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Ed Webb

Turkey moves billions in state assets to wealth fund for megaprojects | Middle East Eye - 0 views

  • The Turkish government has ordered the transfer of billions of dollars in state assets to a sovereign wealth fund, in a huge shake-up of holdings aimed at financing ambitious infrastructure projects championed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.The assets being transferred to the sovereign wealth fund range from wholly state-owned Ziraat Bank, the government's minority shareholding in flag carrier Turkish Airlines, as well as smaller firms like the state tea-making company.Ozgur Altug, economist at BGC Capital in Istanbul, said in a note to clients he estimated the value of the transferred assets to be $33 billion and the wealth fund would enjoy the dividends rather than the budget.
  • When the fund was founded in August, the state-run Anadolu news agency said it would be used to finance "mega projects" such as the planned Istanbul shipping canal and a new three-level tunnel under the Bosphorus.
  • But the plan did not meet universal approval, with the spokeswoman of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Selin Sayek Boke calling it a "palace mortgage fund" in reference to Erdogan's presidential complex.CHP MP Faik Oztrak meanwhile compared it to the excesses of 19th century Ottoman bureaucracy.
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  • Turkey is following in the steps of several countries in putting key national assets into a sovereign wealth fund, which can be used for major projects, maintaining pensions and national welfare programmes, or in times of crisis.But Ankara's fund is so far well behind the biggest sovereign wealth funds in energy-rich Norway and the Gulf as well as China.Norway's sovereign wealth fund is the world's largest, worth $892 billion and holding stakes in around 9,000 companies worldwide.
sean lyness

Libya's regime at 40: a state of kleptocracy | openDemocracy - 2 views

  • Tripoli the "Green House", until its English gardening connotations were pointed out.  More reminiscent of other revolutionary trajectories was his renaming of the months of the year (the Roman words being too reminiscent of the Italian imperial yoke), and his attempt to replace all English words by Arabic (even such good friends of the people as "Johnny Walker" [Hanah Mashi] and "7 Up" [Saba'a Fauq].
  • after 9/11, when Libya took a strong rhetorical stand away from its earlier use and endorsement of state terrorism;
  • Since the early 2000s it has become common to argue that Libya is changing. Libya has for sure altered its foreign-and defence-policy course: many countries do in the course even of a long period of rule by a single leader - even Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union or Kim Jong-il's North Korea, for example. But at home, and the regime's heart, the changes are cosmetic.
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  • Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and disappearance still take place
  • no constitutional system
  • Moreover, it is clear is that for all the rhetoric about "revolution" and the "state of the masses" the Libyan leadership has squandered much of the country's wealth twice over: on foolish projects at home and costly adventures abroad.
  • Libya, with a per capita oil output roughly equal to that of Saudi Arabia, boasts few of the advances - the urban and transport development,  educational and health facilities - that the oil-endowed Gulf states can claim
  • Libya has not introduced significant changes to its political system, and especially not with regard to human rights or governance. The Jamahiriyah remains in 2009 one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes. Its 6 million people enjoy no significant freedoms
  • The improvement in Libya's international profile in recent years reflects the abandonment of the regime's nuclear-weapons programme and its policy of hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder).
  • For Libya's reputation among other Arab states and peoples is abysmal, if the state is not actually an object of contempt.
  • Libya is far from the most brutal regime in the world, or even the region: it has less blood on its hands than (for example) Sudan, Iraq, and Syria
  • ruled for forty years with no attempt to secure popular legitimation.
  • The Libyan people have for far too long been denied the right to choose their own leaders and political system - and to benefit from their country's wealth via oil-and-gas deals of the kind the west is now so keen to promote. 
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     despite a reputation for random arrests and tortures and a public denied the benefits of its country's oil wealth, Libya maintains permissible international image through "cosmetic changes" (?), dropping their nuclear weapons program, and abandoning its policy of "hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder)."
Ed Webb

Will MBS Bankrupt Saudi Arabia? - Middle East News - Haaretz.com - 0 views

  • five years in and with little progress in sight, cracks are appearing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project to diversify the oil-driven Saudi economy. Neom’s former employees raised concerns that bringing the giga-project out of the realm of science fiction might never happen. Architecture experts have called it “insane.” Sources inside the royal circle no longer shy away from lashing out at MBS’ ever-changing ideas, “mood swings,” “terrible tempers” and fear-based leadership.
  • “The general concern is this will turn out like for the Shah of Iran, developing schemes that become incredibly detached from reality and no one will tell him to refocus,” a source familiar with the dynamics of Saudi Arabia’s royal family told me, on condition of anonymity
  • the risk of the Crown Prince ending up in an echo chamber cemented by yes-men. Power consolidation under MBS is unprecedented in Saudi Arabia’s recent history, moving the kingdom’s system from “one of consensus within the family to one-man rule.”
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  • Leaks reveal insiders’ growing uneasiness, which points to the elephant-in-the-room question: Will MBS’ grandiose venture bankrupt the kingdom?
  • Saudi private investors will also be encouraged to pitch in during a potential public listing of Neom in 2024. That raises questions about how consensual this private investment will be. Indeed, Saudi Arabia reportedly “bullied” several of the kingdom’s wealthiest families to become cornerstone investors out of “patriotic duty” in the IPO of Saudi energy firm Aramco in 2019.
  • a large chunk of Saudi money carefully set aside for decades to fund the transition to a post-oil era will pay for Neom's astronomical price tag. A bet on an unproven vision
  • “Infrastructure spending is like doing lines of cocaine; you have to do bigger and bigger and bigger lines just to feel high,”
  • Neom’s initial burst of economic activity, if unsustainable at a similar pace, would simply be "stealing" future economic benefits to create an illusion of growth right now
  • perhaps the motive is not sustainable growth at all, but creating what Pettis calls a "pyramid effect." This would be an attempt to copy monarchs of ancient Egypt who redistributed wealth to the population through jobs – paid laborers built Egyptian pyramids, not slaves. Although Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is already redistributed to ordinary Saudis through public-sector jobs and subsidies, a large tranche is retained and stored in its sovereign wealth funds and U.S. Treasuries. In theory, flushing Saudi citizens with cash would stimulate the local non-oil economy. But in practice, the pyramid effect is likely to first and foremost cause economic leakages, as the kingdom imports most of what it consumes locally, including labor, despite the “Saudification” of the labor market being one of Vision 2030’s key priorities. Migrant workers account for about 77 percent of private sector jobs. At Neom, highly paid Western consultants are toiling to match MBS’ demands, and Asian low-income workers are building it, remitting Saudi money home.
  • Riyadh sweetened the project’s launch party with a flurry of social reforms, such as lifting the ban on women driving. (Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world to lift this kind of ban, and it didn’t do so as a principled stand on behalf of women’s rights.) The idea was not only creating a buzz among investors and the global public, but whipping up aspirational momentum among Saudis.
  • 60 skyscrapers that were built in Riyadh’s financial center are still standing largely empty.
  • MBS, high on his visionary self-branding and his concentration of power, may have to pay the costs of bankruptcy – whether by admitting full responsibility or via a renewed deployment of decidedly imperious and despotic tactics to crush dissent. The latter path is, of course, what the late Shah of Iran chose, with notorious results.
Ed Webb

Mohammed bin Salman Isn't Wonky Enough - Foreign Policy - 0 views

  • Like Western investors, the kingdom’s elites are uncertain about what the new order means for the country’s economy. The new Saudi leadership has indeed created new opportunities, but many of the deep structural barriers to diversification remain unchanged. The bulk of the public sector remains bloated by patronage employment, the private sector is still dominated by cheap foreign labor, and private economic activity remains deeply dependent on state spending. Addressing these challenges could take a generation — and it will require patience, creativity, and a clearer sense of priorities.
  • While a band of Al Saud brothers used to rule collectively with the king as a figurehead, decision-making has now become centralized under one man
  • ruthlessness and willingness to take risks radically at odds with the cautious and consensual political culture of the Al Saud clan
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  • New policies and programs are announced constantly, while the delivery capacity of the sluggish Saudi bureaucracy continues to lag. Below the upper echelons, the Saudi state remains the deeply fragmented, bloated, and slow-moving machine that I described in my 2010 book. The government seems to have no clear strategy for reforming this bureaucracy
  • While space for political opposition arguably has narrowed, women will soon be allowed to drive and the religious police force that once harassed them has been almost entirely neutered. By relaxing religious controls over the public sphere, the crown prince is seeking to attract more foreign investment and facilitate diversification into tourism and entertainment
  • Saudi Arabia has tackled fiscal reforms more vigorously than most local and international observers expected, introducing unprecedented tax and energy price measures, including the introduction of a 5 percent value added tax, new levies on foreign workers, and increases in electricity and transport fuel prices. The government is now experimenting with new non-oil sectors with an increased sense of urgency, including information technology and defense manufacturing.
  • As limits on government employment kick in, young Saudis will increasingly have no choice but to seek private jobs. But they will face tough competition on the private labor market where employers have become accustomed to recruiting low-wage workers from poorer Arab and Asian countries
  • public sector employment remains the key means of providing income to Saudi nationals. Cheap foreign labor dominates private sector employment, thereby keeping consumer inflation at bay and business owners happy. Citizens, however, are parked in the overstaffed public sector. Out of every three jobs held by Saudis, roughly two are in government. The average ratio around the world is one in five. Public sector wages account for almost half of total government spending, among the highest shares in the world
  • Local economic advisors fear that the majority of private petrochemicals firms — the most developed part of Saudi industry — would lose money if prices of natural gas, their main input, increase to American levels.
  • Saudi wage demands will have to drop further if private job creation is to substitute for the erstwhile government employment guarantee. For the time being, private job creation has stalled as the government has pursued moderate austerity since 2015 in response to deficits and falling oil prices
  • The government has also underestimated how dependent private businesses are on state spending. The share of state spending in the non-oil economy is extremely high compared to other economies. Historically, almost all private sector growth has resulted from increases in public spending
  • As long as oil prices remain below $70 per barrel, the goal of a balanced budget will cause pain for businesses and limit private job creation. This will pose a major political challenge at a time when an estimated 200,000 Saudis are entering the labor market every year. More than 60 percent of the population is under 30, which means that the citizen labor force will grow rapidly for at least the next two decades.
  • It would be far more prudent to gently prepare citizens and businesses for a difficult and protracted adjustment period and to focus on a smaller number of priorities
  • The key structural challenge to non-oil growth is the way the Saudi government currently shares its wealth, most notably through mass public employment — an extremely expensive policy that bloats the bureaucracy, distorts labor markets, and is increasingly inequitable in an era when government jobs can no longer be guaranteed to all citizens. A stagnating economic pie that might even shrink in the coming years must be shared more equitably.
  • A basic income would not only guarantee a basic livelihood for all citizens, but also serve as a grand political gesture that could justify difficult public sector reforms. A universal wealth-sharing scheme would make it easier to freeze government hiring and send a clear signal that, from now on, Saudis need to seek and acquire the skills for private employment and entrepreneurship. The government could supplement this scheme by charging fees to firms that employ foreigners while subsidizing wages for citizens to fully close the wage gap between the two.
  • Focusing on such fundamentals might be less exciting than building new cities in the desert or launching the world’s largest-ever IPO — but they are more important for the kingdom’s economic future. No country as dependent on petroleum as Saudi Arabia has ever effectively diversified away from oil
Ed Webb

The king's dilemma in Morocco | Politics | Al Jazeera - 0 views

  • On October 24, Morocco's King Mohammed VI sacked four ministers and barred five former ministers from ever taking official duties. The king's "wrath" comes as a rebuke for the government's poor performance and for "serious dysfunctions" in a five-year development plan launched by the king in 2015 to promote socio-economic development in the northern al-Hoceima region.
  • the sacking of government ministers is merely the latest example of the increasing royal emasculation of the political class, and an astute deflection from the palace's own responsibility in the current socio-political malaise in Morocco.
  • The monarchy's constant manipulation of the political party scene and civil society has removed the buffer between the royal institution and the people, and has exposed the palace to direct scrutiny
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  • the monarchy is not a passive actor in the Moroccan state edifice. It is well-entrenched in the system, and has for decades fostered a patronage system inimical to transparency and accountability, and conducive to venal practices, rampant in the Moroccan state and its institutions
  • The royal decision aims to deflect away from the palace's own shadow cabinet, which in fact holds most political and administrative power, and whose members are the architects of the Makhzen state and Morocco's neo-liberal policies. The kingdom may be, in the words of the sovereign, "enjoying economic dynamism which creates wealth," but that wealth has largely been concentrated in the orbit of the palace and its cronies. 
  • No government has had the effective political mandate to govern. This has weakened the political parties in Morocco, which for the most part suffer from a lack of mobilisation capacity. Elite consensus on the supremacy of the regime prevents political parties from directly challenging the king's power. The regime's ability to co-opt new bases of political appeal clutters the public sphere, making it less open to alternatives from opposition forces.   
  • the monarchy's constant control over the political sphere is ill-devised in the post-Arab uprisings, where the protests of February 20 and the current Hirak movement in Hoceima have somewhat demystified the monarchy
  • Street demands would have been absorbed by civil society and channelled through institutional mechanisms if the Makhzen, at the behest of the palace, hadn't impoverished the political scene and emasculated its most promising actors.
Ed Webb

Why Saudi Arabia is all in on sports - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia’s history with WWE, like much of its frenetic investment in sports and entertainment over the past few years, is a study in how little diplomacy is needed when you control one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history. Using their Public Investment Fund, valued at more than $776 billion, the Saudis have effectively bought some of the world’s most loyal fan bases, bent opponents to their will and wildly shifted the economics of international sports.
  • In the sports world, overcoming a reputation as a global pariah — condemned by human rights organizations for alleged war atrocities and its links to the 9/11 hijackers, the imprisonment of activists and the Khashoggi assassination — has been as simple for Saudi Arabia as advancing claims of innocence or autonomy.
  • The Saudi Pro League has become the default destination for aging soccer legends seeking unprecedented paydays, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly is paid roughly $220 million per year to play for Al Nassr. Lionel Messi turned down a similar bounty in favor of playing in the United States. But he still agreed to promote Saudi Arabia for a reported $25 million under a contract that mandates he is not permitted to make any remarks that “tarnish” the kingdom.
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  • The Saudis have used their financial clout to ground down enemies in ways big and small, from Iranian American wrestlers facing scripted humiliation in WWE shows to American golf executives being forced to swallow previous bitter condemnations of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s golf takeover this year, in which the kingdom coerced the PGA Tour into a planned alliance after effectively winning a game of high-stakes chicken over the fate of one of the world’s most popular sports, struck some analysts as the final dam to break in the sports world’s resistance to Saudi involvement.
  • Sheikh celebrated by buying a $4.8 million Bugatti before landing on a larger vanity purchase. After a stint as honorary president of an Egyptian soccer club ended with him warring with management, Sheikh poured millions into buying a rival team and moving it to Cairo. Months later, he abandoned Egyptian soccer while lamenting the “headache.”
  • Sheikh’s management style has embodied Saudi Arabia’s foray into global sports: free-spending, rancorous and hyper-political. He commandeered the lectern at an international chess tournament in Riyadh to rail against “ministate” Qatar, and he ranted that the Saudi soccer team had put in “less than 5 percent effort” during a World Cup loss to Russia. With his penchant for showmanship, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the PIF’s first massive investments would be bringing WWE to Saudi Arabia — and, with it, hired wrestlers acting out the humiliation of what was then a Saudi enemy nation.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementAt the Greatest Royal Rumble in Riyadh in April 2018, two Iranian American wrestlers, waving the Iranian flag, confronted four young Saudi wrestlers. The scripted comeuppance was swift: The Saudis pummeled the Iranians, brothers Ariya and Shawn Daivari, threw them out of the ring and sent them limping away as the crowd jeered.
  • Many Westerners ascribe a singular motive to Saudi Arabia, if not the entire Middle East, for its interest in sports: sportswashing. And Saudi Arabia has used sports to market its supposed makeover to the outside world — and to guard its image.
  • Another key currency in sports (and adjacent Spandex-clad theater) was embedded in that brief anti-Iranian WWE storyline, a forgettable footnote for American viewers. Saudi leaders have attempted to move the country away from religious fundamentalism, or Islamism, to replace it with something more palatable to global commerce: nationalism, partly ginned up by crushing Middle Eastern rivals at a game it came late to.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementSaudi Arabia, with its geriatric leadership until six years ago, had inadvertently given the United Arab Emirates and Qatar a decades-long head start at investing in sports — but the much larger country has been a bully ever since.
  • by dissuading potential religious extremism, “The idea is to get the country to look quote-unquote ‘normal.’ ”
  • “one of those key moments of reputation laundering and propaganda that Mohammed bin Salman needed at that time: an American organization with a billionaire as famous as Vince McMahon appearing in Saudi Arabia and things going on as normal.”
  • In the years since Khashoggi’s murder, financial leaders returned to doing business with Saudi Arabia, partly revealed when the kingdom released a list of partners in venture capital, including some of the highest-profile firms in the world. (That includes Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. In 2022, the PIF invested roughly $430 million in Amazon.) In sports, reticent executives became increasingly easy marks for a kingdom practiced at bending opponents to its will.
  • The PIF’s effort to purchase Newcastle United was stalled by Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in one of the world’s largest piracy operations, which for years brazenly stole Qatari content, including that of Premier League games, and beamed it to set-top boxes in Saudi homes.Saudi Arabia denied having a role in the piracy. Investigations by several organizations, from the World Trade Organization to FIFA, found otherwise. The piracy halted just before the PIF was set to complete its purchase of Newcastle.
  • “The majority of fans don’t care.”
  • The Saudis — with a diversified portfolio full of other sports — were willing to blow up golf. Pro golf executives, it turns out, were not.
  • Endeavor, helmed by Ari Emanuel, announced in April a $21 billion deal to merge UFC, its mixed martial arts company, with WWE. Less than five years earlier, Emanuel had returned $400 million to the Saudis so as not to have to partner with them in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. But Endeavor and its related companies had recently done business with the kingdom again — including Endeavor’s IMG negotiating media rights for the Saudi Pro League. Under TKO, the company created in the merger with Emanuel as CEO, WWE plans to continue its Saudi shows. And UFC recently announced it would hold its first event in Saudi Arabia next year.
Ed Webb

A Betrayed Revolution?: On the Tunisian Uprising and the Democratic Transition - 0 views

  • it appears that if there was "betrayal" of the revolution, it is not necessarily in the opposition between "religious conservatives" and "secular progressives." The partisan tactic of pitting these two camps against one another masks the difficulty of the entire political class to meet the popular demands for social justice.
  • the voices of social resistance are never killed: they occupied sites in the capital until the month of March, they occupied factories, besieged the ministries, and, more recently, occupied the streets of Sidi Bouzid in the summer of 2012. They no longer oppose and harass Ben Ali’s regime, but instead, shift their frustration toward the provisionary government led by the Ennahda party. They were reunited under a simple slogan, that of the revolution before the final “Dégage”: “Work, freedom and national dignity,” similar to the winter variety heard sometimes as “Bread, Water, No to Ben Ali!”
  • The consideration of social fractures shows to what extent the confrontation between the "secularists" and "religious," given so much scope in the French newspapers, is not a central concern. There is no denying that there were certainly demonstrations to protect the status of Tunisian women, and there is equally an obvious presence of radicalized young Islamists in the streets of Tunisia who intend to impose a puritan and orthodox rule. Yet, the reading of social tensions in Tunisia in terms of identity imposed both by the defenders of secularism (Tunisian specificity, Bourguibist inheritance) and by the Islamists (who, in this way, mask their inability to meet the social demand for justice) is an illusion. After the elections of October 2011 the Islamists, who had strongly emphasized their religiosity and the persecutions they had suffered under the former regime – deemed, in particular, to distance them from corruption – have suddenly lost their subversive potential. After being persecuted, after presenting themselves as "pure," they are now in power.
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  • the Revolution did not bring the Islamists to power, rather they seized power in the context of the elections that followed. Notably, it is by shifting debates into the field of identity that they could win these elections, while parties, notably the left, failed to build a single and audible speech in the confusion that reigned
  • the revolution did not take place in a “fallow” social field or a tabula rasa. The national movement and the struggle for independence contributed to the formation of political and administrative elites. Bourguiba's long reign was not only terror and could not prevent the development of a strong trade union movement, or of a feminist movement still active despite its appropriation under the Bourguibist regime, who built an image of liberating the country and its women,[3] and then under the Ben Ali dictatorship, who used it as an excuse to earn its stripes of modernist despotism, fighting against the Islamist threat. This wealth of mobilization and the social movements’ vigor has had a paradoxical fate: they have produced highly recognized characteristics of modern Tunisia (notably secularism and the status of women), while being the victims of a repression
  • the extent of the crackdown on leftist movements from 1968 to 1978, under the Bourguiban power, which eventually struck the Islamists, led to the implementation of a "selective" education of contemporary history in primary and high schools, and the Benalist propaganda simply replacing that of Bourguiba
  • the constitution of the party led by former Interim Prime Minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, Nida Tounès. Such an agglomeration of political forces would have been unimaginable a few years earlier. Indeed, this party brings together many of the former partisans of Ben Ali’s regime - and Bourguiba’s – and, like Essebsi himself, a fraction of the post-communist left under the banner of the struggle against the Islamists and for Tunisia’s modern identity. There are those who have been adversaries for a long time, employing a platform that takes great care to remain on the side of national identity (especially vis-à-vis the outside world), of "progressivism," and of modernity, to avoid social and ideological issues. He stands in front of Ennahda as its mirror image. The emergence of such a force, unknown in terms of electoral score and what this might represent, shows the effect of "retrospective treason" produced by the passage from a revolutionary situation to a new context of electoral democracy. Meanwhile, it gave neither the time nor the effort to develop social positions establishing democracy. The press is weak and most often simply amplifies the voices of political actors without deepening the issues. Associations are quite present but very few of them have taken up the question of democracy, with the possible exception of those who were involved during the campaign
  • The union has also reaffirmed its independence and willingness to engage itself "alongside civil society and the Tunisian people in its diversity to defend not only the working masses, but also and above all, the Republic and its institutions.[6]” It is not surprising that the UGTT is the only prevailing force. It relies on its 517,000 members, its territorial coverage, and its history.
  • Here, there seems to be a form of necessary betrayal of the "democratic revolution”—difficult to perceive and to decrypt, bitter to those who experience it, but which certainly does not amount to one party’s representative takeover over the rest.
Ed Webb

Egypt's revolution continues as grassroots rage against fragmented elite | World news |... - 0 views

  • To understand what's happening in Egypt, it's important to distinguish between at least two separate struggles that are playing out, the outcomes of which will shape Egypt's ongoing revolution for some time to come.The first is a factional conflict within the ruling elite
  • another, more critical struggle unfolding too, between those fighting to destroy the old authoritarian system that for decades has denied them political and economic agency, that plunders Egypt's public wealth in the name of private profiteers and arrests, tortures and kills those daring to defy it – and those seeking to protect it.
  • Morsi insisted he would reach out to all political factions and heal Egypt at this turbulent time; he promised consensus not partisanship, a constitution that would reflect the national will and not the private interests of the Brotherhood, a revolutionary pursuit of social justice and an end to state violence against its citizens.It was those promises that handed him the presidency: millions reluctantly gave Morsi their vote because they believed in his commitment to the revolution. He failed on every measure, and now – despite the cries of those who believe democracy involves nothing more than a single ballot twice a decade – many Egyptians are unwilling to hang around for another three years to hold him to account and get their revolution back on track.
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  • Time and again Egyptians have refused to accept the elite settlement forced upon them. First the Mubarak regime, then the junta and now the Brotherhood have all been exposed and rejected by grassroots force.
Ed Webb

Mysteries of the Emir - By Marc Lynch | Foreign Policy - 0 views

  • Vanishingly few modern Arab leaders have ever voluntarily stepped down, even when terminally ill, incapacitated, or deeply unpopular (none of which apply to the outgoing emir)
  • the emir's decision is as shocking in its own way as were the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings
  • Those crafting the official version of the handover have therefore been exceedingly keen to present it as a historic but normal move, one that might even be emulated by other Arab monarchs -- were they as bold and farsighted as the departing Sheikh Hamad.
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  • Arab monarchs are more likely to quietly cheer the departure of a leader they have viewed as an unpredictable irritant and an undependable member of the GCC club. "What happened … in Qatar will most likely stay in Qatar," remarked the Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla.
  • Great wealth, international backing, well-honed internal divide-and-rule strategies, and effective cross-national cooperation have helped the regimes resist those pressures. But the intense crackdowns across the Gulf over the last few years on human rights activists, political protests, Shiite citizens, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even online "insults" to the leadership show just how insecure and paranoid these regimes have become
  • Sheikh Hamad's decision to transfer power to an untested young successor -- and during such testing times -- may be a sign of how relatively secure that regime is relative to its Arab counterparts
  • What most non-Qataris really want to know is what this change means for Qatari foreign policy. Allow me to summarize in two words the thousand articles already written on the subject: Nobody knows
  • the departure of the director-general of Al Jazeera, who stepped down to join the new cabinet after less than two undistinguished years. Will his replacement take steps to restore the reputation of the flagship Arabic station, which has lost a great deal of credibility over the last two years due to its coverage of Syria and Egypt? Will the new leadership continue Al Jazeera's dizzying global expansion strategy, including the launch of Al Jazeera America, scheduled for this fall?
  • what happened in Doha most certainly will not stay in Doha. Given Qatar's active role in virtually every one of the region's interlocking problems, from Egypt to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Palestine, the new emir's choices will matter in ways far less predictable then many seem to believe
Ed Webb

The Ouarzazate Solar Plant in Morocco: Triumphal 'Green' Capitalism and the Privatizati... - 0 views

  • a solar mega-project that is supposedly going to end Morocco's dependency on energy imports, provide electricity to more than a million Moroccans, and put the country on a “green path.”
  • The land, sold at a cheap one Moroccan dirham per square meter was clearly worth a lot more. As if things were not bad enough, the duped local population were surprised to find out that the money from the sale was not going to be handed to them, but that it would be deposited into the tribe's account at the Ministry of Interior. Additionally, the money would be used to finance development projects for the whole area. They discovered that their land sale was not a sale at all: it was simply a transfer of funds from one government agency to another.
  • What seems to unite all the reports and articles written about the solar plant is a deeply erroneous assumption that any move toward renewable energy is to be welcomed. And that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, will help us to avert climate chaos. One needs to say it clearly from the start: the climate crisis we are currently facing is not attributable to fossil fuels per se, but rather to their unsustainable and destructive use in order to fuel the capitalist machine. In other words, capitalism is the culprit, and if we are serious in our endeavors to tackle the climate crisis (only one facet of the multi-dimensional crisis of capitalism), we cannot elude questions of radically changing our ways of producing and distributing things, our consumption patterns and fundamental issues of equity and justice. It follows from this that a mere shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while remaining in the capitalist framework of commodifying and privatizing nature for the profits of the few, will not solve the problem. In fact, if we continue down this path we will only end up exacerbating, or creating another set of problems, around issues of ownership of land and natural resources.
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  • the acquisition of 3000 hectares of communally owned land to produce energy
  • "green grabbing"
  • the transfer of ownership, use rights and control over resources that were once publicly or privately owned –or not even the subject of ownership– from the poor (or everyone including the poor) into the hands of the powerful
  • This productivist creation of marginality and degradation has a long history that goes back to French colonial times. It was then that degradation narratives were constructed to justify both outright expropriation of land and the establishment of institutional arrangements based on the premise that extensive pastoralism was unproductive at best, and destructive at worst.
  • the discursive framework rendered it "marginal" and open to new "green" market uses: the production of solar power in this case at the expense of an alternative land use - pastoralism - that is deemed unproductive by the decision-makers. This is evident in the land sale that was carried out at a very low price.
  • various deceptive laws with colonial origins that have functioned to concentrate collective land ownership within the hands of an individual land representative, who tends to be under the influence of powerful regional nobles
  • meetings masquerading as a "consultation with the people" were only designed to inform the local communities about a fait accompli rather than seeking their approval
  • This analysis examines the project through the lens of the creation of a new commodity chain, revealing its effects as no different from the destructive mining activities taking place in southern Morocco.
  • privatizations in the renewable energy sector are not new as of 2005, when a royal holding company called Nareva was created specifically to monopolize markets in the energy and environment sectors and ended up taking the lion's share in wind energy production in the country
  • he government had effectively privatized and confiscated historical popular sovereignty over land and transformed the people into mere recipients of development; development they are literally paying for, provided it would one day materialize, of course
  • There is no surprise regarding the international financial institutions' (IFIs) strong support for this high-cost and capital-intensive project, as Morocco boasts one of the most neoliberal(ized) economies in the region. It is extremely open to foreign capital at the expense of labor rights, and very advanced in its ambition to be fully integrated into the global marketplace (in a subordinate position, that is).
  • The World Bank’s disbursement levels to Morocco reached record levels in 2011 and 2012, with a major emphasis of these loans placed on promoting the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) within key sectors
  • It seems that production of energy from the sun will not be different and will be controlled by multinationals only interested in making huge profits at the expense of sovereignty and a decent life for Moroccans.
  • The idea that Morocco is taking out billions of dollars in loans to produce energy, some of which will be exported to Europe when the economic viability of the initiative is hardly assured, raises questions about externalizing the risk of Europe's renewable energy strategy to Morocco and other struggling economies around the region. It ignores entirely what has come to be called "climate debt" or "ecological debt" that is owed by the industrialised North to countries of the Global South, given the historical responsibility of the West in causing climate change
  • The biggest issue with this technology is the extensive use of water that comes with the wet cooling stage. Unlike photovoltaic (PV) technology, CSP needs cooling. This is done either by air cooled condensers (dry cooling) or high water-consumption (wet cooling). Phase I of the project will be using the wet cooling option and is estimated to consume from two to three million cubed meters of water annually (Kouz 2011). Water consumption will be much less in the case of a dry cooling (planned for phase II): between 0.73 and 0.88 million cubed meters. PV technologies require water only for cleaning solar panels. They consume about 200 times less water than CSP technology with wet cooling and forty times less water than CSP with dry cooling.
  • Even if the solar plant is only using one percent of the average dam capacity, the water consumption is still significant and can become a thorny problem at times of extreme drought when the dam contains only fifty-four million cubed meter. At such times, the dam waters will not be sufficient to cover the needs of irrigation and drinking water,  making the water usage for the solar plant deeply problematic and contentious.
  • in an arid region like Ouarzazate, this appropriation of water for a supposedly green agenda constitutes another green grab, which will play into and intensify ongoing agrarian dynamics and livelihood struggles in the region.
  • If the Moroccan state was really serious about its green credentials, why is it then building a coal-fired power plant at the same time, which represents an ecocide in-waiting for the already-polluted town of Safi? Why is it also ignoring the devastating environmental and social effects of the mining industry in the country? One notable example is the long-standing community struggle in Imider (140 kilometres east of Ouarzazate) against the royal holding silver mine (Africa's most productive silver mine), which is polluting their environment, grabbing their water, and pillaging their wealth.
Ed Webb

The Egyptian Republic of Retired Generals - By Zeinab Abul-Magd | The Middle East Channel - 0 views

  • Will any civilian winner be able to demilitarize the Egyptian state?
  • the discourse of presidential candidates avoids even acknowledging this situation, much less making a case for demilitarizing the state.
  • As Mubarak was grooming his son, Gamal, for presidency, he tried to ensure the loyalty of the military and stave off potential dissent by hiring military officers for economic and bureaucratic positions. The last 14 months, since the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) assumed power following Mubarak's departure, has seen a rapid increase in the number of officers in the civilian positions.
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  • Sadat promulgated Law Number 47 of 1978 in order to end Nasser's legacy and reduce military presence in the cabinet, and Mubarak used the same law to bring them back
  • Pensions are typically low, the equivalent of monthly salaries without the extra allowances they enjoy while in service. These salaries are only somewhere between $400 and $500. In February 2011, five days after the end of the uprisings and the dissolution of Mubarak's parliament, the SCAF used their vague authority to amend this retirement law and introduce a 15 percent raise in pensions. But this is still not enough to cover increasing cost of living expenses in Egypt. Thus, the leadership offers officers civilian jobs with considerable salaries to supplement their unsatisfying pensions.
  • In order to keep the hierarchical structure of the Egyptian military, the institution dismisses a significant number of officers at the ranks of Colonel and Brigadier General in their early 40s. It promotes only a small number into the ranks of Major General, Lieutenant General, and Chief of Staff, who in turn usually retire in their early 50s. The relatively young age at which officers leave service provides a perfect excuse for the military to place them at civilian jobs, lest they use their professional training in activities harmful to national security
  • In order to keep a civilian face for the state in Cairo, only a few officers are hired as ministers, such as the minister of provincial development and the minister of information, running state-owned media. Outside the cabinet, they prefer certain spots where influence and wealth are concentrated. In the north and the south, 18 out of the 27 province governors are retired army generals. This includes key locations, such as touristic provinces in Upper Egypt, all the Suez Canal provinces, two Sinai provinces, sometimes Alexandria, and major Delta areas. Additionally, they serve as governors' chiefs-of-staff, directors of small towns, and heads of both wealthy and poor highly populated districts in Cairo.
  • The head of the Supreme Constitutional Court now was originally an army officer who previously served as a judge in military courts. This judge, Faruq Sultan, also currently serves as the head of the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission. Ironically, retired officers even dominate in government bodies dedicated to oversight: The head of the Organization of Administrative Monitoring is a retired general and its offices across the nation are staffed with army personnel.
  • There are three major military bodies engaged in civilian production: the Ministry of Military Production, running eight factories; the Arab Organization for Industrialization, running 12 factories; and the National Service Products Organization, running 15 factories, companies, and farms. They produce a wide variety of goods, including luxury jeeps, infant incubators, butane gas cylinders, plastic tubes, canned food, meat, chicken, and more. They also provide services, like domestic cleaning and gas station management. 
  • Civilians working under retired army personnel show continuous discontent about mismanagement, corruption, and injustice.
  • Labor strikes are primarily harming the military economic interests rather than the national economy.
  • "The military produces the best managers," Wuhiba said
  • Loyalty raises them into higher ranks within the army and then prestigious civilian positions afterward. Whereas under Nasser military managers adopted the socialist ideology, today they embrace neither socialist nor neo-liberal politics -- they are neutral. Their leaders in camps train them as young officers to maintain political neutrality and ensure that they uphold only one ideology: Egyptian nationalism. The majority are just individuals seeking to maximize their personal benefits later in life.
  • an elected president will certainly fail to demilitarize, and nothing will change.
Ed Webb

Director of Tunsia's National Archives: "We Need Action" on Transitional Justice : Tuni... - 0 views

  • Many Tunisians do not share Lassaad’s confidence in the country’s recent record-keeping. Rumors have circulated widely since the revolution that the Interior Ministry archives have been strategically cleaned and those of the ATCE, the ministry charged with targeting propaganda to foreign media, simply destroyed.
  • Jallab confirmed that much of the archives of the ATCE were indeed largely destroyed shortly after the revolution. Additionally, the files of certain municipalities and local police bureaus, as well as most regional branches of the RCD, Ben Ali’s ruling party, have also disappeared
  • the record that Jallab claims remains is rich: most of the archives of the Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, the Presidency, and the headquarters of the RCD party, to which all the regional branches of the party transmitted their records. In addition, 1,800 boxes of files from the now-dissolved Ministry of Information were transferred to the National Archives this past March
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  • there is indeed still interference by government officials in the work of archivists at Tunisian ministries
  • While there may well exist a wealth of information concerning the torturers, embezzlers, and other legalized criminals of Tunisia’s past, there is not yet an organized political will to bring that information to bear in a court of law
  • Samir Dilou, the Minister of Transitional Justice, stated in a recent interview with The Egypt Independent that the job of his ministry is not to pursue cases of crimes by members of the government, but to work on reforming the current Tunisian justice system
sean lyness

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,”
  • “This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,”
  • Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact. Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
Ed Webb

Prosperity in Sudan Wins Votes for Leader, Bashir - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • Mr. Bashir probably could have won without rigging
  • Rare are pictures of him decked out in his military uniform or like an Islamic sheik, images he has projected before. Most posters today show him standing in front of icons of industry: a dam, a factory, a road, a steamroller.
  • Corruption is not a crippling problem here, as it is in neighboring Kenya, or in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, two African nations blessed with staggering amounts of resources but suffering from the so-called resource curse. World Bank executives say Sudan has some of the sharpest economic policy makers on the continent, who have invested wisely in infrastructure, education and the country’s agriculture industry.
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  • wealth here is not evenly shared. Mr. Bashir’s Sudan is a thoroughly militarized place, and the president’s troops are among the biggest beneficiaries of the boom, constantly getting new weapons, trucks, hospitals and other perks
Ed Webb

Is Oman ready to mourn Qaboos? - 0 views

  • Despite maintaining a low profile, Oman remains an extremely important regional actor, particularly as it is on good terms with both Iran and the Saudi-West alliance. In particular, Oman was the only gulf state to recognise the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and more recently it has played a significant role in supporting the P5+1 talks over Iran's nuclear programme, including hosting the latest round of talks.
  • the Sultan rules through decree and occupies several positions at the top of government
  • Oman has managed to cultivate a reputation as the "world's most charming police state".
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  • the Oman 2020 plan, launched in 1995. With the goal of diversifing the economy away from hydrocarbons and increasing the ratio of nationals in public and private employment to 95 per cent, from 68 per cent in 1996. However, these two goals have proven somewhat contradictory. The high rate of foreign labour in both the public and private sectors has increased since 2009 when a Free Trade Agreement with the US came into force– more than doubling the 2005 figure. High rates of unemployment, low wages and the concentration of wealth among elites aligned to the government were contributing factors to the popular unrest of 2011-12.
  • Oman faces a number of pressing, and distinctly Omani-challenges in the immediate and mid-term
  • if we follow the categorisation of the region's regimes discussed by Henry and Springborg in Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, we can see that Qaboos' Oman represents an almost completely different approach to government from most other regimes in the region. Indeed, it reflects neither the kind of practices of a bunker state – associated with rule "through military/security/party structures that are in turn controlled by alliances of these leaders' families and tribes", such as was the case in Salah's Yemen, Assad's Syria or Gaddafi's Libya – nor the kind of "bully praetorianism" which characterised the kleptocratic regimes of Ben Ali's Tunisia, Mubarak's Egypt or the PLO/PA under Arafat. Moreover, it also differs from the strife riddled monarchies in Riyadh and Manama particularly in as much as the ruling family has not gone out of its way to ostracise, exclude and oppress particular sections of the population. Instead, according to Henry and Springborg, "being the sole GCC ruler without a solid family and tribal base ... [Qaboos' Oman has] been the most assiduous in seeking to build an identity that simultaneously glorifies the Sultan himself".
  • Under a 1996 constitutional provision a council comprising members of the ruling family and senior officials is granted three days from the Sultan's death to choose a successor. If this process fails to provide a clear transition, then a contingency plan would be activated. This, as Qaboos himself told Foreign Affairs in a 1997 interview, would mean that: "As for a successor, the process, always known to us, has now been publicised in the Basic Law. When I die, my family will meet. If they cannot agree on a candidate, the Defence Council will decide, based on a name or names submitted by the previous sultan. I have already written down two names, in descending order, and put them in sealed envelopes in two different regions."
  • 49 per cent of residents under the age of 20
  • some dissatisfaction arose during the height of the uprisings across the region in 2011-12. Though initially it appeared that Qaboos had handled popular protests deftly – through increased public sector spending, and some political reorganisation and an anti-corruption campaign – frustration at the slow pace of reform contributed to strikes by workers at Petroleum Development Oman and protests elsewhere. Authorities countered with arrests and a draconian crackdown on freedom of speech including hacking the social media accounts of intellectuals involved in the protest
Ed Webb

Exporting Jihad - The New Yorker - 0 views

  • A friend of Mohamed’s, an unemployed telecommunications engineer named Nabil Selliti, left Douar Hicher to fight in Syria. Oussama Romdhani, who edits the Arab Weekly in Tunis, told me that in the Arab world the most likely radicals are people in technical or scientific fields who lack the kind of humanities education that fosters critical thought. Before Selliti left, Mohamed asked him why he was going off to fight. Selliti replied, “I can’t build anything in this country. But the Islamic State gives us the chance to create, to build bombs, to use technology.” In July, 2013, Selliti blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Iraq.
  • Tourism, one of Tunisia’s major industries, dropped by nearly fifty per cent after June 26th last year, when, on a beach near the resort town of Sousse, a twenty-three-year-old student and break-dancing enthusiast pulled an automatic weapon out of his umbrella and began shooting foreigners; he spared Tunisian workers, who tried to stop him. The terrorist, who had trained at an Islamic State camp in Libya, killed thirty-eight people, thirty of them British tourists, before being shot dead by police.
  • “The youth are lost,” Kamal told me. “There’s no justice.” Douar Hicher, he said, “is the key to Tunisia.” He continued, “If you want to stop terrorism, then bring good schools, bring transportation—because the roads are terrible—and bring jobs for young people, so that Douar Hicher becomes like the parts of Tunisia where you Westerners come to have fun.”
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  • he condemned the Sousse massacre and a terrorist attack in March, 2015, at Tunisia’s national museum, the Bardo, where three gunmen killed two dozen people. The victims were innocents, he said. Kamal still entertained a fantasy of joining a reformed police force. His knowledge of Islam was crude, and his allegiance to isis seemed confused and provisional—an expression of rage, not of ideology. But in Douar Hicher anger was often enough to send young people off to fight
  • “Maybe it’s the Tunisian nature—we like risk,” a former jihadi told me. A million Tunisians live and work in Europe. “A lot of drug dealers are Tunisian; many smugglers of goods between Turkey and Greece are Tunisian; a lot of human traffickers in Belgrade are Tunisian. Online hackers—be careful of the Tunisians, there’s a whole network of them.”
  • “The radical narrative tells you that whatever you’ve learned about Islam is wrong, you have to discard it—we have the new stuff. The old, traditional, moderate Islam doesn’t offer you the adventure of the isis narrative. It doesn’t offer you the temptation to enjoy, maybe, your inner savagery. isis offers a false heaven for sick minds.”
  • Democracy didn’t turn Tunisian youths into jihadis, but it gave them the freedom to act on their unhappiness. By raising and then frustrating expectations, the revolution created conditions for radicalization to thrive. New liberties clashed with the old habits of a police state—young Tunisians were suddenly permitted to join civic and political groups, but the cops harassed them for expressing dissent. Educated Tunisians are twice as likely to be unemployed as uneducated ones, because the economy creates so few professional jobs. A third of recent college graduates can’t find work. Frustration led young people to take to the streets in 2011; a similar desperate impulse is now driving other young people toward jihad.
  • the factors that drive young men and women to adopt Salafi jihadism are diverse and hard to parse: militants reach an overwhelmingly reductive idea by complex and twisted paths. A son of Riyadh grows up hearing Salafi preaching in a state-sanctioned mosque and goes to Syria with the financial aid of a Saudi businessman. A young Sunni in Falluja joins his neighbors in fighting American occupation and “Persian”—Shiite—domination. A Muslim teen-ager in a Paris banlieue finds an antidote to her sense of exclusion and spiritual emptiness in a jihadi online community. Part of the success of isis consists in its ability to attract a wide array of people and make them all look, sound, and think alike.
  • Souli wasn’t sure what should be done with returned jihadis, but, like nearly everyone I met, he spoke of the need for a program of rehabilitation for those who come back. No such program exists
  • In its eagerness to modernize, the Ben Ali regime encouraged widespread access to satellite television and the Internet. The sermons of Islamist firebrands from the Gulf, such as the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, entered the homes of Tunisians who felt smothered by official secularism. Oussama Romdhani, who was a senior official under Ben Ali—he was referred to as the “propaganda minister”—told me, “Radicals were able to use these tools of communication to recruit and disseminate the narrative, and they did it quite efficiently.”
  • “I never thought I would repeat the same demands as five years ago. The old regime has robbed our dreams.”
  • Why can’t the police do their job and stop the terrorists but let the smugglers go with a bribe?
  • Around 2000, the Tunisian Combat Group, an Al Qaeda affiliate, emerged in Afghanistan, dedicating itself to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. One of its founders, Tarek Maaroufi, provided false passports to two Tunisians who, allegedly on instructions from Osama bin Laden, travelled to northern Afghanistan posing as television journalists and assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan mujahideen commander, on September 9, 2001. The Combat Group’s other leader, known as Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, was an Al Qaeda commander; when the Americans overthrew the Taliban, in late 2001, he escaped from Tora Bora with bin Laden, only to be arrested in Turkey, in 2003, and extradited to Tunisia. (Sentenced to forty-three years in prison, he seized the chance to radicalize his fellow-prisoners.)
  • Walid was vague about his reasons for returning to Tunisia. He mentioned a traumatic incident in which he had seen scores of comrades mowed down by regime soldiers outside Aleppo. He also pointed to the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in April, 2013, which soon engaged in bitter infighting with the Nusra Front. Walid spoke of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, with the personal hatred that Trotskyists once expressed for Stalin. He accused isis of destroying the Syrian resistance and helping the Assad regime. He believed that isis was created by Western powers to undermine Al Qaeda and other true jihadi groups.
  • these aged men from the two Tunisias—Essebsi a haughty remnant of the Francophile élite, Ghannouchi the son of a devout farmer from the provinces—began a series of largely secret conversations, and set Tunisia on a new path. In January, 2014, Ennahdha voluntarily handed over the government to a regime of technocrats. Ghannouchi had put his party’s long-term interests ahead of immediate power. A peaceful compromise like this had never happened in the region. Both old men had to talk their followers back from the brink of confrontation, and some Ennahdha activists regarded Ghannouchi’s strategy as a betrayal.
  • To many Tunisians, Nidaa Tounes feels like the return of the old regime: some of the same politicians, the same business cronies, the same police practices. The Interior Ministry is a hideous seven-story concrete structure that squats in the middle of downtown Tunis, its roof bristling with antennas and satellite dishes, coils of barbed wire barring access from the street. The ministry employs eighty thousand people. There is much talk of reforming Tunisia’s security sector, with the help of Western money and training. (The U.S., seeing a glimmer of hope in a dark region, recently doubled its aid to Tunisia.) But the old habits of a police state persist—during my time in Tunis, I was watched at my hotel, and my interpreter was interrogated on the street.
  • The inhabitants of Kasserine, however neglected by the state, were passionate advocates for their own rights. They had played a central role in the overthrow of the dictatorship, staging some of the earliest protests after Bouazizi’s self-immolation. In every coffee shop, I was told, half the conversations were about politics. Although Kasserine is a recruiting area for jihadis, Tunisia’s wealthy areas are so remote that the town felt less alienated than Douar Hicher and Ben Gardane.
  • “You feel no interest from the post-revolutionary governments in us here. People feel that the coastal areas, with twenty per cent of the people, are still getting eighty per cent of the wealth. That brings a lot of psychological pressure, to feel that you’re left alone, that there’s no horizon, no hope.”
  • The old methods of surveillance are returning. In the center of Kasserine, I met an imam named Mahfoud Ben Deraa behind the counter of the hardware store he owns. He had just come back from afternoon prayers, but he was dressed like a man who sold paint. “I might get kicked out of the mosque, because last Friday’s sermon was something the government might not like,” the imam told me. He had preached that, since the government had closed mosques after terror attacks, “why, after an alcoholic killed two people, didn’t they close all the bars?” To some, this sounded like a call for Sharia, and after informers reported him to the police the governor’s office sent him a warning: “In the course of monitoring the religious activities and the religious institutions of the region, I hereby inform you that several violations have been reported.” The imam was ordered to open the mosque only during hours of prayer and to change the locks on the main doors to prevent unsupervised use. The warning seemed like overreach on the part of the state—the twitching of an old impulse from the Ben Ali years.
  • revolution opened up a space that Salafis rushed to fill. There were a lot more of them than anyone had realized—eventually, tens of thousands. In February, 2011, Tunisia’s interim government declared an amnesty and freed thousands of prisoners, including many jihadis. Among them was Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, the co-founder of the Tunisian Combat Group. Within two months, he had started Ansar al-Sharia.
  • According to the Tunisian Interior Ministry, a hundred thousand Tunisians—one per cent of the population—were arrested in the first half of 2015. Jihadi groups intend their atrocities to provoke an overreaction, and very few governments can resist falling into the trap.
  • New democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Asia have had to struggle with fragile institutions, corruption, and social inequity. Tunisia has all this, plus terrorism and a failed state next door.
  • Ahmed told himself, “If I pray and ask for divine intervention, maybe things will get better.” Praying did not lead him to the moderate democratic Islam of Ennahdha. His thoughts turned more and more extreme, and he became a Salafi. He quit smoking marijuana and grew his beard long and adopted the ankle-length robe called a qamis. He un-friended all his female friends on Facebook, stopped listening to music, and thought about jihad. On Internet forums, he met jihadis who had been in Iraq and gave him suggestions for reading. Ahmed downloaded a book with instructions for making bombs. In the period of lax security under Ennahdha, he fell in with a radical mosque in Tunis. He was corresponding with so many friends who’d gone to Syria that Facebook deactivated his account. Some of them became leaders in the Islamic State, and they wrote of making thirty-five thousand dollars a year and having a gorgeous European wife or two. Ahmed couldn’t get a girlfriend or buy a pack of cigarettes.
  • “Dude, don’t go!” Walid said when they met on the street. “It’s just a trap for young people to die.” To Walid, Ahmed was exactly the type of young person isis exploited—naïve, lost, looking for the shortest path to Heaven. Al Qaeda had comparatively higher standards: some of its recruits had to fill out lengthy application forms in which they were asked to name their favorite Islamic scholars. Walid could answer such questions, but they would stump Ahmed and most other Tunisian jihadis.
  • “We need to reform our country and learn how to make it civilized,” he said. “In Tunisia, when you finish your pack of cigarettes, you’ll throw it on the ground. What we need is an intellectual revolution, a revolution of minds, and that will take not one, not two, but three generations.”
Ed Webb

Is tourism the antidote to youth unemployment in Oman? - 0 views

  • A stubbornly high youth unemployment rate is one of Oman's most pressing internal issues. Roughly half of Oman's youths are unemployed, the World Bank estimates.
  • many Omanis await structural economic reforms, as the hydrocarbon industry accounts for 74% of government revenues but employs only 16,000 citizens of the Gulf state
  • the country’s road map for social and economic reform identifies five high-priority sectors, including the employment-intensive tourism industry. Ranked as one of the fastest growing industries in the world, the tourism sector could employ a total of 535,000 people, directly and indirectly, in Oman by 2040 to cater to 11 million visitors.
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  • The government is expected to play a "crucial" role in tourism development by injecting $6 billion over 25 years to trigger $43 billion worth of investments from the private sector.
  • the promises to allocate 223,000 direct tourism jobs to Omani nationals by 2040 does not align with Oman's undersized tourism education sector, which graduates only a few hundred students per year, mainly from the Oman Tourism College
  • although the number of tourists visiting Oman has doubled since 2008, the industry employs less than 17,000 Omanis.
  • “Corruption was also an issue since local authorities requested me to pay imaginary taxes," he said. "I am an ordinary man so I had to shut up and comply.”
  • “The concept of SMEs [small and medium enterprises] does not exist in the field of tourism anyway, the whole system is designed for large corporations,” said Christopher Chellapermal, a French entrepreneur. Chellapermal ran a scuba diving business in Oman for 15 years before being forced out of business in 2017.
  • The country’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product is rated junk by all three major agencies, as it has multiplied by 12 since 2014. Moreover, the Omani economy is ranked the worst performing among Gulf countries
  • For Chellapermal, Oman "makes the crazy wager" of luxury tourism by prioritizing premium visitors when the backpacker segment would be a better fit.
  • “Chinese and Indian tourists are very much interested in culture and heritage destinations," Hollister said. "Oman could focus on this segment to make it their niche, a differentiator.”
  • wealth of cultural and natural assets. The Ministry of Tourism promotes Oman as a hidden jewel at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. 
  • regional tensions had very little impact on tourism
  • As Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said takes power, analysts worry that Oman’s foreign policy of neutrality could be at stake. Will “any of Oman’s more assertive neighbors seek to sway Haitham to align more closely with their own approach,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen wrote for Al-Monitor.
  • The prospect of tensions between Muscat and neighboring states does not please tourism actors, as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are Oman’s key source regional markets for tourism. In 2018, Gulf citizens accounted for about half of international arrivals.
  • Saudi Arabia’s aggressive push to develop its leisure tourism industry and attract 100 million visits by 2030 collides with Oman’s ambitions
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