authoritarianism in MENA

civil society groups and Saied's political opponents have been warning of a return to authoritarianism under his power grab

With strong support from some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states - chiefly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the patron of the counterrevolution - the leaderships in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and other Arab states have been emboldened in their crackdowns on civil society and pro-democracy movements

“Not only have these regimes not paid a price for their ruthless suppression of civil society but many of them have been rewarded by Western democratic governments. Last year, for example, Emmanuel Macron hosted Egypt’s fascist dictator in Paris and gave him the ‘Legion of Honor’ award for great leadership and statesmanship. A month earlier, Germany did something similar.”

Biden’s administration is quite like Donald Trump’s in terms of being indifferent to democratisation in the Arab world

Just as the Obama administration never determined that Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s ouster in 2013 resulted from a “coup”, the current leadership in Washington has refused to designate either last year’s autogolpe in Tunisia or General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s takeover of the Sudanese state as a “coup”. The Biden administration’s responses to both have been mild and cautious.

n Washington, there will be more of a willingness to accommodate greater autocracy in countries that have official diplomatic ties with Israel or at least are non-confrontational toward Tel Aviv

“The pandemic has helped authoritarian regimes reassert control over society and environmental conditions have increased the level of suffering, despair, and mass pauperisation. For many people in the region, the focus is on survival, not democratisation.”

Citizens of MENA countries are willing to die for democratisation, exemplified by recent events in Sudan

In the years after the Baath party came to power, writes Abdi, the budget for the Department of Antiquities increased by 80% and the number of excavations mushroomed, as did the renovation and reconstruction of historical sites

In Syria, too, Assad’s promotion of archaeology was, as the late journalist Patrick Seale described it, part of his exercise in nation building. Stéphane Valter, a French political scientist who specializes in Arab culture and civilization, studied Assad’s relationship to Syria’s archaeology in his 2002 book, “La construction nationale syrienne” (“The Syrian national construction”). He writes that because of the fragility of a social cohesion in Syria due to its varied ethnic and religious communities, it was important for Assad to establish a territorial and historical identity in which all minorities could find a legitimate place. The archaeological richness of Syria doubtless helped build a national identity based on a culture that was promoted as authentically Syrian.

Iraq was flooded with propaganda posters, murals and sculpted reliefs in the style of ancient artworks, all depicting Saddam superposed with Mesopotamian rulers or symbols

when Gadhafi saw that the museum staff had named some of the rooms “Greek” or “Roman,” his face fell, said Fakroun, “and he made us change the names to ‘Greek colonization’ or ‘Byzantine colonization.’ ”

“We couldn’t talk about our Amazigh heritage. Or objects that were Tuareg, we had to say they were Arab. We wanted to be scientific, but we couldn’t, because the only ethnicity that existed for him was Arab,”

Gadhafi’s view of Libya’s heritage was selective, but like the other dictators, it aligned with the message he wanted to transmit.“Libya links east to west, and north to south, and there are examples of all the cultures that were around us,” said Fakroun.But Gadhafi largely favored Islamic archaeology, in keeping with his Pan-Arab ideological preference at the time (vis-a-vis Pan-Africanism, which he embraced in later years), and after that, prehistory because it was far enough into the past to be relatively uncontested. In contrast, British archaeologist Graeme Barker, who spent many years in Libya, explained that “the country’s fabulous Greek and Roman archaeology represented to him simply the precursor of the hated Italian colonization of the 20th century.”

the Baath regime in Iraq sought to “connect modern-day Iraq with its glorious Mesopotamian past, leaving aside any possible Sunni-Shia division or ethnic divide. Instead, it stressed that Iraq was one nation unified in a shared Mesopotamian-inspired culture.”

Saddam rebuilt the site shoddily, most professionals agree, and built a palace for himself on top of it. He used new materials and inscribed his name on the bricks, as Nebuchadnezzar had done over 2,000 years before him. Moreover, said Almamori, “he dug three or four lakes, which damaged and removed part of the Persian cemetery near the northern lake. Many layers of different civilizations were removed. He constructed artificial mounds and built his palace on one of them. Archaeologists with high positions were afraid to say anything.”

“When Nebuchadnezzar II took over from his father, Nabopolassar, he ruled from the same palace which he rebuilt. The Baath party related to this — we have a long history, a strong civilization, that needs a strong army. Nationalists in other countries think the same way.”

the Umayyad period of history was useful to the party because of its multiethnic nature. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was one of the best symbols for the party, writes Valter, because of its specifically Syrian cultural traits — first an Aramean and then a Roman temple, then a church and finally a mosque. The mosque figured on Syria’s most valuable banknote at the time, behind an image of Assad. Banknotes included images of Aleppo’s Citadel, the Roman amphitheater of Bosra and Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, and clearly showed the regime’s wish to conflate ethnocultural Arab references with nationalist pride and a pinch of Islam

one of the most important ancient sites for Assad was Ugarit, near the Mediterranean city of Latakia. With five layers of cultures going back to the Neolithic period, not only is it famous for its clay tablets with an alphabet in cuneiform script, but Ugarit is also just north of Qardaha, where Assad was born and is buried.

Unlike in Saddam’s Iraq or Assad’s Syria, in Gadhafi’s Libya, the Department of Antiquities suffered from constant underfunding. “Our budget was next to nothing,” recalled Fakroun. “Once they forgot about the Department of Antiquities when they were drawing up the country’s budget. We had no salary for six months. We’re talking about a country with tons of money from petrol, and they gave us pennies. And we have five World Heritage sites.

outstanding archaeological sites in all three countries suffered looting, vandalism, neglect, or at the hands of the Islamic State or, in the case of Ancient Babylon, from U.S. and Polish troops building their military base on top of the ruins in 2003

Homosexual activity in the North African country remains a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison

Although there are signs that attitudes towards Tunisia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are improving, activists say police grew emboldened following antigovernment protests this year as the country’s economy flailed amid the COVID-19 pandemic

observers say the October assault in the center of Tunis indicates that members of law enforcement are becoming more explicit in targeting LGBTQ individuals. Baabou’s reported abuse also highlights a pattern of officers independently seeking revenge for efforts by LGBTQ activists to bring misconduct cases against police who harassed or assaulted them, they say

“Usually the police are technicians of torture or abuse. They don’t leave fractures or bruises,”

After the 2011 revolution that deposed Ben Ali, tens of thousands of officers took advantage of new-found freedoms to unionize. But rights groups say Tunisia’s now-powerful police unions enable misconduct while the government turns a blind eye to brutality.

“Officers feel empowered to enact whatever form of violence they want, knowing that they will get away with it because the law is on their side,”

Transgender people are not recognized at an administrative or medical level, meaning they are unable to access gender-affirming procedures or to legally change their names, leaving them vulnerable to harassment or violence.

Damj has noted an increase in the persecution of LGBT people during the coronavirus pandemic. The organization provided legal assistance to LGBT individuals at police stations in 116 cases and responded to 195 legal consultation requests. The combined number is five times higher than in previous years, according to the group.

Observers point to the weeks of antigovernment protests this year as a turning point. Facebook pages linked to police unions began posting photos of LGBTQ activists at the protests, often captured using drones that flew over the crowds, and in some cases forcibly outing individuals to the public.

While Baabou thinks that the decriminalization of homosexuality is unlikely any time soon, he is more optimistic about “middle term” prospects. He points to shifting language around LGBT rights in Tunisia and the movement receiving support from other civil rights groups. “Now, we can put pressure and we can free people (from jail). In the past, this wasn’t possible at all,” he said.

Morocco is at the crossroads of one of the most circulated migration routes to Europe, and its coast guards regularly rescue migrants at sea.  Most of those risking this sea route are migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to reach the European Union through Spain, which is only 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Morocco.

Moroccan authorities have repeatedly pledged to improve the conditions of young people in the country, but struggle to tackle high unemployment rates.

so far, Saied’s approach to addressing corruption has largely been to accuse his political opponents of corruption and to arrest those who disagree with him

Chalker declined requests for an interview or to answer detailed questions about his work for the Qatari government. Chalker also claimed that some of the documents reviewed by the AP were forgeries.

The AP took several steps to verify the documents’ authenticity. That includes confirming details of various documents with different sources, including former Chalker associates and soccer officials; cross-checking contents of documents with contemporaneous news accounts and publicly available business records; and examining electronic documents’ metadata, or digital history, where available, to confirm who made the documents and when. Chalker did not provide to the AP any evidence to support his position that some of the documents in question had been forged.

Two Tunisian television stations critical of the president, Nessma and Al-Quran al-Kareem, were taken off the air on October 11, over alleged licensing issues.

The ruling elites are all dependent on oil rents for the survival of their regimes. They need the oil business to stay alive for them to stay in power. Their system is based on continued oil rent, but ultimately, the citizens’ long-term interests are with a liveable climate

The precise point oil demand will peak has been contested, and depends on a myriad of assumptions about regulation, technology and consumer behaviour. But many people say demand will peak in about 2040, and then decline.

the International Energy Association’s report Net Zero by 2050, by contrast, proposed oil demand fall from 88m barrels a day (mb/d) in 2020, to 72 mb/d in 2030 and to 24 mb/d in 2050, a fall of almost 75% between 2020 and 2050. It argued that the Gulf has all three elements needed to switch to renewables: capital, sun and large tracts of vacant land.

Opec’s own projections suggest oil demand will rise in absolute terms through to 2045, and oil’s share of world wide energy demand will fall only from 30% to 28%. Hardly a green revolution.

In the United Arab Emirates it is estimated that the climate crisis costs £6bn a year in higher health costs. The salinity of the Gulf, caused by proliferating desalination plants, has increased by 20%, with all the likely impact on marine life and biodiversity.

Aramco, the Saudi company with the largest carbon footprint in the world, is not trying to diversify at the rate of Shell or BP. Indeed, it has just announced an investment to increase crude capacity from 12m barrels a day to 13m barrels by 2027

If you see the lifestyle in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is based on endless consumption

The region is responsible for only 4.7 % of worldwide carbon emissions, dwarfed by the pollution from Europe, America and China. The oil that the Middle East exports is logged against the carbon emissions of the users, not the producers.

The Gulf’s self-proclaimed first mover, the UAE, was the first country in the region to ratify the Paris agreement and is now the least dependent on oil for government revenues. Last week it announced a “net zero initiative by 2050” to be begun with $163bn (£118bn) of investments and a new minister for climate change and the environment, Mariam Almheiri. The announcement came after the UAE ordered an 80-day brainstorming session in every government department from June. It was the first petro-state to embrace net zero in domestic consumption.

Gulf states are deeply competitive, so a flurry of news is emerging. Qatar has appointed a climate minister; Bahrain is targeting net zero by 2050; Kuwait has a new emissions plan.

Fossil fuels shipped abroad are not on the Saudi’s carbon ledger, owing to UN accounting rules, and the promised internal reduction in emissions is dependent on a heavy bet that unproven blue hydrogen and carbon capture technology will work.