In this Al-Bab translation, the details of the 2002 Arab Summit peace initiative for the Israel-Palestine conflict are outlined. Including borders based off of 1967 lines, and the right of protection, the plan was inspired by Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia.
most Arab economies suffer from very high levels of unemployment. Good jobs are scarce. This motivates applicants to use every mean possible to improve their chances of being hired.
For example, sons of police and military officers are given preference in admission to the Egyptian police academy or military college, respectively.
study conducted by Whiteoak, Crawford and Mapstone (2006) showed the young UAE citizens believed that wasta is more useful than do their older citizens. This finding may imply that wasta is strengthening rather than diminishing in Arab societies. Commenting on the spread of wasta in Egypt, a senior bank official told one of the authors that up to 25% of his staff were hired only because of their wasta.
many top governmental positions are reserved for members of the ruling families or members of their supporting tribes
First, to maintain their grip on authority, Arab political regimes tend to place close confidants in key positions even if they are not the most qualified for such positions.
In Syria, the key argument made in favor of selecting Basher Al Asad as the country’s president was that he was the son of the late president Hafez Al Asad.
study conducted by Kilani and Sakija in Jordan showed that 90% of the respondents believed that they would use wasta in the future.
In the Quran, Muslims are instructed that “the best that you can hire employee is one who is competent and trustworthy” (Quran, 28, 26). Prophet Mohamed is also reported to have said “He who is in a leadership position and appoints knowingly a person who is not qualified to manage, than he violates the command of God and His messenger”. He also stated “when a person assumes an authority over people and promotes one of them because of personal preferences, God will curse him for ever”.
Rising to high levels requires important connections. Receiving important privileges or benefits is contingent upon using the right connections.
Intercessory wasta on the other hand, involves someone intervening on behalf of a client to obtain an advantage or
2overcome a barrier from an authority figure. It is this type of wasta that affects hiring decisions.
Those who are supported by strong others will not be put down or rejected. Only the unconnected or unsupported are punished.
people who are related to important others (especially in government) are fortunate as they will have their demands or needs fulfilled. People serve those that are related to important people.
People tend to serve those that they know. Without knowing anybody, you will have difficulty getting the service you want.
The turban symbolizes a senior respected person. If you know a senior person, your demands will be meet. Similar to the second proverb
Intermediary wasta is utilized to facilitate the resolution of intergroup or interpersonal conflicts. In this system, wasta improves human relations and reinforces social norms.
Intermediary wasta is utilized to facilitate the resolution of intergroup or interpersonal conflicts. In this system, wasta improves human relations and reinforces social norms. Intercessory wasta on the other hand, involves someone intervening on behalf of a client to obtain an advantage or
2overcome a barrier from an authority figure. It is this type of wasta that affects hiring decisions.
feed feelings of injustice and frustration among those who are qualified for the job but do not have a wasta. Wasta is also different from the more popular nepotism and cronyism. While nepotism involves hiring of relatives and friends, wasta is not restricted to such groups and may involve strangers
may lead to poor job performance and economic decline.
Indeed, wasta is blamed for Arab world’s poor economic performance and brain drain (Al Maeena, 2003; Cunnigham & Sarayrah, 1994). Kilani and Sakijha (2002) stress that wasta is becoming a burden on its seeker, its granter and the government.
Arab wasta has been compared to the Chinese concept of guanxi. Both wasta and guanxi use social networks to influence the distribution of advantages and resources. However, while guanxi is based on Confucian ethics which focus on strengthening collective ties (Hutchings & Weir, 2006a; Hutchings & Weir, 2006b); wasta violates Muslim ethics which prescribe hiring the most qualified.
Wasta plays a critical role in hiring and promotion decisions in Arab organizations. Before applying to a position, applicants may seek out a wasta to improve their chances of being hired. A person with poor qualifications but a strong wasta will be favored over a person who is more qualified but does not have a wasta. Because many people may apply with wasta, the applicant with the most important wasta often gets the position.
Compiled by faculty members at the German University in Cairo, this working paper series addresses the effect that watsa has on competence and morality in Middle Eastern economics and society. The authors define watsa as, "the intervention of a patron in favor of a client to obtain benefits and/or resources from a third party." In simpler terms it is a system of social networking in Arab culture in which family and social ties play a significant role in the attainment of economic advantages and resources, largely in the hiring process in businesses and organizations. A person applying for a job seeks out watsa to increase their chances of getting hired. Comparable to nepotism and cronyism, but is not restricted to friends and associates, watsa can also involve strangers linked through some social web of people. Watsa runs somewhat parallel to a Chinese concept of guanxi, based on Confucian ethics and focusing on strong collective ties. While guanxi is a part of Chinese ethics it actually defies Muslim ethical values, which advocates hiring the person most capable. In a Jordanian survey, 87% of respondents want watsa eradicated. While we know that unemployment in the Arab region is widespread, we can assume that this motivates people to do anything they can to improve their chances of obtaining a job. However, the practice of watsa as a whole is actually degrading the economic systems in the Arab sates even further. The article explains the linkage between watsa and poor job performance, economic decline, and the festering of injustice and frustration among the masses in Arab countries.
Despite the hardships Egyptian citizens have endured in the last 4 years they have poured a collective 8.5 billion dollars into an upgrade of the Suez Canal, a long time symbol of national pride. Al-Sisi is planning to build a waterway parallel to the Suez Canal. Egyptians had the option to invest in the waterway by purchasing certificates with a guaranteed return. 82% of investments were from individuals instead of institutions and the canal is expected to bring in $2 to $5 billion in revenue over the next two to three years.
The US with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched 14 strikes against IS in Syria, hitting a number of targets, including Raqqa, a stronghold in eastern Syria captured by the group in 2013.
al-Qaeda veterans named
These refineries are believed to be producing "between 300-500 barrels of refined petrolium per day", generating as much as $2 million (£1.2m) per day for the militants, a key source of revenue for IS.
This article provides a detailed outline of the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria through the use of maps, charts, and photographs to allow readers to visualize areas where fighting is taking place. Several maps provide locations of ISIS controlled territory, locations of airstrikes, and locations of ISIS controlled oil refineries. It was really helpful to see different maps outlining this information because I often hear about this conflict on the radio or television programs and it can be hard to understand the scope of the conflict without any visual aids. I really appreciated the effort to show in detail the specific locations.
This article outlined the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq providing detailed maps, charts, and photos to present a more clear picture of where violence and air strikes are occurring.
Aid agencies have warned of an urgent humanitarian crisis after Islamist militants seized control of a refugee camp, just a few miles from Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Fighters for the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s official Syria wing, advanced into the camp in the town of Yarmouk – home to 18,000 refugees – on Friday night
The Observatory, which monitors the conflict from the UK, also said jets from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s air forcebombed the camp on Saturday
called the crisis in Yarmouk “an affront to the humanity of all of us, a source of universal shame”.
He said Palestinian and Syrian refugees in the camp, which had previously been besieged by Assad’s forces, were already suffering from starvation and disease
Their main target was Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis, an anti-Assad militia of Syrians and Palestinians from the camp.
Reuters that Isis fighters had killed 21 people including fighters and civilians since Friday
The evacuation of the camp had been made harder as Isis snipers were shooting refugees as they tried to leave the camp.
ISIS has taken over a refugee camp near Damascus, the Syrian capital. They say they are targeting opposition forces living in the camps. ISIS is making it nearly impossible to evacuate those inside the camp and the UN has called this a major "humanitarian crisis."
"It is a failed state. Unlike other countries in the region, it does not have a semblance of government. This makes it the most vulnerable,"
Moreover, Libya is rich in oil and, earlier this month, gunmen claiming to represent IS raided a French-run oil facility in al-Mabruk, south of Sirte city,
many IS-aligned fighters collect salaries from the Libyan state," Jason Pack, a researcher in Libyan history at the UK's Cambridge University, told the BBC.
Mr Pack points out that the country has three main power blocks:
Libya Dawn (a mixture of Islamist and non-Islamist militias allied with the Tripoli-based government),
Operation Dignity (led by forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar and allied with the internationally recognised government based in the eastern city of Tobruk) and
Jihadist groups (which include IS, al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia - the most powerful of them).
"There is a civil war between the two main groups [Libya Dawn and Operation Dignity]. The jihadists act as spoilers," Mr Pack says.
Though many of the youth leaders who participated in the 2011 revolution are in prison, youth-driven political campaigns will continue under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A new movement that has risen, called the "We have had enough" campaign has several demands from the Egyptian youth. These include holding accountable anyone who was involved in killing any Egyptian, a debate about implementing separation of powers, setting minimum and maximum wages, and amending the protest law. These demands have led the state to release some of the prisoners of conscience, in an attempt to prevent any chaos before parliamentary elections. A similar movement, called the Dhank movement, arose in protest of the living conditions for the poorest Egyptians. The leaders of this movement encourage protests like refusing to pay electric bills because of a lack of service. The activists describe the need for the Dhank movement coming from Sisi's poor treatment of the lower class that included removal of subsidies and raising prices of commodities. The "We have had enough" campaign spokesman says they insist on the implementation of 14 human rights amendments. He ends by reiterating the consistent suspicion the youth groups have of the state and a lack of confidence that their demands will be met. This shows that there is no clear strategy or realistic possibility to ending the tension between youth groups and the state.
The university plans to hire a security company to work in partnership with the university's guards to regulate the entrances and exits to the campus, ensuring that only students are allowed in, according to Al-Azhar officials, who added that security forces would be dispatched to campus rapidly in the case of any violence.
Author: alhayat Posted October 20, 2012 "The Tunisian university is at a tipping point." That is how Yousra al-Jabali, a sociology student at the April 9 College of Arts and Humanities, summarized the situation at her academic institution after last week's violent clashes.
Author: Shaida al-Ameen Posted August 11, 2014 Kurdish female peshmerga fighters have been active during battles against the Islamic State (IS). According to the female troops' leaders based in the Sulaimaniyah governorate, Kurdish female fighters have been on the front lines in the battles against IS.
Five students from the Muslim Brotherhood are being charged with rioting and arson after being arrested in January. According to the report, the students associated with a terrorist organization set fire to a building in the engineering department of al-Azhar University in Cairo. al-Azhar is one of the oldest universities for Islam in the entire world.
released an audio recording on Thursday in what could be the first sign of life since rumors spread that a U.S. airstrike hit Baghdadi and a convoy of ISIS leaders in Iraq.
Baghdadi references several events that happened in the last week, including the recent move by militant groups in Yemen and Sinai to swear allegiance to ISIS.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is suspected to be alive, after reports that he had been injured or dead after an air strike hit the area he was in at the time. The is an audio recording that fit into the accounts that he might be alive.
If the conditions
remain unchallenged and, hence, unchanged, it will turn into another Syria
or Iraq.
Nowhere is this
threat more profound than with the rise of radical Islam in Libya
The ongoing low-level insurgency in Benghazi is driven by two factors. The
first is the radical Islamist ideology of certain groups that refuse to
recognise the modern state and its institutions. For example, according to
the leader of AS’s Benghazi branch, Mohammed al-Zahawi, his group will not
disarm and demobilise until its version of sharia is imposed. The
realisation of such an Islamic state constitutes the group’s main aim. In
other words, it is the nature of their Jihad.
The second reason is the Islamists’ history with the state security forces.
During the 1990s, Muammar Gaddafi unleashed a crackdown on all expressions
of Islamism, which saw thousands of youths arrested and jailed as political
prisoners. Many were incarcerated in the notorious Abu-Saleem prison.
Today’s rejection of state institutions has its roots in that brutality.
However, Benghazi is not the only Islamist stronghold in Libya: the city of
Derna, which has historically been a strong recruiting ground for Jihadi
fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Syria, is of serious
concern
Derna’s
Shura Council of Islamic Youth and Ansar al-Sharia have decided to declare
Derna an “Islamic emirate” and publicly announce their allegiance to ISIL
and its leader and so called “Caliphate” of Abu Baker al-Baghdadi. This
means that ISIL now has its terrorist tentacles in Libya.
If the international community continues to overlook the current Libyan
crisis, the country is likely to become an incubator of militant Islamist
groups.
In addition to a military
response, however, we need a holistic and proactive approach that focuses on
achieving reconciliation and stability. This involves forcing all rival
political parties to the negotiation table to agree that a newly elected
parliament is the sole representative body in the country.
This article basically accentuates the driving factors to the ongoing insurgency of ISIL in Libya and how the threat is even more extreme than that of Iraq and Syria. One is the Islamist ideology in itself, rejecting any form of a modern state and the institutions that accompany its success. For example in Libya the leader of the AS branch declares that his militants will not disarm or demobilize until sharia law is imposed. Second, during Gaddafi's rule he unleashed a crackdown on all Islamic expression. The brutality shown towards Islamic groups during this time has fueled their resentment towards sectarian rule and has urged them to push for the rejection of state institutions even more so. The article explains how Islamic groups have claimed power in both Benghazi and Derna, the latter being the historic recruiting ground for Jihad fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The author makes it clear that both military and diplomatic force from the international community is crucial for the reconciliation of security.
There are those who think that the region as a whole may be starting to go through something similar to what Europe went through in the early 17th century during the Thirty Years’ War, when Protestant and Catholic states battled it out. This is a conflict which is not only bigger than al-Qa’eda and similar groups, but far bigger than any of us. It is one which will re-align not only the Middle East, but the religion of Islam.
Either way there will be a need for a Treaty of Westphalia-style solution — a redrawing of boundaries in a region where boundaries have been bursting for decades.
But for the time being, a distinct and timeless stand-off between two regional powers, with religious excuses and religiously affiliated proxies will in all probability remain the main driver of this conflict.
‘Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the birthplace of Islam. As such, it is the eminent leader of the wider Muslim world. Iran portrays itself as the leader of not just the minority Shiite world, but of all Muslim revolutionaries interested in standing up to the West.’
‘Saudi Arabia will oppose any and all of Iran’s actions in other countries, because it is Saudi Arabia’s position that Iran has no right to meddle in other nations’ internal affairs, especially those of Arab states.’
Saudi officials more recently called for the Iranian leadership to be summoned to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes. Then, just the month before last, as the P5+1 countries eased sanctions on Iran after arriving at an interim deal in Geneva, Saudi saw its greatest fear — a nuclear Iran — grow more likely. And in the immediate aftermath of the Geneva deal, Saudi sources darkly warned of the country now taking Iranian matters ‘into their own hands’. There are rumours that the Saudis would buy nuclear bombs ‘off the shelf’ from their friends in Pakistan if Iran ever reaches anything like the nuclear threshold. In that case, this Westphalian solution could be prefaced with a mushroom cloud.
This article touches on an array of ideas but for the sake of my research I focused on the "Thirty Years War" section. Douglass Murray from The Spectator conveys the perspective that the Middle East is likely to be going through a similar 17th century European 30 years war, when Protestant and Catholics launched a full fledged war against one another. This means that religious war in the Middle East is so much bigger than just al-Qaeda and similar groups. The conflict will re-align the region, but also the entire religion of Islam. Douglass says the outcome would call for a Treaty of Westphalia-style solution, redrawing boundaries of a region where they've been bursting for decades.
For the time being the drivers of the conflict is a standoff between the two regional powers and their affiliated proxies, Saudi Arabia and Iran.