Tunisia faces risks linked to its political transition and a fragile global economy but it will not be a “new Greece,” the International Monetary Fund said today:

In early June, the IMF approved a two-year standby loan for about $1.75 billion to support the government’s economic reforms after the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. The money is to be disbursed in installments depending on the government’s successful implementation of the loan-supported reform program that includes strengthening a fragile banking sector and encouraging business investment.

“The growth outlook could fall short of projections, particularly if the external economic environment deteriorates further, impacting tourism and remittance inflows,” the IMF said in a report. “Also, setbacks in the political transition — such as delays in organizing the elections — could reduce political commitment to economic reforms, and increase investors’ wait-and-see attitude.”

“Two and a half years after kindling a revolution that flamed across the Arab world, Tunisians have moved on to the next chapter, a political struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and the tolerant, Mediterranean-style Islam that has characterized their nation’s 57 years as an independent state,” writes The Washington Post’s Edward Cody,

Although Tunisia is a small country of 11 million people, its looming decisions on national identity, the role of religion and political organization touch on — and are likely to become a beacon for — the main challenges facing reformers across North Africa and the Middle East. …Tunisians, in effect, have reached the point in their democracy where Syria’s opposition wants to be after that country’s civil war, where Libyans want to be after they build a post-Gaddafi state and where secular Egyptians want to be if and when an effective opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood arises.

A draft of the new constitution is behind schedule, with many of its articles hotly contested. Rachid Ghannouchi (left), spiritual leader of the majority ruling Ennahda party, recently told Washington Post editors that his party had made “many concessions” to secular demands, including abandoning an insistence on sharia as the basis of law and accepting equal rights for women.

“But outside the assembly, Ghannouchi’s party over the past two years has allowed the rise of a strong Salafist movement, hard-liners dedicated to imposing a severe form of Islam,” Cody notes.

While judges recently sentenced members of the FEMEN activist group to four months in prison,  he notes, some 20 Salafists who had been charged in connection with the September mob attack on the U.S. Embassy were given suspended sentences and released.

Ennahda bears primary responsibility for the emergence of the radical Salafist threat, says Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” he wrote in a recent report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy.

The assassination of labor union organizer and secular activist Chokri Belaid “shocked Tunisian society, becoming something of a turning point for the Ennahda government and, perhaps, for the struggle to redefine Tunisian politics,” notes Cody. Ennahda is also taking an illiberal approach to transitional justice, he argues, by pushing a proposed law to “immunize the revolution” by excluding officials associated with the former regime from holding political office.

“The main target is me,” said Beji Caid Essebsi, 86, who served in key positions under Bourguiba and whose Call for Tunisia party, in alliance with other secular groups, has gained enough strength in recent opinion polls to raise hopes of defeating Ennahda in the upcoming presidential and legislative elections.

Essebsi said his support is swelling because Tunisians feel that the revolution has stalled under Ennahda. He also said that people are upset over the anemic, tourist-scarce economy and that a majority of Tunisians reject the Islam promised by Ennahda and Ansar al-Sharia.

“We are for a secular state, while they are for a religious state,” he said. “The bottom line is that we stand for two different kinds of society.”

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The elevation of Crown Prince Tamim to Qatar’s leadership “could spur Iran and other rivals to play mischief,” according to a leading analyst.  

“Although the decision is being depicted as an evolutionary change,” says the Washington Institute’s Simon Henderson, “it could prompt the state’s regional rivals to challenge parts of its activist foreign policy, which has recently included assisting opposition fighters in Syria and backing the Morsi government in Egypt.”

Emir Sheikh Hamad is expected to cede power to his son by July, the Project for Middle East Democracy reports:

As one western official commented, “there has been a clear attempt over several years to prepare the ground for an orderly succession…the concept of a planned transition… [is happening] for the first time in Qatar’s recent history.”

According to The Financial Times, while the planned transition is expected to boost long-term stability, few analysts expect the country to adopt a more democratic bent as time progresses. ”The emir has  recently been silent on his pledge made a year ago to hold elections to the country’s advisory council in the second half of 2013,” it added. And while Crown Prince Tamim’s Sandhurt education has helped his family expand  Qatar’s military and trade ties with the United States, Great Britain, and  other western countries, his ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Libya as well as support for Islamist factions in Syria suggest that he may be less liberal than his father or the current prime minister.

“Qatar’s wealth, underpinned by the world’s third largest natural gas reserves, is a potent weapon in its quest for political influence in a Middle East undergoing transition,” analysts suggest.

Its high degree of exposure partly “reflects the reluctance of western governments to intervene in Syria,” say Roula Khalaf, the FT’s Middle East editor, and Fielding-Smith, the paper’s Lebanon and Syria correspondent.

According to reports by Reuters and the Telegraph, analysts have speculated that Sheikh Tamim’s close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood could push Qatari policy in a more conservative direction, writes Foreign Policy’s J Dana Stuster, possibly straining ties with the United States. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Qatar has strengthened its ties with Egypt and Tunisia, where Islamist political parties have swept to power.

“Qatar’s foreign policy balances the desire for good relations with Iran (which shares one of emirate’s huge offshore gas fields) against reliance on U.S. military support (centered on the giant al-Udeid Air Base, which controls American air operations in the region),” notes Henderson, the Baker fellow and director of the Washington Institute’s Gulf and Energy Policy Program:

Tehran may be tempted to take advantage of Qatar’s transition, seeking revenge on Doha for backing opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, a key Iranian ally. Other neighbors have also been infuriated by Qatar’s behavior. For example, the Doha-based Aljazeera satellite television network has at times seemed solely focused on annoying Saudi Arabia. More recently, the United Arab Emirates has been outraged by Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, seeing the UAE branch of the group as a challenge to domestic security.

Qatar has come under criticism for funding illiberal actors, including ultraconservative Salafist militants, during the Arab uprisings while suppressing fundamental freedoms at home.

“Qatar’s involvement in Libya also builds on its long relationship with (and subsequent perceived loyalty by) some Libyan Islamists,” notes Lina Khatib, the head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

POMED is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group.

“The rapid unraveling of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s image at home has spilled into Egypt in what experts say is a warning to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood as they balance the need to meet the demands of both the deeply conservative and the secular communities in the Arab world’s most populous nation,” AP reports:

The Brotherhood’s deputy leader Khairat el-Shater depicted himself as “Egypt’s Erdogan” during his short-lived presidential campaign last year before he was thrown out of the race over a Mubarak-era conviction.

“This is certainly a bad omen for Islamists. Their model is violently shaking as the man they say they want to emulate has been dealt a blow,” said Mohammed Abdel-Kader Khalil, a Cairo-based senior researcher at the East Center for Strategic and Regional Studies

He said the Brotherhood actually “inverted the model” by trying to monopolize power through the infusion of its members in state institutions under the pretext of battling the “deep state,” a term used in Turkey to refer to a network of military and civilian allies accused of trying to destabilize the country during the early years of Erdogan’s rule. The term is repeatedly used by Brotherhood leaders to refer to the legacy of Mubarak’s 29-year regime.

“They wanted to consolidate power, take control of state institutions while the streets are boiling and the economy in shambles,” said Khalil. “They are in a rush and they didn’t really benefit from Turkey’s experience.”

Other experts insist that Taksim Square is no Tahrir.

“Various parties attempt to make a connection between the so-called Turkish model and the Egyptian. They are very mistaken. The two are vastly different,” said Amr Ismail Adly, a Turkish affairs scholar in Cairo. “Portraying this as a struggle between secularism and Islam is also oversimplifying a much more complex issue given the diversity of protesters and motives.”

Members of Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party suggest that such parallels are part of a conspiracy to undermine Islamist regimes.

“What is going on in Turkey has nothing to do with daily or economic needs. It is intended to promote the idea that Islamic regimes, which have made economic achievements and proved to the world that they can stand in the face of all external challenges, have failed,” Murad Aly, the FJP’s media adviser, said in a newspaper interview.

But the protests “have sent ripples across the Arab world, unnerving Islamist leaders who have long touted Turkey as a successful model of political Islam, analyst Jailan Zayan reports from Cairo:

Islamist-led Egypt and Tunisia “must be worried about the problems faced by Erdogan’s Turkey, a supposedly successful model” of political Islam, said Antoine Basbous, director of the Paris-based Observatory of Arab countries. Turkey’s protests are reminding the Arab world’s liberals and secularists “that they were the motor of change” during the 2011 uprisings, he said.

Tunisia and Egypt — where unprecedented revolts led to the ouster of longtime dictators in 2011 and propelled Islamists to the forefront of politics– have repeatedly pointed to Turkey as a good example of a moderate Islamist democracy. The Islamist party Ennahda which won post-revolution polls in Tunisia has openly expressed its admiration for the “Turkish model,” while Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who addressed the AKP’s congress in September 2012 lauded Erdogan’s party as a “source of inspiration”.

But both Arab states have been suffering increasing polarisation between Islamists and secularists, with Islamists in power accused of failing to live up to their promise of guaranteeing rights and freedoms.

“At the end of the day, what matters is not the soundness of the analogy, but public perceptions of it and its ability to capture the imagination, which it seems to be doing right now,” said Hesham Sallam, Washington-based political analyst at Georgetown University.

Supporting democratic transitions in volatile regions like the Middle East will remain a key element of U. S. counter-terrorism strategy, President Barack Obama said today.

The peaceful realization of individual aspirations for freedom and dignity in countries like Libya, Tunisia and Egypt will act as a “rebuke” to violent extremists, he said in a speech at the National Defense University. He cited the need to support Syria’s opposition, but cautioned that ending one form of tyranny must not facilitate “the tyranny of terrorism.”

The foreign assistance so vital to supporting transitions is fundamental to national security and should not be viewed as charity, he said.

Announcing a new legal and moral framework for the U.S. war against terror, he called for major revisions to the policies that emerged following the attacks of 9/11.

“This war, like all wars, must end,” he said. “That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

“Unrest in the Arab World has also allowed extremists to gain a foothold in countries like Libya and Syria,” said Obama, adding that the threats differed from those of Al-Qaeda and 9/11.

“In some cases, we confront state-sponsored networks like Hizbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals,” he said. “Others are simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory.”

Consequently, a key element of U.S. strategy “involves addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia,” he said:

As we’ve learned this past decade, this is a vast and complex undertaking. We must be humble in our expectation that we can quickly resolve deep rooted problems like poverty and sectarian hatred. Moreover, no two countries are alike, and some will undergo chaotic change before things get better. But our security and values demand that we make the effort.

This means patiently supporting transitions to democracy in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – because the peaceful realization of individual aspirations will serve as a rebuke to violent extremists. We must strengthen the opposition in Syria, while isolating extremist elements – because the end of a tyrant must not give way to the tyranny of terrorism.

“Success on these fronts requires sustained engagement, but it will also require resources,” he told the NDU:

I know that foreign aid is one of the least popular expenditures – even though it amounts to less than one percent of the federal budget. But foreign assistance cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national security, and any sensible long-term strategy to battle extremism. Moreover, foreign assistance is a tiny fraction of what we spend fighting wars that our assistance might ultimately prevent. For what we spent in a month in Iraq at the height of the war, we could be training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.

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In confronting Tunisia’s radical Islamists, the Nahda-led government is being forced to address a problem of its own making, says a leading analyst. Since they took over the reins of government early last year, Nahda leaders have focused on issues which divide Tunisian society deeply,” writes Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” Ghilès contends in a must-read report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy:

Until recently, the party has tolerated the violence of its Salafi friends, arguing, at least to Tunisia’s foreign partners and to ambassadors in Tunis that it was a small price worth paying to ensure that these often young unemployed men joined the democratic process. The attack of the US embassy in Tunis last 14th September, the lynching soon afterwards of an member of Nidha Tunes, Lotfi Naguedh, the attack by Nahda militias on the trades union headquarters in Tunis last November, the torching of sixty Sufi shrines – zaouias – and the murder of Chokri Belaid cast serious doubts about Nahda’s real intentions, all the more as the culprits are seldom brought to trial.

The Nahda Prime Minister, Hamadi Jebali, was dismissed because his proposal of a technocratic government was not accepted by his party – his proposal was an attempt to broaden the political support for the government and thus enable it to conduct economic reforms more easily. His successor, Ali Larayedh’s failure to give strong support to the enquiry into the murder of Belaid (right) has fuelled suspicions among many Tunisians that the ruling Nahda Islamist party has something to hide. Opinion polls in April conducted by the private Tunisian company 3C suggest Nidha Tunes candidates would poll more votes (32.2%) than Nahda (30.1%) were elections held tomorrow.

The Minister of Human Rights and Transitional Justice for his part recently stated that rising Islamic violence could well delay elections. After coming to power 18 months, Nadha leaders turned a blind eye to the violence of hard line Islamist groups such as Ansar al–sharia but three factors explains why the prime minister, Ali Larayedh changed tack and branded the group “terrorist”: the murder of the police officer Mohammed Sboui by Islamists on 4th May coming after many similar attacks against members of the security forces, the rioting last week end by Ansar al-charia supporters in Tunis and the holy city of Kairwan on 19th May and the growing number of young Tunisians going to fight the “holy war” in Syria. To argue that in this tense climate elections should be delayed would be funny spectacle indeed were its potential consequences not so dire. The risk of Tunisia slipping into a political and economic quagmire which seriously damages its future stability is real if elections are put off indefinitely.

Opening the door to a theocratic state?

The draft text of the proposed constitution was severely criticised by Human Rights Watch on 13th April. Leading Tunisian intellectuals and legal experts argue that, were it to be endorsed by the constituent assembly, it would open the door to a theocratic state. The atmosphere in Tunisia is tense: the growing threat of Islamic armed guerrilla activity, massive smuggling of petrol, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, cement etc at the country’s frontiers speak of a weakened state and a growing bazaar economy.

The Nahda dominated government is also discovering, like its counterparts in Tripoli and Algiers that that the blow back effect of exporting jihadi activity abroad is nasty. This dawning realisation does not prevent the party, a majority of whose ruling Majliss are hardly moderates, to continue inviting hard line wahabi preachers to Tunisia, to the fury of many ordinary citizens and the delight of a few. Early in May the Egyptian preacher Mohammed Hassen attracted thousands of bearded followers to the sea front of Hammamet, the country’s prime tourist resort – at a time when tourists from Europe continue on their downward trend. In Euro terms, foreign receipts from tourism are at the level they had reached in 2005.

The new minister of the interior, Lotfi Ben Jeddou is a former magistrate and a man of integrity. He is leading the crack down hard on Salafis groups. Tunisia’s western allies and Algeria are strongly supporting this change of heart. The US was both surprised and furious when its embassy was attacked. Its view of Nahda is less naïve than it was a year ago.

Why Nahda struggles to deliver economic reform

The Nahda-led government is finding it hard to deliver economic reform: its lack of experience and widespread nepotism are brilliantly analyzed in one of the more incisive analysis of the Arab revolts, Le Peuple Veut whose author, Gilbert Achcar argues that the Tunisian Islamists, as Islamists elsewhere hold a “magical view” of how to govern a country: in particular they chose to believe that the success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey results from its founders overtly religious posturing rather than hard socioeconomics facts.

It is worth remembering that traditional Sunni jurisprudence offers little in the way of new economic thinking because re-Islamizing society, as Nahda sees it, remains more important than improving the well being of ordinary people. Government control over one of the more efficient bureaucracies in the Arab world has weakened because many ministers cast doubts on the loyalty of senior civil servants and managers who served under the former dictator. Third, as Islamists and more liberal Tunisians compete for power and Nahda fails to create a broad consensus of how to manage the economy, a state of never ending political crisis encourages investors to hold back.

Another reason which explains Nahda’s behavior is that its supporters played no part in the downfall of Ben Ali. This was, according to a book which reads like a thriller and is authored by two exceptionally well informed Tunisians, the result of a coup within the security apparatus not, as some observers choose to believe, some western plot.

Example of Turkey is misleading

The paramount leader of Nahda, Rashid Ghannouchi (right) likes to compare the policies of Nahda to those of AKP but circumstances on the shores of the gulf of Tunis are different from those which prevail on the shores of the Bosphorous. AKP holds five cards Nahda does not. It built its policies in government on the economic reforms enacted by its predecessors and thus benefited from the results. The party gained valuable experience from running towns large and small before it came to power in Ankara – the prime minister was a successful mayor of Istanbul. AKP learnt to solve practical problems not ideological ones.

The Turkish army remains a secular force to be reckoned with, however much its beard has been singed by AKP. The second article of the Turkish constitution says the country is “secular”. This contrasts sharply with the draft constitution which the Tunisian government has just announced and will usher in “an Islamic state” according to Yahd Ben Achour, the highly respected scholar and former president of the High Authority for the Achievement of Revolutionary Objectives – the commission responsible for constitutional reform post revolution. Professor Ben Achour, a scholar grounded in both modern law and Islamic law, headed the commission charged with overseeing the elections of October 23rd 2011 but has since retired from active politics, not least because of Nahda’s open hostility towards him.

Last but not least, Turkey is engaged in an integration process with the European Union. However uncertain this process, however far away in the future its potential outcome may be, its very existence leads to a legislative and normative convergence which will be the country’s passport to modernity and efficient economic management. European political leaders may have no such integration process to offer Tunisia – though a little imagination in Brussels might help, but they are helping the country financially, as is the IMF, the World Bank, Japan and the US. All are desperate for a “success” story in at least one of the Arab countries which has overthrown the yoke of authoritarian rule recently. Such help is both needed and legitimate but it surely allows them to hold the Tunisian government more accountable than hitherto. The rule of law must be upheld far more rigorously by the courts and by the ministry of justice than it has been hitherto.

Ansar al-charia invokes Allah but never the democratic process. Only when the leaders of Nahda’s calls the bluff of such hard-line groups and those among its senior leaders who talk with a forked tongue, will the path to democracy in Tunisia be consolidated.

This extract is taken with permission from a longer analysis available here. 

Credit:MEMRI

Tunisia is making progress in its efforts to dismantle “terrorist” cells, Prime Minister Ali Larayedh said today. But he declined to apply the “terrorist” label to the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia (right) that has been linked with Al-Qaeda and has been implicated in a series of violent attacks.

“This is an illegal organization, and some of its leaders are involved in terrorism,” said Larayedh, a member of Ennahda, Tunisia’s majority party. “I have not yet said that Ansar al-Sharia is a terrorist organization… it must quickly issue a statement clearly condemning violence and terrorism,” he added.

“It seems like Ennahda have finally put their foot down, but that shouldn’t be applauded because over the last two years they have tolerated the growth of Salafism and done nothing about it,” said Aaron Zelin, an expert on Tunisia at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“There is likely to be more confrontation in the short to medium term. There could be a cycle of low-level conflict, but neither side has an interest in it becoming larger-scale.”

Ansar al-Sharia is the most radical Islamist group to emerge in what was long one of the most secular Arab countries. It poses a test to the authority of the moderate Islamist-led government and to the stability of Tunisia, a country of 11 million.  Zelin estimated that the movement, which is not officially registered, has at least 20,000 activists and is gaining support fast among young people disenchanted with Ennahda’s failure to anchor Islamic sharia law in the constitution, and alienated by unemployment and lack of economic opportunity.

“Salafists have felt targeted and this has only added to their frustration,” said Alaya Allani, a specialist on Islamist groups. “These events are slowing (Tunisia’s) democratic transition and delaying the recovery from an economic crisis.”

Despite the economic challenges, especially debilitating unemployment, the role of religion in governance has emerged as a major obstacle in preparing a constitution, says a prominent Tunis-based civil society activist,

“Two renowned Tunisian constitutionalists have wisely declined to be part of the panel appointed to review the draft constitution. Both Yadh Ben Achour and Kais Saied realize that the text is rife with impossible contradictions (a state religion and Tunisia as a civil state), severe omissions (the universality of human rights) and that highlighting these deficits could endanger their safety,” writes Radia Hennessey,  president of the Vineeta Foundation, an NGO dedicated to public health, human rights and governance:

Tunisians are calling the text the Constitution of Shame….It is a constitution that paves the way for a Shariah-based theocratic state with no checks and balances — and immune from future change or amendment. The obsession with religion has so derailed the work of the Constitutional Assembly that the nature of government is not even well established in the draft text.

“The separation of mosque and state, as a way to ensure the freedom of religion, is an urgent imperative if this so-called Arab Spring is not to dry up,” she contends.

Some analysts suggest that the Nahda-led government is using radical Islamists as a ‘trump card’ to distract citizens from its failure to address the country’s pressing problems. The ruling Islamists are also being forced to address a problem of their own making, says a leading analyst. “Since they took over the reins of government early last year, Nahda leaders have focused on issues which divide Tunisian society deeply,” writes Francis Ghilès, a North Africa expert at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs:

“By insisting for months that shari’a should be a major source of law, by inviting hard line Wahabi preachers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia to preach in what has traditionally been a tolerant country, by failing to bring to justice the authors of most acts of vandalism against Sufi shrines, and by allowing their militia, the Ligues de Défense de la Révolution, to attack the headquarters of the powerful trades union UGTT last December, the Islamist party has opened up deep lines of fracture in Tunisian society,” Ghilès contends in a must-read report, Still a Long Way to Go for Tunisian Democracy:

Until recently, the party has tolerated the violence of its Salafi friends, arguing, at least to Tunisia’s foreign partners and to ambassadors in Tunis that it was a small price worth paying to ensure that these often young unemployed men joined the democratic process. The attack of the US embassy in Tunis last 14th September, the lynching soon afterwards of an member of Nidha Tunes, Lotfi Naguedh, the attack by Nahda militias of the trades union headquarters in Tunis last November, the torching of sixty Sufi shrines – zaouias – and the murder of Chokri Belaid cast serious doubts about Nahda’s real intentions, all the more as the culprits are seldom brought to trial.

RTWT

Photo: Qantara

Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood came under attack today for “normalizing” relations with corrupt elements of the former regime, as the non-Islamist opposition received “a gift from the heavens” from the courts and the US Ambassador to Cairo lamented the “high degree of political polarization” and called for “more dialogue and compromise” between the key political actors.

Under the Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi, the authorities have arrested and tortured the activists who sparked the revolution that brought them to power, says a leading analyst, while reaching a morally dubious accommodation with former regime elements.

“Under the banner of ‘conciliation and returning stolen funds,’ Morsi and his group decided to normalize relations with Mubarak’s regime….at the expense of the revolution, its principles and advocates who brought Morsi to power [and] the values and morals the Muslim Brotherhood is always flaunting,” writes Khalil Al-Anani, a leading expert on the Islamist group.

The authorities plan to release several of the former regime’s most corrupt officials, including former Information Minister Safwat Al-Sharif, former presidential chief of staff Zakaria Azmi, former prime minister Ahmed Nazif, and Ahmed Fathi Sorour who served as parliament speaker for more than 20 years. The Brotherhood stands to gain from the release of certain financial assets held by former regime insiders, says Anani (right), a Scholar of Middle East Politics at Durham University who was recently appointed Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington, D.C.

Gift from the heavens

“A ruling by an Egyptian court blocking next month’s controversial parliamentary elections provides a way out of the country’s months-long political crisis,” according to reports:

The Administrative Court on Wednesday halted President Mohammad Mursi’s call for the four-stage vote that was due to begin on April 22. The court said that the Islamist president acted outside his jurisdiction by issuing the decree on elections without discussing it with the government as the new constitution dictates. The court also ordered the referral of a divisive poll law to the Supreme Constitutional Court for review.

“This is not a mere court ruling. It is a gift from the heavens,” said prominent opposition leader Amr Moussa.

The Muslim Brotherhood was apparently “unnerved” by the court decision.

“The ruling and its reasons mean that the Constitutional Court is doing a legislative job, which is not within its jurisdiction,” Essam Al Erian, a senior Brotherhood official, said in a tweet. “We are consulting with other political parties on how to deal with the ruling and its consequences.”

The US plans to sponsor an election observation mission to monitor the forthcoming elections, says Anne Patterson, the US envoy to Cairo, adding that she was concerned about the febrile political atmosphere.

“There is a high degree of political polarization, and thus a need for more dialogue and compromise,” she told Al-Ahram.

Following the prosecution of US-funded democracy assistance NGOs, the US has been focusing on supporting socio-economic projects and sponsoring interfaith dialogue in an attempt to reduce sectarian violence, she said.

“We have initiated entrepreneurship programmers in the Smart Village New Cairo, we work with NGOs that instigate initiatives such as the Angel Investors and Mentors Programme, promoting entrepreneurship and commercial activities,” she said. “We also plan to announce a big educational initiative for women and found science, technology and math departments in high schools.”

Egypt’s National Salvation Front (NSF) has criticized the Muslim Brotherhood-backed draft NGO law as more restrictive than laws under former President Hosni Mubarak, says the Project for Middle East Democracy:

The opposition bloc said the law “seeks to reproduce a police state by putting into law the role of security bodies in overseeing the work of civil society groups.” The bill stipulates that NGOs be vetted by a committee comprised in part of members of the security services and get official permission to receive foreign funding. According to the NSF’s statement, “This can allow these entities to refuse funding for rights groups that monitor elections or work to fight torture.” The NSF announced it would support an alternate bill drafted by a group of 50 civil society organizations.

The NSF has also formed an alliance with the Islamist, Salafist-dominated Al Nour party in an attempt to counter the Brotherhood’s growing power and attempt to monopolize or ‘Ikhwanize’ the country’s political institutions.

“The Salafists stand to gain. If elements of the secular opposition actually put time and money into their [campaign] infrastructure, they could make a dent,” said Tamara Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “Whereas the secular opposition is seen as being old elites and the Brotherhood has the reputation of ‘Oh, they tried and failed,’ the Salafists have the advantage of being untested.”

But the non-Islamist opposition also stands to gain from the pact.

“[If] National Salvation Front and Nour participate in elections and do well, they have the potential to have a majority or super majority in parliament,” said Issandr El Amrani, an independent expert on Egypt who blogs at Arabist.net. “This would be unknown territory in Egypt: the president from one party and the prime minister from another.”

Tunisia’s government, led by the majority Islamist Ennahda party, “was once accused of conciliation to the country’s substantial minority of militants with a violent interpretation of their faith,” notes analyst Alice Fordham. “Now, in a series of statements and actions, the government seems to have decided to crack down on the groups, amid what western and regional officials say are growing security threats.”

A change in discourse by  Ali Larayedh, the prime minister, is a key indicator of the shift, say analysts.

“The government will deal with Ansar Al Sharia as an illegal organisation that has committed acts of violence and has ties to terrorism,” he said this week. “The head of this movement is involved in many affairs, including terrorism, and is wanted by security forces.”

“It is a change of language. Larayedh has never before used this term for Ansar … reserving the word terrorist for the groups” which Tunisia’s army is hunting on the Algerian border, said Michael Ayari from the International Crisis Group think tank.

“The words count, but we still can’t say that the policy has changed, that they mark a point of no return, and that the Ansar al-Shariah activists will now be arrested for belonging to the movement, for their political identity,” he added.

“Ennahda’s dramatically hardened attitude towards Salafists could be an attempt to claw back security credentials,” writes Tunis-based journalist Sherelle Jacobs.

“But Ennahda’s crackdown is missing a trick,” she contends:

Ennahda should instead adopt a shrewder policy, making the distinction between three types of Salafists – scripturalist Salafists who are apolitical and only interested in proselytising; jihadist Salafists who are against using violence domestically (a group that includes some Ansar al-Sharia members); and jihadist Salafists who champion domestic terrorism. Ennahda should tolerate the first lot; pull the second lot into mainstream politics; and come down hard on the third group through targeted anti-terrorism operations.

Ansar al-Sharia “is about as close as one could fear to being an al-Qaeda-front organization operating freely in an Arab country. And it’s on the move,” says analyst Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

“Salafist groups, including Salafist-Jihadist and takfiri organizations like Ansar al-Sharia, may agree with less extreme Islamists about many things in theory. But in practice, they always find them both a political obstacle and insufficiently ‘Islamic,’” he writes for Now Lebanon:

Since they rely on literalism, militancy, categorical assertions, and extremism virtually unrestrained by almost any pragmatic considerations, such organizations will invariably find the power-oriented political realism of Brotherhood-style parties to be religiously and politically objectionable. More importantly, they will see political benefits in attacking them rhetorically and, eventually, literally. 

A grim set of factors is combining to empower this openly and extremely radical group. Ongoing economic distress has undermined the government, including Ennahda, and strengthened the impact of Ansar al-Sharia’s aggressive social services program. Ennahda’s political compromises with its coalition partners undermine its ability to appeal to Muslim extremists who find conciliation, even in the service of gaining political power, to be distasteful at best. Instability, and the growing power of their Salafist-Jihadist allies in Libya and the Sahel region, have provided Ansar Al-Sharia a new degree of strategic depth. 

Ansar al-Sharia now openly warns of civil war. This is a confrontation Ennahda sought to avoid. Its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, last year asked Salafists, including associates of Ansar al-Sharia, to give his party peace and quiet to secure Islamist control over the police and military. But clearly Ansar al-Sharia is in no mood for patience.

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“Qatar’s wealth, underpinned by the world’s third largest natural gas reserves, is a potent weapon in its quest for political influence in a Middle East undergoing transition,” analysts suggest:

Nowhere is this influence more clear than in Libya and Syria. In 2011, Qatar helped to boost the rebels who toppled Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi. Today, Qatar is a leading backer of the forces trying to topple the Assad regime in Syria. As an FT investigation has shown, its effort on armament in Syria is now beginning to be overtaken by Saudi Arabia. Still, the emirate has spent $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebels, far exceeding the contribution made by any other government.

As tentative steps begin towards talks to end the conflict in Syria, “Qatar has emerged as a driving force: pouring in tens of millions of dollars to arm Syria’s rebels,” say two prominent analysts.

“Yet it also stands accused of dividing them – and of positioning itself for even greater influence in the post-Assad era,” according to the Financial Times investigation by Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fielding-Smith:

When it comes to backing Syria’s rebels, no one can claim more credit than the gas-rich Gulf state. Whether in terms of armaments or financial support for dissidents, diplomatic manoeuvring or lobbying, Qatar has been in the lead, readily disgorging its gas-generated wealth in the pursuit of the downfall of the House of Assad.

Yet, as the Arab world’s bloodiest uprising grinds on into its third year, Qatar finds itself pulled into a complicated and fractured conflict, the outcome of which has a decreasing ability to influence, while simultaneously becoming a high-profile scapegoat for participants on both sides. Among the Syrian regime’s numerous but fragmented opponents the small Gulf state evokes a surprisingly ambivalent – and often overtly hostile – response.

Qatar’s high degree of exposure partly “reflects the reluctance of western governments to intervene in Syria,” say Khalaf, the FT’s Middle East editor, and Fielding-Smith, the paper’s Lebanon and Syria correspondent.

“However, for Qatar, Syria is also the culmination of an opportunistic foreign policy which saw Doha become the unlikely backer of other Arab revolts in north Africa – and a friend of those who emerge as winners, in most cases Islamists,” they note:

Qatar’s ruling family, the al-Thanis, have no ideological or religious affinity with the Islamists – they are simply not choosy about the beliefs held by useful friends. Qatar has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia’s Islamist al-Nahda party, which won the first elections after the popular revolts. Some politicians in the region believe the emir is trying to position himself as the “Islamist [Gamal] Abdel Nasser”, as one Arab politician put it, referring to the late Egyptian president and the Arab world’s only true pan-Arab leader.

Most of Doha’s neighbours in the Gulf are hostile to the Islamist trend in the region, but this is of little consequence to a state that takes pleasure in being contrarian. Nor are the al-Thanis embarrassed by the contradictions of an autocracy cheerleading for revolution. “The Qataris say if there’s a tsunami coming your way you ride it, not let it hit you,” says a western diplomat describing Qatar’s attitude towards Islamists.

“Qatar’s involvement in Libya also builds on its long relationship with (and subsequent perceived loyalty by) some Libyan Islamists,” notes Lina Khatib, the head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Since the 1990s, Qatar had hosted a number of Libyan Islamists, mainly from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

In an interview with al-Jazeera on September 7, 2011, the Emir of Qatar said “he believed radical Islamists whose views were forged under tyrannical governments could embrace participatory politics if the promise of real democracy and justice of this year’s Arab revolts is fulfilled. If so, the Qatari ruler said, ‘I believe you will see this extremism transform into civilian life and civil society’”.

“As the Qataris have attempted to unite the political opposition by championing the formation of the Syrian National Coalition (the main front) they have been accused of dividing it – just as their efforts to shape a fragmented rebel army into a more coherent form by helping to unify the brigades under one command have contributed to its incoherence,” say the FT investigators:

In the years before the Arab uprisings, Qatar had cultivated its role as a mediator, capable of talking to all sides on the divisions that polarised the Middle East. It hosted the US’s biggest military air base in the region, while maintaining cordial relations with Iran; it held contacts with Israel while simultaneously backing the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hizbollah. On Syria, Qatar soon emerged as one of the few angry voices at Arab summits, pushing for a tougher line.

“In Syria, Qatar became an active protagonist,” says a western diplomat. Having worked to become a kind of Norway of the Gulf, he adds, it also wanted to be “the Gulf version of the UK and France, and you can’t be both at the same time”.

Qatar has come under criticism for funding illiberal actors, including ultraconservative Salafist militants, during the Arab uprisings while suppressing fundamental freedoms at home.

“Groups get funding from both Qatar and Saudi Arabia and they deceive sponsors sometimes,” comments Elizabeth O’Bagy, an analyst at the US Institute for the Study of War, which has published extensive studies of Syria’s fragmented opposition: 

…..as the conflict progressed, the Qataris worked through members of the exiled Muslim Brotherhood to identify rebel factions that should be supported. For example, she says, that is how they linked up with the Farouq brigades, one of the largest and more mainstream factions. ……A rebel leader in the northern Aleppo province, who works with Liwaa al-Tawhid, says he has also received a Saudi intermediary who goes around rebel-held areas distributing funds.

“Indeed, if Qatar is, as its detractors say, seeking to build up a proxy force in Syria to implement its regional agenda, it is doing so in an environment which is not conducive to either loyalty or cohesion,” note khalaf and Fielding-Smith:

With so many different outside sources of sponsorship and no stable organisational structures, rebel groups lurch from alliance to alliance and continually rebrand themselves in the search for support.

Ironically, although the relationship between Riyadh and Doha has long been characterised by mutual suspicion, in many ways they have worked very closely on Syria. However, a crucial division over the Muslim Brotherhood has undoubtedly led to the pursuit of divergent agendas on the Syrian battlefield, with harmful consequences for an opposition in desperate need of unity. For the Saudis, the handful of secular rebel factions, plus the Salafi groups that espouse a stricter Wahabi Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, are vastly preferable to the Brotherhood, a more organised political group and therefore a greater political threat.

“The Saudis say ‘No to the Brotherhood,’” says Riad al-Shaqfa, the leader of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Qataris, on the other hand, are “playing a positive role.”

Observers also give credence to allegations that Qatar has – directly or indirectly – provided assistance to the Al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusrah, although other suggest that may be due to leakage of arms and other charitable contributions from the Gulf.

“Because the Free Syrian Army [FSA] groups work so closely with non-FSA groups these weapons are spreading just because they are fighting side by side – and maybe the groups trade arms with each other as well,” says Eliot Higgins, who analyzes weapons used in the conflict on his Brown Moses blog.

Most Syrians have never heard of Mustafa Sabbagh, “though he is considered the most powerful man in the political opposition,” say the FT investigators:

He doesn’t make many speeches, or issue statements, but he does oversee the coalition’s budget, to which the Qataris are the biggest donors, and is responsible, as one western official says, “for writing the cheques”. While seen by both friends and detractors as a shrewd man who appealed to Qatar officials’ business-minded attitude, Sabbagh has come under criticism for supposedly using his position to control the opposition and further Qatari influence.

Tensions between Sabbagh and secular members of the new National Coalition, announced in Doha in November 2012, emerged after the disputed election of an interim prime minister, Ghassan Hitto, in March.

Claims of Qatari dominance of the opposition persisted….True, the Muslim Brotherhood was no longer the main component, but a new bloc of more than a dozen members, brought in by Sabbagh as representatives of local communities in Syria, sparked new disagreements,” the FT investigators reveal:

It was seen as another bloc that was loyal to Qatar…..Each of these members was supposed to represent a local council in Syria’s different provinces, and together the councils received $8m from Qatar soon after the formation of the coalition. Qatar was also the first – and possibly the only – country to provide funding for the coalition budget, to the tune of $20m, and it delivered the first $10m out of a pledged $100m package for the organisation’s new humanitarian assistance unit.

For all its investment in the conflict, “whether Qatar’s venture into Syrian opposition politics will have any returns will depend on whether Syria survives as a country – something that is by no means assured,” Khalaf and Fielding-Smith conclude:

Perhaps for the Qatari emir, the demise of Assad will be sufficient satisfaction. In theory, Qatar could also emerge with multiple points of influence through Islamists and loyal brigades. But it has already created many enemies inside Syria, and not just among pro-regime supporters. So torn apart is the fabric of Syria’s society, and so radicalised and suspicious its battered population, that the Qataris are more likely to find that they are neither thanked – nor even wanted – there.

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“The divisions between the Qataris and Saudis have partly come about because of the reluctance of the US to engage in the conflict,” the FT suggests:

Washington has recently tried to streamline the flow of arms by Gulf states to the rebels, creating “operation rooms” in Turkey and Jordan to co-ordinate deliveries. But the US effort should have come earlier. In the meantime, the rebels’ fight against Assad will remain confused until the US, Britain and France supply some arms of their own to moderates fighting in Syria.

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Qatar’s ruling emir ‘wants to be the Islamist Nasser’

“The gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels,” according to a new report.

“The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio,” Roula Khalaf and Abigail Fiedling Smith write in The Financial Times:

But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition…. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms transfers, Qatar has sent the most weapons deliveries to Syria, with more than 70 military cargo flights into neighbouring Turkey between April 2012 and March this year.

The emirate’s reputation for punching above its weight as the little state that could is also based on its extensive support for the region’s Islamists groups.

For instance, “Qatar’s involvement in Libya also builds on its long relationship with (and subsequent perceived loyalty by) some Libyan Islamists,” notes Lina Khatib, the head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law:

Since the 1990s, Qatar has hosted a number of Libyan Islamists, mainly from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group…….In an interview with al-Jazeera on September 7, 2011, the Emir of Qatar said “he believed radical Islamists whose views were forged under tyrannical governments could embrace participatory politics if the promise of real democracy and justice of this year’s Arab revolts is fulfilled. If so, the Qatari ruler said, ‘I believe you will see this extremism transform into civilian life and civil society’”.

Qatar has come under criticism for funding illiberal actors, including ultraconservative Salafist militants, during the Arab uprisings while suppressing fundamental freedoms at home.

“Though its approach is driven more by pragmatism and opportunism, than ideology, Qatar has become entangled in the polarised politics of the region, setting off scathing criticism,” note the FT analysts:

Qatar’s support for Islamist groups in the Arab world, which puts it at odds with its peers in the Gulf states, has fuelled rivalry with Saudi Arabia. Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani (above), Qatar’s ruling emir, “wants to be the Arab world’s Islamist (Gamal) Abdelnasser”, said an Arab politician, referring to Egypt’s fiery late president and devoted pan-Arab leader.

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