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a new Constitution in balloting Thursday, paving the way for a multiparty system for the first time since independence from France in 1962.
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Assad Supporters Cast Vote in Blood Video - ABC News - 0 views
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This video reveals the battle against ISIS that is occurring in Syria. What are the Russian forces doing? The rebels have been stopped in their tracks by the Russians.
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Congress' Vote to Block the Iran Nuclear Deal Hurts Real Progress - US News - 0 views
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Feb. 2, the United States Congress rejected the Iran nuclear accord despite efforts Iran has made to decrease the size of its program. This rejection is creating a large amount or tension between the U.S. and Iran.
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100 Libya MPs back unity government, demand new vote - 0 views
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In a relatively good sign for the UN lead efforts for a new government, members of Libya's recognized parliament officially backed the UN sponsored Unity government. Recognizing the importance of a united Libya, this is a step in the right direction on the long road toward peace.
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Putin: Syrian regime poll 'does not interfere' with peace process - 0 views
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The important question in this election! who will "vote" in the absence or the displacement of most of the Syrian citizens.
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ALGERIA APPROVES NEW CONSTITUTION - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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More than 70 percent of the 10.4 million people who voted favored the constitutional change, the Interior Ministry said.
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About 80 percent of the 13 million voters
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He said it will allow his country ''to know more democracy, to assure public and individual liberties, and to establish the sovereignty of the law.''
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Although it does not specifically authorize political parties to compete with the ruling National Liberation Front, the new Constitution declares ''the right to create associations of a political character.''
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In November, 92 percent of the voters approved political changes that began reducing the power of the ruling party, the only legal political organization in the nation of 25 million people.
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The Constitution also guarantees freedom of expression and, within limits, the right to strike.
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ALGIERS, Feb. 24- The Government announced today that Algerian voters overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution in balloting Thursday, paving the way for a multiparty system for the first time since independence from France in 1962. More than 70 percent of the 10.4 million people who voted favored the constitutional change, the Interior Ministry said.
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Gender equality? It doesn't exist anywhere in the world - LA Times - 1 views
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t's been more than 100 years since the world began observing International Women's Day, and yet no country has achieved full gender equality.
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But in Yemen, the country that ranks lowest according to the same data,
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About two-thirds of countries in the developing world have achieved gender equality in primary education according to U.N. data, but the progress is less substantial at the secondary school level.
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In Africa and South Asia for example, boys remain 1.55 times more likely to complete secondary education than girls, according to World Bank data.
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Even when girls make it into the classroom they still “continue to face particular risk in chaotic conflict settings,”
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n Pakistan, for example, the Taliban has declared war on girls' education, and frequently attacks educational institutions
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“They don’t translate into greater equality in the labor market,” said Sarah Gammage, director of gender, economic empowerment and livelihoods at the International Center for Research on Women. “Around the world women have disproportionately been part of the informal economy.”
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hey are typically responsible for providing care services for family members, Gammage said. Other duties include child rearing, cooking, and other household chores. It is work for which they are not paid. Women perform three times more unpaid work than men, according to the U.N.’s 2015 Human Development Report.
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eing able to make decisions, such as voting, owning land, and deciding whom to marry “is where we see the most significant difference between the least developed and developed countries,” said Varia.
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In Saudi Arabia, women are not permitted to drive and cannot open bank accounts without their husbands' permissio
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Uganda forbids women to gain permanent custody of children after a divorce,
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Honor killings, the traditional practice that allows the slaying of a family member who is believed to have brought dishonor on a family, claims thousands of women’s lives every year in South and Central Asia.
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This article is a response to International Women's Day, saying that gender equality doesn't exist in the world. In the middle of the article, they show a chart of the gender gap between men and women. Egypt is last in the chart. -
This article goes into depth about the inequality in the Middle East which extends to today. This looks at the ideas of democratization which would promote higher education. Greater rights for women. and improve infant morality rates
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How $40 Oil Is Driving Social Change in Saudi Arabia - 0 views
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women in Saudi Arabia know how to drive. They can vote, at least in local elections. And every Saudi citizen, men and women, may be about to see the end of generous, oil-driven subsidies that explain a lack of income taxes and utility costs so low as to be practically free.
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The U.S. Is Giving Up on Middle East Democracy-and That's a Mistake - The Atlantic - 0 views
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democracy assistance to the region, which will drop from $459.2 million to $298.3 million
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Today’s Middle East is a product, at least in part, of failed democratization, and one of the reasons it failed was the timid, half-hearted support of the Obama administration.
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the significant impact Western leverage and “linkage” can have on democratic transitions.
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“it was an externally driven shift in the cost of suppression, not changes in domestic conditions, that contributed most centrally to the demise of authoritarianism in the 1980s and 1990s.” They find that “states’ vulnerability to Western democratization pressure… was often decisive.”
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it is also worth noting that President Bush acknowledged the existence of a “tyranny-terror” link—the notion that the root causes of extremism and terrorism can be found in the region’s enduring lack of democracy.
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the administration’s approach to the region is characterized almost entirely by ad-hoc crisis management and traditional counterterrorism approaches. Its one larger-scale reform initiative—a half-hearted proposal for a
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We argue that the U.S. and its partners now need to consider a very different approach to Middle East democracy assistance.
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Conventional democracy promotion activities tend to focus on the process and “retail” aspects of democratic politics—things like elections, political party training, get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns, and civil society enhancement. While these are undoubtedly important, they are insufficient to deliver lasting reforms. Authoritarianism in the Arab world has proven time and time again—even in supposedly post-revolutionary settings such as Egypt today—that it can weather the annoyances of elections and civil society.
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What is needed are more systematic reforms focused on fundamental institutions. These include things like constraining the military’s role in civilian domains of governance, deep reform in the security and justice sectors including law enforcement and policing, and comprehensive “renovation” of the civil service sector. These are large-scale, long-term, and expensive undertakings that far transcend the modest parameters of most U.S. democracy promotion programs.
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we make the case for a new Multilateral Endowment for Reform (MER) that would tie significant levels of financial assistance—in the billions of dollars—to reform commitments and benchmarked implementation performance by partner nations.
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provide a real incentive for countries to embark down a path to deeper and more enduring political reforms while retaining the ability to pull back funding if they do not deliver.
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This article begins by illuminating the regional democracy assistance cuts that are dropping from $459.2 million to $298.3 million It explains that the Bush Administration began the quest for democracy in the Middle East, and the Obama administration has only continued in his footsteps. The author presents the viewpoint that the U.S. approach to Arab democratization has been in the form of "ad-hoc crisis management" rather than "large scale reform initiatives." Promoting democracy in the form of democratic politics are insufficient, elections and political parties have consistently proved to weather away and fester further civil strife. Consequently, the article proposes a new approach to the region conflict. This approach calls for "systematic reforms" focusing on basic institutions such as the civil service sector, justice and law enforcement, and the military's role in governance. The idea is that addressing these lacking departments in the arab world will eventually pave the way to a smoother democratic transition.
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Libya: Where are the dividing lines? - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
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The House moved to Tobruk after armed groups supportive of the General National Congress began to overrun the capital.
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Libya's new parliament, dominated by self-styled secular and nationalist candidates, was formed after the heavy defeat of Islamist candidates in June elections.
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In the House of Representatives camp, many figures have come together in opposition to the contentious political isolation law, which banned anyone involved with the former regime from political participation.
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Errishi told Al Jazeera that oil revenues pass through the country's central bank. With members of Libya Dawn guarding the gates to the central bank, Errishi added that "the central bank is controlled by whomever is controlling Tripoli".
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The UAE, which is home to Mahmoud Jibril, a leading politician opposed to Libya's Islamist groups, has been accused by the US of bombing sites held by Misrata forces with the help of Egypt.
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t has also been alleged that Qatar, which plays host to Ali Salabi, a leading spiritual figure with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has provided weapons and support to Brotherhood-affiliated groups battling former general Haftar.
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With the displacement of 100,000 people due to fighting in Tripoli and Benghazi, however, the Libya crisis may not yet have taken its worst turn. "If we see more brigades going to one side over the other," said researcher Hamedi, "this will lead to civil war. The role of the regional environment is to help the domestic equation reach a deal."
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Due to Libya's lack of institutional structure and weak centralized government, rival militia violence and clashes have created constant chaos leading the country towards another civil war. After the fall of Qaddafi, who obliterated institutions necessary for a functional government, Libya has been unable to manage the state. The National Transitional Council, which replaced the Qaddafi Regime, turned into the General National Congress and was given 18 months to form a democratic constitution. When the deadline passed the constitution was incomplete, which forced Congress to organize elections to a new House of Representatives. The former GNC members declared a new self proclaimed GNC, electing Omar al-Hasi as their prime minister. The new GNC is not recognized by Libya's parliament nor is it by the international community. Al Jazeera says the country literally has two parliaments and two governments, creating inconceivable instability throughout the state. The newly elected House has moved to Tobruk after armed islamic GNC militia groups overran the capital, seizing control over the major institutions in Tripoli. Due to this lack of a functional government, the rest of the state has turned to chaos. After the civil war, anti and pro Qaddafi forces branched into militias striving for power. Without a working state and government, militias had to rely on themselves to provide security, and really have no incentive to give up arms and no true government to be a part of. General Khalifa Hifter, a former Qaddafi general who later joined the Libyan rebel army in 2011, formed an anti-militia militia, targeting islamist militias like Ansar al-Sharia. Hifter is not affiliated with either of the governments, but rather strives for a military government, and supreme control of the armed forces.
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Syria crisis: Where key countries stand - BBC News - 0 views
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The eruption of civil conflict in Syria in 2011 very quickly provoked a deep split in the international community over which side to back and what outcome to see
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Syria regarded as the world's most pressing crisis, the US and Russia, along with other permanent members of the UN Security Council, Turkey and Arab states, have attempted to resolve their differences.
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Their Geneva Communique, which calls for a transitional government based on "mutual consent", has become the basis for peace talks in the Swiss city. But it is clear the sides have different interpretations of the plan, and have so far failed to achieve a breakthroug
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US wants Bashar al-Assad out of power, and is pushing for the transitional government called for in the Geneva communique.
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President Barack Obama sought Congressional support for military action but postponed the vote - which was not certain to pass - when Syria indicated it would surrender its chemical stockpile
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United States has been one of the most prominent advocates of firm action against the Syrian government, which it has accused of using chemical weapons and other atrocities.
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It is backing Syria's "moderate opposition" with "non-lethal" assistance, including communications equipment, generators, and office supplies - but is also believed to be supplying light weapon
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Russia is one of Mr Assad's most important international backers and has warned the US and its allies against taking one-sided action against Syria
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Russia was key to Syria agreeing to give up chemical weapons, and backs the Geneva Communique. But it has repeatedly said Syria's future should be decided by Syrians and blocked anti-Assad resolutions at the UN Security Council. It continues to supply Syria with arms, including missile systems and aircraft
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Britain has been a big critic of the Assad government and signed a statement in 2013 calling for a "strong international respons
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supported military action but had to rule out Britain's involvement when he failed to secure the backing of parliament in August 2013.
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UK, along with France, successfully lobbied for the EU's arms embargo to be lifted so as to allow further supplies to Syrian rebels
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France has been among the most hawkish Western countries and was the first to stop recognising the Syrian government and deal with the main opposition coalition instead.
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France up to join US military action until plans were put on hold. The president acknowledged that France could not, and would not, act on its own
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China has joined Russia in blocking resolutions critical of Syria at the UN Security Council. It has criticised the prospect of strikes against Syria, insisting any military action without UN approval would be illegal.
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Turkish government has been one of the most vocal critics of Syrian President Assad since early on in the uprising and signalled its willingness to join international action even without UN approval
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Saudi Arabia has been a rival of the Syrian government for years. It has been particularly active in pushing for action against Mr Assad, and called for "all legal means possible" to be used to stop the bloodshed
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Qatar is thought to be one of the main suppliers of weapons to Syrian rebels and says outside military intervention has become a necessity to protect the Syrian people.
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ebanon there is deep division between supporters and opponents of President Assad. The country has suffered from an overspill of violence, including bomb attacks, as well as a huge flood of refugees. It has said it thinks military intervention might make the situation worse.
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Jordan has also received hundreds of thousands of refugees and has called for a political solution to the conflic
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Iran has been Syria's main backer in the region since well before the current conflict.
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Iran has warned that any foreign intervention risks sparking a regional war.
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Israel regards President Assad as an enemy, but has refrained from publicly backing military action against him. It fears its backing could alienate the Arab world,
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This article details were certain countries, that are most affected by the Syrian conflict, stand within the conflict and how they would like to solve the issue.
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Efua Dorkenoo fought against female genital cutting - The Globe and Mail - 0 views
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Efua Dorkenoo fought against female genital cutting
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successful 30-year campaign against the tradition of genital cutting of girls and women,
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Efua Dorkeno
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ied Oct. 18 in London. She was 65.
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Equality Now, a London-based women’s rights organizatio
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Dorkenoo started organizations to battle genital cutting and co-ordinated the effort more broadly as acting director of women’s health at the World Health Organization in the late 1990s.
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She wrote articles and an influential book – Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation (1996) –
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“warrior in chief
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“She inspired a generation of feminists across the world to take up the cause of banning the procedure,
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Last year, the UN General Assembly voted unanimously to recognize female genital cutting as a human-rights violation.
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British government prosecuted it as a crime for the first time,
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African-led organization she helped found, The Girl Generation: Together to End FGM, began work this month.
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practice is declining in many countries
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teenage girls were less likely to have been cut than older women in half of the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is concentrated.
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In Egypt, where more women have been cut than in any other country, surveys showed that 81 per cent of 15- to 19-year-olds had undergone the practice, compared with 96 per cent of women in their late 40s.
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Female genital cutting involves pricking, piercing or amputating some or all of the external genitalia
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vulva is closed, leaving a small hole for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.
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The practice is believed to have originated about 4,000 years ago in Egypt or the Horn of Africa.
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27 countries in Africa
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Adherents come from a spectrum of faiths, including Christianity, Islam and African religion
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often ages 4 to 8
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pathway to womanhood
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The World Health Organization says female genital cutting has no health benefits and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating and, later in life, cysts, infections and infertility.
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intended to reduce women’s sexual pleasure
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preserve a woman’s virginity until marriage.
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125 million women living today in the countries where it is concentrated have experienced such cutting.
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The mother was so badly scarred, she said, that she could not deliver her baby through natural childbirth.
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Ms. Dorkenoo began campaigning against the practice in the early 1980s
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Foundation for Women’s Health and Development to promote the health of African women and girls, with a focus on abolishing female genital cutting
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co-ordinated national action plans against female genital cutting in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
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In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II named Ms. Dorkenoo an honorary officer in the Order of the British Empire.
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Efua Dorkenoo recently passed away. She was a women who fought for women's rights and the ban of FGM. She was an inspiration to feminists to take action.
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Timeline: What's Happened Since Egypt's Revolution? | Egypt in Crisis | FRONTLINE | PBS - 0 views
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This article lays out what has happened in Egypt since the 2001 revolution. Starting from when Mubarak stepped down, the article gives a timeline of significant events up until September 12th of 2013. It highlights events such as Morsi being voted into presidency in 2012, The first draft of the constitution on Nov. 29th 2012, when protestors return to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25 2013, to when Sisi warns Mubarak of military intervention, to when Morsi is removed from office, to when Supreme Court Chief Justice Adly Mansour is chosen by Sisi to step in as Egypt's interim president, etc.
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shared by sheldonmer on 03 Nov 14
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Egyptians visit Washington to defend their 'revolution' - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the ... - 0 views
www.al-monitor.com/...si-human-rights-terrorism.html
United States egypt egyptian revolution washington
shared by sheldonmer on 03 Nov 14
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during an anti-Morsi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo, June 28, 2013. (photo by REUTERSAsmaa Waguih)
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group of influential Egyptians sought to convince a dozen Americans that the removal of elected president Mohammed Morsi in 2013 and his replacement by Field Marshal Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was a plus for Egypt’s political evolution and US interests.
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Morsi had violated the constitution by claiming dictatorial powers in November 2012 and acquiesced in the brutal beating of demonstrators in front of the presidential palace. Crime rose during Morsi’s tenure and Egyptians were afraid to walk the streets or send their kids to school, she told Al-Monitor.
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The Americans, in turn, criticized Egypt for criminalizing the Muslim Brotherhood, killing more than a thousand people and detaining thousands more, including journalists and secular liberals, in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster.
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Coptic and other Christian leaders and a representative of the Ministry of Endowments. T
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told Al-Monitor that the Egyptians conveyed their support for Sisi, who, after ruling as head of a military council that replaced Morsi, was elected president in May with a large percentage of votes, although a smaller turnout than in the previous presidential election.
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Zaki said the delegation also expressed their view that while “we know we are moving toward a strong state, a strong state needs civil society and political opposition.” The third message, he said, was that Egypt wants US support in the fight against terrorism.
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Washington has praised Cairo for mediating last summer’s Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and expressed sympathy for those fighting Islamic extremists, such as the Egyptian soldiers killed in the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 24.
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l some restrictions on US aid to Egypt and many analysts in Washington assert that Egypt cannot return to stability while repressing major components of its society. They also criticize an impending edict for civil society groups to register with the government, which has led many respected foreign-funded nonprofit organizations
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encouraged the Egyptians to embrace political and religious pluralism. “The Egyptians should understand that no government can deliver peace, prosperity and law and order that does not involve all sections of society,” he said.
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“Don’t deal with us like a teacher with a pupil,” said Nashwa el-Houfi, a columnist for the daily newspaper Al Watan. “No one has the whole truth. You have part and I have part.”
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Another plea was for Americans to stop acting as though they knew better what was in the interests of a country with a recorded history going back 7,000 years.
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This article talks about how some Americans feel like Egypt did itself a disservice by getting rid of Morsi's rule. This article describes the conversation had by some members of the Egyptian delegation that were invited to Washington by Hands Along the Nile Development Services. This articles goes on to talk about different issues regarding U.S., Egyptian relations and basically was the U.S. condones and what it doesn't, as if it mattered.
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The article mentions the views of Americans and the views of Egyptians regarding the state of Egypt with concerns surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptians were able to carry a message to Americans. Egyptians voiced their want for U.S assistance with terrorism.
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shared by allieggg on 13 Nov 14
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Proxy War Feared in Libya as UN Envoy Warns Against Foreign Intervention | VICE News - 0 views
news.vice.com/...s-against-foreign-intervention
libya militias armed groups war middle east proxy power vacuum
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US officials accused the United Arab Emirates and Egypt of secretly conducting air strikes on Islamist militias who have seized control of Tripoli airport.
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Islamist groups — from Misrata and other cities wrested Tripoli's airport from the rival Zintan militia, loosely allied with the rogue General Khalifa Hifter, that controlled it since 2011.
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US officials reportedly said they were not consulted over the strikes, which threaten to turn the already disintegrating country into a battleground for a regional proxy war.
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The Misrata alliance — operating under the banner Libya Dawn — is now said to be in de facto control of the entire capital after their opponents abandoned their positions.
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Tripoli-- occupied by Misrata and other islamic groups Tobruk-- new house of reps. / interim gov. / recognized by the UN
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The old General National Congress reconvened in Tripoli on Monday following calls from the Misrata alliance and voted to disband Libya's interim government, while the new House of Representatives, based in Tobruk, has branded those in control of the capital "terrorist groups and outlaws".
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analysts fear Libya could become an arena for a battle between regional rivals, as countries such as the UAE and Egypt attempt to crush the threat from Islamist fighters backed by Qatar.
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after the previous Islamist-dominated parliament refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new assembly elected
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conducted by the two US allies without the knowledge of the US.
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"outside interference" in Libya, which they said "exacerbates current divisions and undermines Libya's democratic transition."
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power vacuum that allowed rival militias to thrive
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US officials told the New York Times that the UAE had provided the military aircraft and crews for two sets of air strikes
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"It's clear there is a proxy war in Libya between Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Algeria on one side and Qatar and Turkey on the other side,"
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the country needs "real engagement from the international community" to defeat the Islamist militias.
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After the fall of Gaddafi a power vacuum allowed rival militias to thrive. Now, Libya has become a proxy war for other Arab nations. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Algeria on one side and Qatar and Turkey on the other.
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Head of Egypt's council for women slams detained female activists | Middle East Eye - 0 views
www.middleeasteye.net/...lams-detained-girls-1879918577
egypt female middle east revolution politics
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Head of Egypt's council for women slams detained female activists
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Egyptian president of the National Council for Women said a group of jailed female activists were better off behind bars than they were on the outside.
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pointing out the favourable conditions in which she said female activists are living in Egyptian detention facilities.
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torture inside the prisons
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December 2013, 21 young women were handed prison sentences ranging from 11 to 15 years for assembling on a street in Alexandria.
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Egypt was handed 300 recommendations by 121 member states
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While we have four years to address the recommendations given during the session, we will amend the laws as soon as a new parliament is voted in
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parliamentary elections by March 2015.
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Women’s rights activists reacted to the interview with dismay.
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"The statement by the head of Egypt's National Council for Woman, Mervat El-Tallawy, comes as a huge disappointment from a woman who has presented herself throughout her career as a defender of Women's rights,”
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“Her views represent a serious blow to any hopes that the regime in Egypt will reconsider its oppressive policies against peaceful protesters and NGOs, in line with the recent recommendations made at the UN human rights review
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The head of Egypt's council made a remark stating that the female activists that were in prions deserved to be there. The comment was shocking to many because Tallaway was a defender of women's rights.
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Egypt: Passive Aggression and Counter-revolution: Voters, Youth Stay Home - 2 views
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Voting was extended from two days to three in Egypt's presidential election on Tuesday, apparently because of an unexpectedly low turnout. The contest pits Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, until recently minister of defense and a high-ranking general, against leftist warhorse Hamdeen Sabahi, a fixed election all on its own.
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Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views
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It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
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Benghazi is again a battlefield.
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The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
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Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
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Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
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the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
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Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
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In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
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Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
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he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
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militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
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The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
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Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
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The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
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tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
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The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
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He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
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which might have given militiamen jobs
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Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
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the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
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In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
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In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
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The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
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Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
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Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
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Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
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Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
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So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
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The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
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Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
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General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
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the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
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Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
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Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
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threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
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Yusuf Dawar
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The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
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And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
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ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
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Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
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oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
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The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
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The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
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Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
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Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
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Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
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In Fashloum
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residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
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“No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
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Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
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Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
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On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
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The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
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the Western powers
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have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
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Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
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Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
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Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
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Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
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The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
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If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
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Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
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The old divisions still matter
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the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
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Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
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July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
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In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
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Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
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Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
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opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
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Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
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In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
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The Arabs are Voting! - 0 views
www.slate.com/...s_israel_s_prime_minister.html
Israel Israeli-Palestinian conflict Palestine Netanyahu No State Arabs
shared by mharcour on 11 Apr 15
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In this Slate article, the author dives in deeper to comments made by Netanyahu in the lead up to the final day of elections. Touching on the issue of no Palestinian state, the author spends most of the article pointing out Netanyahu's blatant bigotry against the Arab people who make up 20% of Israel.
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Egyptian Constitution Provides Little Protection | Violence is not our Culture - 0 views
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women sexual harrassment constitution
shared by sambofoster on 24 Feb 16
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Egypt's new constitution leaves Doaa Abdelaal feeling left out. "I don't see myself as an Egyptian citizen in this constitution. I don't see my future in this constitution," she said. Abdelaal voted against the proposed constitution and now says it must not be left in its current version.