of dull wit and unclaimed provenance, the saying nonetheless makes the rounds every time the White House reiterates its commitment to resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The initial media reaction scrutinizes the White House’s words for microscopic shifts in diction and emphasis, trumpeting each as a policy departure that could herald progress and, thus, additional news. Then the excitement subsides, as commentators recall that every president since Jimmy Carter has taken up this task, only to find it Sisyphean.
When 19 al-Qaeda hijackers attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the United States faced a strategic dilemma that was unique in magnitude, but not in kind. Terrorists had killed numerous civilians before, in the US and elsewhere, with and without state sponsorship. Al-Qaeda was not the first non-state actor to present no coherent demands alongside its propaganda of the deed or to have no single fixed address. Nor were Americans the first victims of unprovoked terrorist assault to set aside political differences, at least for a time, in search of a unified self-defense.
At about 11 pm on May 2, Bahrain’s criminal investigations directorate summoned Nedhal al-Khalifa, a 42-year-old dermatologist. Her father dropped her off at their headquarters at the ministry of interior at about midnight. Her family, including her four young children, didn’t hear anything from her until she was released two days later. Her husband, Sadiq Abdulla, a vascular surgeon, also 42, was detained in the same fashion on April 14. His whereabouts and condition remains unknown, as does the reason for his detention.
A venal dictatorship three decades old, mutinous army officers, dissident tribal sheikhs, a parliamentary opposition coalition, youthful pro-democracy activists, gray-haired Socialists, gun-toting cowboys, veiled women protesters, northern carpetbaggers, Shi‘i insurgents, tear gas canisters, leaked State Department cables, foreign-born jihadis — Yemen’s demi-revolutionary spring has it all. The mass uprising in southern Arabia blends features of the peaceful popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia with elements of the state repression in Libya and Syria in a gaudy, fast-paced, multi-layered theater of revolt verging on the absurd.
Casbah Square in Tunis has the feel of the morning after. Strewn around the plaza are the odd, drooping Tunisian flag and other relics of the mass demonstrations that forced the fall of the ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January and then two “interim governments” deemed too closely associated with his regime. There are still a few protests in the Tunisian capital. But they are no longer transformative of the political order. They are small, sectional, partisan — almost routine.
In the coming days, many will pore over the Guantánamo files released by Wikileaks to find startling revelations or to justify pre-existing positions. But before diving in, it may help to reflect on a few things that may not be explicit in the documents but are crucial to understanding their significance. These include:
