File photo of Iraqi Shi’ite politician Ammar Al-Hakim gesturing during a speech in Baghdad. (Reuters)

In a speech he delivered at his office on the anniversary of the birth of Imam Ali, Hakim called on the Iraqi political factions to put their differences behind them in light of the recent spate of terrorist attacks.

He said: “The meeting will show that no matter how sharp our differences, we respect the blood of the people. This will send a message to the terrorists and their sponsors that that they will not undermine our unity, and that we will fight [them] until the last moment.”

He called for the establishment of a “National Honor Code” that codifies rejection of sectarianism and terrorism, adding that all political parties should sign this.

Commenting on the initiative, ISCI MP Furat Al-Shara’a told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Many initiatives have been launched, whether by Ammar Al-Hakim or others. This is not the first initiative and possibly will not be the last until we achieve the best results to overcome the current ordeal which threatens the future of Iraq.”

“The importance of the initiative lies in it coming at a decisive time and from a figure accepted by everybody. This is something which will guarantee the success of the initiative. Accordingly, we will hold two-, three- and four-party meetings to determine the formula for this national honor code,” he added.

When asked about his evaluation of the security measures taken in Iraq, Shara’a said: “It appears that the changes made by the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces were very important, yet not enough. Those found to be negligent must be severely punished because terrorists are able to attack when they want. This is something which will make the situation more difficult even with the presence of national initiatives.”

For its part, the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) welcomed the initiative. Spokesman Moayad Tayeb informed Asharq Al-Awsat that “the KA supports the initiative and all other initiatives that aim to reunify the country and prevent the horrors of civil war.”

Tayeb added: “Dialogue is important to rise above the differences and crises gripping the country provided that this it is based on clear programs that bring positive results so as not to re-launch useless initiatives in the future.”

The KA spokesman emphasized that “we are ready to take any step required to build on the current initiative and resolve the crisis.”

In related news, Sheikh Mahdi Al-Somaida’ai, the chief of the Sunni Fatwa Council in Iraq, stressed that “the initiative comes at an appropriate time despite the vague political scene and the severe crisis of confidence among politicians.”

“Such meetings and dialogues are always welcome, but today they have become urgent,” he added. “Hakim’s initiative supports our step, although no prior coordination took place.”

Iraqi women show their ink-stained fingers after casting their votes at a polling station in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on March 7, 2010. AFP/ GETTYIMAGES

The problems faced by the women of Iraq are doubly tragic in light of the fact that the majority of the population is female—a result of the horrors perpetrated by Saddam Hussein, as well as the armed conflicts, generalized violence and the displacement of thousands of people in post-2003 Iraq. Representing more than 55% of the population, thousands of Iraqi women are widowed, unemployed or displaced due to the ongoing battles.

The situation is made even more cruel by the sting of expectations raised and then dashed. Many women held high expectations of the possibilities offered by life after Saddam Hussein. As part of the US’s stated commitment to bringing democracy to Iraq, many Iraqi women hoped that it would use its influence to reinforce and expand women’s rights, and allow them to fully participate in the government and society of a new, free Iraq.

Under the Ba’athist thumb

Under the rule of the Ba’ath Party, political power in Iraq was highly centralized and dominated by a small circle of men at the top of the party. However, on paper at least, Iraqi women enjoyed a considerable degree of social and economic equality, and this translated into real gains in many respects.

“Women in Iraq were privileged compared to other countries in the region,” says Maysoon Al-Damluji, the founder of the Iraqi Independent Women’s Group. “By [the] 1970s and 1980s, women were already empowered and enjoyed wide legal rights and social freedom,” she told The Majalla.

The basis for this relative freedom was the Personal Status Law introduced in 1959, just after Iraq became a republic, which granted equal inheritance and divorce rights for men and women and included provisions for child support. It also remained on the statute books through various changes of regime. The constitution drafted in 1970 by the Ba’ath Party also guaranteed equal rights to women, and it specifically guaranteed their rights to vote, attend school, run for political office and own property. However, increasing social and economic rights for Iraq’s women were not accompanied by political reforms. As Kaitlyn Soligan, a media coordinator at MADRE, an international women’s rights organization, says, “During the 1970s and 1980s, women did have social and economic rights in Iraq; like all Iraqis they did not enjoy any political rights.”

Recalling this era, Iraqi novelist and women’s rights activist Safria Jamil hafidh said: “Although there were women working in the government during Saddam’s regime, they had no voice and no freedom to express themselves.” Overall, the number of women joining Iraq’s workforce grew, but in other respects the roles open to women remained severely restricted. Labor and employment laws were passed to ensure that women were granted equal opportunities in the civil service, maternity benefits, and freedom from harassment in the workplace. This helped break down the traditional reluctance to allow women to work outside the home.

Even after Saddam Hussein became president in 1979, women’s access to employment and education continued to grow, mainly because Iraq’s expanding economy needed their labor. By 1993, women constituted 79% of the workforce in the services sector, 43.9% in the professional and technical sectors, and 12.7% in administrative and organizational posts, according to Women in Iraq, a 2005 report by the United States’ Congressional Research Service.

At the same time, women suffered the consequences of political repression, a characteristic of Iraqi society as a whole during this period. Saddam regarded women as an instrument for pressuring opposition members and for extracting and finding information from dissidents. A favorite regime tactic involved sending dissidents videotapes of their female relatives being raped by members of the secret police.

The situation began to worsen in the 1980s, as Iraq endured a series of disasters. After the catastrophic eight-year war with Iran, Saddam’s regime moved away from Arab socialist ideals and towards conservative interpretations of social and cultural norms, including less tolerance for female autonomy in the public sphere. Women’s rights deteriorated further following the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of the economic sanctions. According to Damluji, “Like men, women suffered wars and the effects of sanctions that impoverished the society as a whole, leading to social fragmentation.”

Soligan adds that “the majority of women’s rights were rolled back; however, the 1990s saw severe oppression for all Iraqis. The whole population was targeted.”

Mina Al-Oraibi, the assistant editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, agreed, saying: “It is hard to separate human rights from women’s rights; they were definitely not respected during Saddam’s era…. Women suffered greatly from [the] sanctions regime. A decade of Iraqi society was taken away from them during those years.”

The government also made a number of changes to the Iraqi constitution in the early 1990s that disadvantaged women. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on women’s rights in Iraq stated that “these changes allowed men to practice polygamy without the first wife’s consent and afforded leniency to men who committed so-called honour crimes, allowing them to receive as little as six months in prison for killing female relatives suspected of sexual transgressions.”

One step forward or two steps back?

Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, international organizations and governments had high hopes for the progress that could be made in the important task of improving women’s rights in Iraq. For instance, one UN report noted that “women’s rights and gender equality became symbolic issues for Iraq’s new national agenda.”

There have been significant changes in some areas since 2003—for example, with many more women participating in politics. However, female activists have thus far been unable to capitalize on this further, with few women in positions of leadership and their exclusion from the decision-making process. As Damaluji states, “Women enjoy a quota in legislative authorities of no less than 25% [of the seats]. This is the first important step in empowering women to take part in decision-making processes.”

However, Soligan believes that “women’s rights in Iraq have been systemically dismantled since 2003.” The new, post-Saddam constitution approved in 2005 guarantees the same rights to women as the one drafted in 1970 by the Ba’ath party. However, there has been widespread condemnation of the new constitution as a fundamental setback for the majority of Iraq’s population, in particular its women. Soligan argues that the new system fails in its implementation of these rights, saying that “the clerics are in charge of personal status issues within the legal system in Iraq, not the public civil courts. This has been regulating women in public and private spheres; discriminating against women in issues of marriage,divorce, inheritance and more.”

Article 2 of the new constitution states: “Islam is the official religion and foundation for legislation. (a) No law may be enacted that contradicts the established provisions of Islam. (b) No law may be enacted that contradicts the principals of democracy. (c) No law may be enacted that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms as stipulated in this Constitution.” Critics allege that a side effect of making Islam the “foundation for legislation” has been handing power to those able to claim the right to interpret and apply religious strictures. For this reason, the document has been condemned by critics both inside and outside Iraq as a fundamental setback for the majority of Iraqi population, and in particular women.

As Oraibi says, “Limitations for women were apparent during Saddam, [but] today these limitations are still apparent but on a much larger scope, and used by religious groups as a political tool.”

The removal of Saddam has allowed for the entry of numerous NGOs working on women’s issues and the creation of independent women’s organizations, as well as the implementation of government policies more favorable to them. But the endemic violence and insecurity that plague the country and the resurgent Islamic, tribal, and conservative forces have combined to impact negatively on Iraqi women.

Despite these problems, some activists and campaigners argue that progress is still possible. In an interview with The Majalla, Iraqi novelist and women’s rights activist Safira Jamil Hafidh said that space had opened up in Iraqi society and politics for women to press for reforms. “The situation for women is slowly progressing, as they have the freedom of speech to demand for more rights and recognition,” she said. “The majority of the Iraqi population in regards to men are now aware of women’s rights, although the security situation in Iraq is dangerous women are now able to express themselves without any limitations.”

Although many hopes have not been fulfilled, many women remain determined to seize opportunities to improve their position—or at least hold on to what rights they have in the face of growing violence, insecurity and economic hardship. Soligan, for one, told The Majalla that “women’s rights activist are severely targeted, however, it does not stop them from demonstrating.”

Iranian Mehan Javid registers her candidacy for the upcoming presidential election at the interior ministry in Tehran on May 9, 2013 (ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

So far, the Guardian Council, the institution charged with interpreting the constitution, has done little to clarify the definition of the key term rejal (the plural form of the Farsi word rajol) in Article 115 of the Iranian constitution, which is often translated as ‘personalities.’ The continuation of this ambiguity by the Guardian Council seems to be rooted in pragmatism.

According to Article 115, the president must be elected from the religious and political rejal, must be of Iranian origin, must be prudent and a good manager, and must have impeccable background, be trustworthy and pious. The president must be faithful to the doctrine of the Islamic Republic and the country’s official religion, Shia Islam.

Azam Taleghani nominated herself to compete in the 7th presidential election in 1997, saying she wanted “to clarify the role of the rejal.” This year, 30 women have nominated themselves for the presidency, compared to 656 men.

Despite female activists’ numerous efforts, and the positive political and jurisprudential opinions by some ayatollahs and ulama, the definition of rejal remains unclear. The ambiguity of this word, which seems to have been deliberately chosen by the framers of the constitution, is still the topic of discussion and debate.

Although the subjects of women and politics, women and political power and women and the presidency have always been debated in academia, from the 1997 presidential election onwards the debate over the acceptance of female candidates standing alongside male counterparts has been a concern for different media outlets, political and theological groups.

To date, Iranian officials have maintained that they have disqualified candidates because of their lack of expedience without mentioning their gender. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi has recently broken with this precedent, and the reason for disqualifying women became clear.

Ayatollah Yazdi, one of the Guardian Council clerical members, said last week: “The law does not allow women to become president. There are ten, twelve women amongst the registered candidates and one of them has said, ‘If I become a president, half of my cabinet members will be women and the other half will be men.’

“There is a well-known saying that someone once wanted to enter a village in which he was not allowed, but he kept asking, “Where is the chief’s house?” The law does not allow women to become president; how come this individual has already established her cabinet?”

Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, expressed a different opinion in 2009, when he responded to questions on his views on the issue of female candiates, and if women can be considered political and religious rajol.

He said: “No one is forbidden to register and enter into the game. One of the Guardian Council’s constitutional duties has specifically been to review the credentials of the candidates. In the case of political and religious rajol, there were no formal discussions and therefore there was no announcement about our decision.”

“But should we decide to address the issue then the Guardian Council needs to interpret Article 115 of the Constitution and declare its conclusion. So far there is no official interpretation about the issue.”

The Guardian Council will likely continue to follow the same course, and avoid a specific ruling on the issue. The Guardian Council has taken no action to prevent women registering for elections in the past, nor is there any specific ban against women.

However, Ayatollah Yazdi is not the member of the council to have expressed an individual opinion. In previous elections, Gholam Hossein Elham, the Guardian Council’s previous spokesperson, said that the constitution’s wording specifies that the presidential candidates must be men as well as political rajol.

During the past few years, female activists and anti-discrimination advocates have focused efforts to articulate a broad and gender-free definition of political and theological rajol as someone who is prudent and capable so as to include women. But it ultimately is the Guardian Council’s duty to interpret the law; thus, all their efforts have so far been futile.

The comprehensive debates in the Constituent Assembly that wrote the 1979 constitution indicate that there were representatives who emphasized that the Constitution should explicitly state that only a male can become a president. However, there was a minority group with a different view.

In order to resolve this conflict, the word rejal was eventually suggested and chosen, and the ambiguity about the word has continued until today. It seems improbable that constitutional experts will try to clarify this ambiguity, given the outcry that would result, whichever side they come down on.

An Algerian woman leaves a voting booth before casting her vote at a polling station in Algiers during local elections on November 29, 2012. FAROUK BATICHE/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to The Majalla, France-based Algerian analyst Anouar Malek said, “Bouteflika won’t leave office because that would mean the fall of many heads that enjoy privileges under his regime.” He added that “it would also affect those who have found a favorable environment to indulge in corruption during his fourteen year reign.”

The Algerian constitution stipulates that if the President of the Republic is unable to carry out his duties due to a serious and long-lasting illness, the Constitutional Council will declare the office of President of the Republic vacant using detailed procedures. If Bouteflika becomes incapable of performing his duties, his replacement would have to be approved by the junta. “If Bouteflika remains in power ’til the end of his current term, he would obviously take part in choosing his successor,” Algerian political expert and former army officer Ahmed Adimi told The Majalla.

It is quite obvious that the Algerian government is not ready for a perfectly transparent presidential election. Since the country became independent in 1962, the military has always chosen the president, from Ahmed Ben Balla in 1962 to Mohamed Boudiaf, who was brought back from his exile in Morocco and later assassinated six months later on June 1992, to Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999.

Like his predecessors, Bouteflika belongs to the independence war generation, but he rules a country in which 70% of the population is under the age of thirty and who have very little memory of this era. “We have to give power to the new generation of rulers; the period of revolutionary legitimacy is over,” Hichem Aboud, writer and editor-in-chief of Mon Journal, said to The Majalla. It is clear that in an environment where the president is very close to the elite and strongly linked to the security forces, it might not be a bad idea to see the ascension of a younger generation into power. But any drastic change looks to be excluded in a country that suffered the Islamic uprising and bloody civil war in the 1990s, which caused more than 300,000 casualties.

“Most Algerians hope for a soft and a fair transition; they want a candidate who has sufficient energy for solving the country’s most complicated problems, but the successor has to go through political reforms gradually and avoid any drastic changes,” Geoff Porter, director of North Africa Risk Consulting, told The Majalla. In the mean time, there is already one official candidate for the 2014 presidential elections: former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour. Others may emerge when Bouteflika’s intentions towards running a fourth term are made clear.

Among the potential candidates are the current prime minster, Abdelmalek Sellal, and the seventy-year-old former head of government Mouloud Hamrouche, who well may receive support from Hocine Aït Ahmed, an iconic figure of the Algerian revolution. In the case that Bouteflika is unable to complete his current term, his temporary replacement until the elections will be the Senate chairman, Abd-el-Kader Bensalah.

Although Bouteflika’s last appearance in public was on April 17, at the funeral of a highly-ranked official, his presence in Algerian politics continues to dominate political discourse even while he is out of the public eye. His health has gone beyond being a permanent feature of Algerian politics, and has also raised the issue of media censorship in the country. Last Sunday, the Algerian authorities censored the newspapers Mon Journal and its Arabic version, Djaridati, for the first time in decades, after they printed information about president’s declining health.

For Hichem Aboud, head of both newspapers, the authority’s attitude confirms that the information they had on Bouteflika’s health was accurate.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki addressing a press conference in Baghdad on May 11, 2011. AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GettyImages

Just 140 out of a total of 325 Iraqi parliamentarians attended the special parliamentary session called for by Speaker Osama Al-Nujaifi at the behest of the Ahrar parliamentary bloc, affiliated to the Sadrist Movement. The State of Law coalition bloc, headed by under-fire Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, boycotted the emergency parliamentary session, as did a number of other allied parliamentary blocs.

Prior to the session, Maliki had called for Iraqi MPs to boycott the emergency session, making general accusations against unnamed Iraqi MPs of being directly involved in the latest violence.

Although the major topic of discussion at yesterday’s parliamentary session was the deteriorating security situation in the country, senior defense and interior ministry officials boycotted the emergency session. Local media reported that both Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun Al-Dulaimi and Deputy Interior Minister Adnan Al-Assadi had boycotted the parliamentary session, along with all other security officials.

Following this latest controversy, along with previous parliamentary dissatisfaction with the security authorities, the first full Iraqi parliamentary session following the legislative break—scheduled for June 18—is expected to see these security officials removed from office following a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

Responding to Maliki’s accusations and calls for a boycott, Iraqi parliamentary Speaker Osama Al-Nujaifi accused the Iraqi prime minister of “recklessness and tyranny.”

Speaking during a press conference following the parliamentary session, Nujaifi characterized Maliki’s calls for MPs not to attend the emergency session as “disregard for the blood of the Iraqi people.”

“We had hoped that the prime minister would have been more courageous and attended parliament to discuss the security breaches and the reasons behind the failure of the security services,” he added.

In an unprecedented move by the parliamentary speaker, Nujaifi accused Maliki of “rebelling” against the constitution and being “indifferent” to the suffering of the Iraqi people.

He stressed, “Maliki has confirmed his rebellion against the constitution by calling on MPs not to attend the emergency parliamentary session and carry out their constitutional duty to discuss the security deterioration in the country,” adding, “this is taking place at a time when a large portion of the armed forces budget is being spent on counter-terrorism to no avail.”

He also confirmed: “The prime minister’s inflammatory statements yesterday and his accusations against parliament (of being involved in terrorism) gives us the right to raise an official complaint to the cabinet,” adding that “we will do this in the coming days.”

Moqtada Al-Sadr had previously warned against the presence of “extremist” voices, among both Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’ite communities, pushing the country towards violence.

He emphasized that Iraq is on the verge of witnessing “imminent sectarian violence.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki had ordered a shakeup of senior security officers on Tuesday evening, following a spate of bombings that have killed more than 380 people over the course of one month.

The office of the prime minister issued an official statement announcing, “After consultation with security officials, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, today (Tuesday) issued orders…for changes in the operations commands and the leadership of the divisions.”

Maliki named Lieutenant Abdulamir Al-Shimari as head of Baghdad’s Operations Command following the sacking of Staff Lieutenant General Ahmed Hashem.

Over the past week more than 200 people have been killed in a wave of car bomb attacks across Iraq. The worst violence took place in Baghdad, where car bombs targeted Shi’ite districts during Monday morning rush hour. A spate of sectarian bombings also struck Iraq on Tuesday; the worst attack seeing a car bomb explode near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people. At least 23 people were reported killed in the newest wave of attacks earlier today.

Written by Hamza Mustafa

Yemeni security forces inspect the scene where a Russian-made Yemeni military jet crashed into a residential district of the capital Sanaa on May 13, 2013, killing the pilot, officials said. Witnesses said the plane exploded in the air before crashing and debris from the aircraft scattered across the area, causing light damage to buildings and shattering windows (AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED HUWAIS/Getty Images)

Three military airplanes crashed in and around Sana’a over the last few months, the last of which came down in the south of the city last week, killing the pilot. According to reliable sources at a nearby air force base, at least three aircraft have also returned to base with bullet holes in them in previous months.

Two weeks before the latest crash, three military pilots were assassinated by a gunman on a motorcycle while on their way to their work at the air base of Anad, in Lahij province in the south of the country. The man accused of killing the 3 pilots was later reportedly arrested by security authorities, and told his interrogators that he was a “missile.”

“These repeated incidents happening with Air Force indicate that there are centers [of power] who want to destroy the Air Force,” said President Hadi this week, speaking to thousands of officers and soldiers at Al-Dailami Air Base in Sana’a. One day earlier, the commander of Yemeni Air Force, Brigadier Rashid Al-Janad, said in televised interview that the three military airplanes that crashed over Sana’a had been shot down. Brigadier Al-Janad showed pieces of the stricken airplanes with bullet holes in them, which he said proved that someone from Sana’a was shooting them down deliberately. “Now it’s clear to us that there is a conspiracy against the Air Force,” he said.

Shortly after the last crash of a military plane, a Russian-made Sukhoi-22 ground attack jet, military intelligence officers at Anad air base arrested a soldier from Lahij. The soldier, who is now under investigation, was accused of having bombed the main reservoirs of fuel of military airplanes at the base.

The question remains as to who is behind all these incidents, if sabotage and attacks are indeed the cause of the crashes as the government claims. There are several possible culprits: political groups seeking to discredit each other, military personnel who have lost out in the recent reorganizations of the military and security services, and finally Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who view Yemen’s government and military as agents of American power.

AQAP is growing more and more in the south of Yemen, the most troubled region of the country. Its members know that American trainers and some American Special Forces troops are based at the Anad air base, so it has been always one of AQAP’s targets. The terrorist organization also holds that American drone strikes are enabled by guidance and intelligence from “bad Muslims,” represented by the Yemeni government and its air force’s planes.

In the past, AQAP members have justified killing Yemeni Muslim soldiers, saying: “we kill them because they are the first barrier between us and our enemy America.” They also justify bombing any interest of the Yemeni, American or western governments by saying “we are in a war and they [the Yemeni and US governments] hit us with things that we do not have, and we hit them with things they do not have,” referring to suicide bombings and other means of asymmetric warfare.

“We kill pilots and destroy airplanes because the Yemeni government who works under commandership of its master America, tries to kill us and destroy us with these things,” said one member of Al-Qaeda via email.

Syrian protesters hold banners referring to the international conference on the Syrian crisis being held in Paris during a demonstration after Friday prayers in Kfar Nubul in the northwestern province of Idlib on July 6, 2012 (D. Leal Olivas/AFP/GettyImages)

Not so long ago, most Arab and European political elites were consistently repulsed by America’s adventurism in the Middle East—no time more than during the George W. Bush years. Yet now, in the era of Obama, it seems many of these observers simply cannot get enough of us. Is America “missing in action” in the Middle East, or simply more judicious in the missions it chooses to take on?

Syria is perhaps the biggest reason this question is back on the agenda, but the same principle can be applied to much of the region as well. In one important area, America has been much more selective in its choices of military missions in and around the broader Middle East and North Africa; this was the case in Mali as well as Libya.

Some in France seem to feel they were abandoned by the US with regard to Mali, and critics in the United States attacked Obama for “leading from behind” on Libya. But in both cases, the US got what it wanted with minimal cost to itself. Unlike with NATO’s experience in the Balkans and Afghanistan, this time America’s European allies took on the lion’s share of the burden instead of unloading most of it onto Washington.

The Syrian conflict, however, still lingers. It remains unclear if there even is a viable military solution to this conflict, especially given the possibility that a rebel victory might empower the same Al-Qaeda terrorists that American troops were recently fighting in Iraq. On the other hand, it is also possible that allowing the situation to deteriorate further means it will get harder and harder to resolve. America has therefore stepped up its efforts to seek a political resolution through a conference at Geneva, bringing together members of the Syrian regime and opposition for negotiations, although the prospects for success there still seem quite dim.

America is not currently in a position to extend the sort of economic statecraft that it traditionally has pursued in the Middle East. Aid to Israel and Egypt continue, as do programs under the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). However, the administration has encountered opposition from Congress over a special package of new assistance for the Arab transition countries, and emergency funding to help Egypt reach a comprehensive deal with the IMF has been a particularly difficult domestic battle. Some in the US want the Obama administration to be doing more—for instance, pressing President Mursi harder on Israeli–Palestinian issues or human rights—while others feel that the US should be simply doing less in the region right now.

As transition countries such as Egypt and Tunisia struggle to consolidate the democratic opening that began two years ago, one of the main avenues for this effort is in the economic realm. This means convincing their citizens that a democratic system of government can meet basic needs with regard to unemployment, income and growth.

No doubt foreign investment, commerce and aid have a key part to play in meeting this goal, but America simply is not in a position to finance the Arab Spring. Neither is Europe, for that matter, making the role of funding from the Gulf more important than usual. American officials want better consultation with the Gulf states to ensure that this funding is being used to consolidate rather than derail democratization, but neither is Washington in a position to extract much in the way of assurances.

The most imminent security threat to America is probably still terrorism originating in the Middle East, but there are also quite reasonable pressures for spending on other military and domestic priorities. There is also reason to doubt whether greater spending on defense is the best way for ensuring America’s long-term share of global power.

Meanwhile, the recent bombings in Boston confirm that radical Islamist terrorism, even when inspired from abroad, can also originate at home. Iraq has had one of its worst months on record in terms of terrorist attacks and social unrest, but the American public still seems quite content about our troops in Iraq having come home.

However, for all the talk of American disengagement from the region or a “pivot” toward Asia, one has only to look at the agenda of Secretary of State Kerry to see that America continues to give high priority to confronting Middle Eastern challenges. His travel schedule since becoming secretary of state has focused far more on Syria and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict than on other priorities, and that includes East Asia.

This confirms that American diplomacy in the Middle East will continue apace, but other American assets may be much less easy to deploy in the region for the foreseeable future. The American military experience in Iraq has led to the conclusion that our military might needs to be deployed much more judiciously in the future, while the 2008 financial crisis makes it much harder, certainly for the time being, for America to remake the world in its own image through economic soft power.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian disaster in Syria continues to rage on. It is not clear that greater US involvement would actually fix the crisis, although some of the administration’s critics at home and abroad certainly seem to think so, clamoring for more assertive US leadership. One cannot help but think that President George W. Bush would have loved this.

An Israeli man tries a gas mask at a distribution centre in Or-Yehuda, south of Tel Aviv on February 28, 2010 (YEHUDA RAIZNER/AFP/Getty Images)

Yet more column inches have been devoted to these few, if lingering, deaths than all the others—not because of the people who died, but because their deaths may have involved chemical weapons (CW), something the Obama Administration declared in August 2012 to be a “red line,” with unspecified—but presumably major—consequences for transgression. Whether CWs were used, and, if so, who might have used them, is therefore key. Some simple, impartial analysis may help answer those questions.

The first issue to note is that CW are an area weapon, normally fired by artillery barrage or dropped by ground attack jets. The areas in which they are alleged to have been used make sense. Soviet doctrine advocated using CW against built-up areas; but to do so, many rounds must be fired, to saturate the area with chemical agent such that no one without the correct protective equipment will survive. Yet in none of the accounts are more than a few dispensers described, and the reports are usually provided by unprotected civilians who survived the attacks without access to countermeasures such as atropine, which is used to counteract the effects of nerve gas. If the Syrian government is using CW, it is not doing so very competently.

It is known that the Syrians have SCUD-launched CW, sometimes called the “poor man’s nuclear bomb,” as a deterrent—usually described as being against Israel, although they probably deterred Iraq as well. However, there are other possible—and less dramatic—explanations for the events described. Some of the effects reported may have different origins: white phosphorous smoke (sometimes used as a smokescreen to obscure the movement of troops) is very acrid, and a lungful is likely to cause coughing, as well as irritation to the eyes. Similarly, the description of smoking devices dropped from a helicopter may have been target markers for a subsequent air or artillery attack rather than CW canisters. There is also the possibility that some devices are merely tear gas or another less-lethal irritant (although technically tear gas counts as CW in wartime under the Hague Convention). The main question, given the conventional destructive power available to the regime, is why would they bother with using CW?

However, it is likely that some CW has been used, in sufficient quantities for Western intelligence agencies to raise concerns. If it was not the Syrian government, the question then arises as to who the culprit is. The analysts’ question—“Cui bono?” (To whose benefit?)—identifies two obvious candidates, both of whom have an interest in trying to involve the US in the conflict: the rebels and Israel. Consequently, the possibility of either the Syrian rebels or an Israeli “false flag” operation planting evidence was raised by a former US State Department official, Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Colin Powell, who cast doubt on the evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria in an interview with Current TV.

The rebels would probably like to see a Libyan scenario, of close air support to their fighters, but otherwise little interference from the West. By contrast, the Israelis fear yet another Islamist regime on their borders, and would probably like to see an Iraq scenario, in which a US force enters Syria and destroys the regime. This would possibly lead to Balkanization of Syria and Iraq, as envisaged in the “Clean Break” document written in 1996 for then soon-to-be prime minister Netanyahu. The would be to reduce the power of any single Arab country to proportions manageable by Israel without US assistance.

While more famous for their nuclear weapons, the Israelis have their own stocks of CW (and biological weapons, BW) which they are far more likely to use, since the threshold for CW use is so much lower. (This was regrettably shown in various places, notably Halabcheh in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, but also North Yemen in the 1960s.) It would not be impossible to move a small quantity of chemical agent into Syria—probably via Turkey—and produce an effect sufficient to prove the Obama Administration’s “red line” to have been breached. This would admittedly be a difficult thing to fake. Western shells usually have several safety features to prevent accidental initiation of the payload before the desired impact point, whether high explosive or CW. Israeli shells follow Western designs, and thus any such false flag use would require a Syrian round, but this is not an insurmountable problem if the potential geo-strategic rewards are high enough.

The other possible perpetrators are the rebels. They may have come by CW through a regime sympathizer providing them with one or two rounds with chemical warheads, or simply by regime incompetence—just as the US Air Force accidentally flew some nuclear weapons across the US a couple of years ago. The semi-official Iranian Fars News suggests that the weapons were supplied by a former Iraqi Ba’athist general from among the small number of unaccounted-for CW rounds in Iraq, although it did not explain why these were not used more often against the occupying forces, thus remaining available to pass on to the Sunni rebels in Syria.

There is also the possibility that the rebels themselves have manufactured the agent. A video discovered by the Syria Tribune website purports to show an Islamist from the Almighty Wind Brigade (Katibat Al-Rih Al-Sarsar) making a chemical agent, which he then tests on a pair of rabbits in a tank. Creating simple-yet-dangerous chemical agents is not difficult: several Royal Navy personnel had to be evacuated from a ship when someone accidentally made a chemical agent while cleaning the lavatories.

There are, however, several issues which do not quite add up. The chemical agent described by the witnesses in Syria is variously blue or white, yet the agent in the video is clear. Further, while the rabbits appear to die when the agent is introduced, there is no fume extractor to the tank (which appears to have no air-tight seal), nor is there one over the preparation area. Similarly, the protective gear being worn in the video does not seem particularly advanced: washing-up gloves and what looks like a simple dust filter over the man’s mouth. Indeed, its primary purpose seems to be to protect the individual’s identity as much as his health.

It is likely that some chemical weapons have indeed been used in Syria, although the number of incidents of CW use is likely to be far fewer than claimed. What is less likely is that the Syrian regime deliberately used CW: the tactical benefits are not worth the geo-strategic risks. Rather, if chemical agents have been used deliberately, the most likely perpetrators are the Syrian opposition trying to incite the US to intervene in the conflict against the regime.

AK-47 machine guns hang in a shelter for Syrian rebels in the Salaheddine district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on April 12, 2013. DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images

For now, it appears that Salafist jihadis are set to dominate post-Assad Syria. Yet appearances are deceptive: these groups are operating in a political vacuum and buoyed by the passions of war. Their success is owed partly to alternative political visions, such as socialism and nationalism, being misused by the Syrian Ba’athist regime and the failure of Western promises. In such a chaotic environment, and with the opposition still in disarray, it is natural for Syrian Muslims to turn to their Islamic faith for spiritual succor.

Like the other Abrahamic religions, Islam has developed a martial component, jihad, to deal with the harsh realities of war. This component is activated when war occurs, and switches off when peace returns. The idea of jihad gives many Syrian Muslims faith, direction and strength in a war where right and wrong is blurred and death ubiquitous.

For the observer with a superficial grasp of Islam, it is easy to equate Syrians resorting to the martial component of their faith with support for groups like the Al-Nusra Front. As Elizabeth O’Bagy says in Jihad in Syria, “Growing popularity is not reflective of popular support for their radical ideology.”

In fact, in Syria’s Salafi Insurgents, Aron Lund says most low level Salafist jihadists are really just religiously conservative Sunnis, many of whom turned religious during the war and “care very little about the theoretical strands of Islamism.” One suspects that there are many who join these groups not because they subscribe to their ideology but because of their fighting ability. Most observers concede that the Al-Nusra Front is among the most militarily-effective groups active in Syria at the moment.

The failure to make this distinction has led many to conclude that the Al-Nusra Front and similar groups will play a disproportionate role in post-Assad Syria, especially seeing that other theoretical strands of Islamism are on the wane. After all, the Syrian Brotherhood’s vision—which is more liberal, according to Ashes of Hama author Raphaёl Lefèvre—seems to have erratic support, and is perhaps geared to the political fracas to come rather than the current situation.

Furthermore, Sufism has been co-opted by the regime, as Dr. Thomas Pierret shows in Religion and State in Syria. Many of the brigades I interviewed cited the Assad regime’s turn to Sufism as one of the main reasons for turning to Salafism in the first place: Abu Jihad, one of the commanders of Zahir Baybar’s brigade, told me that “Sheikh Ramadan Buti and Ahmed Hassoun [both Sufis] failed to condemn the regime when the regime oppressed us.”

Yet Syrians are not passive receptacles. The FSA’s Islamist Brigades have already rejected Al-Qaeda ideology, indicating that Syrians are engaging with their country’s political destiny. In addition, Salafist jihadi groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra demand too much from their adherents. Many Salafist jihadi brigades demand total obedience from their members—which means renouncing things like smoking, because it is considered sinful and an impediment to victory. Many fighters I talked to said that the smoking ban was one of the reasons they did not join these brigades.

If strictness prevents Syrians from joining these brigades in war, how will they embrace them in peace time? In fact, if the Bosnian experience is anything to go by, Salafist jihadis become a political embarrassment in peacetime. It is no wonder that Salafi umbrella organizations like the Syrian Islamic Front appear more moderate than expected. As Lund suggests, the Syrian Islamic Front, aims for an Islamic state, but still disregards the fatwas of Ibn Tayimiyyah declaring the Alawites apostates. Instead, the Syrian Islamic Front, considers minorities like the Alawites and Druze as people of distinct religions who can thus have a place in post-Assad Syria. The implication is that if the front is adjusting to the Syrian milieu, other groups who cannot compromise are likely to be marginalized.

Salafist jihadis will also have to contend with Syria’s tradition of civil activism, its rich intellectual heritage and the established religious institutions (which rival Egypt). Even the Salafi religious scholars I spoke to were tempering the religious zeal of the fighters through study. In such an environment, it seems difficult to envisage politically inexperienced Salafist jihadis dominating Syria’s political landscape after Assad.

The key to diffusing the jihadis is to stabilize the situation quickly. Reviving Syria’s political and economic life and investing in Syria’s indigenous religious institutions will ensure the return of civil society. In such a situation, Salafist jihadis will have to either enter politics, remain quiet, or take up arms. If they choose the first option, they will have to offer compelling ideas and learn compromise. They will be marginalized if they choose the latter two. Already, there are indications that organization like the Syrian Islamic Front are in the process of presenting their ‘third way,’ implying that they are open to dialogue. Western policymakers must stop viewing the Syrian crisis through the prism of counter-terrorism and realize that Salafist jihadis flourish when they are repressed and in wartime—not when civil society is alive.

Egyptians campaign for presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood member, in Nasr City, Cairo, on March 9, 2012. (AMRO MARAGHI/AFP/GettyImages)

“Religion should change society indirectly through inspiration, not directly through politics,” he said from his office in suburban Cairo, which serves as the headquarters of his Strong Egypt party. “I oppose Islamist groups who launch their own parties. There will inevitably be conflict between religion and politics.”

Aboul Fotouh, who was edged out in the first round of Egypt’s presidential election last year, was shrewdly restrained when asked to comment on the first-year performance of a government dominated by the Brotherhood, which he abandoned two years ago. “It is not for me to evaluate,” said the 61-year-old physician, “though we are against the concept of political Islam.”

A band of ex-Brothers

The view from the moral high ground is always gratifying, particularly when one’s rivals are mired in a tar pit of their own making. A cadre of prominent members of the Ikhwan (as the Brotherhood is known in Arabic) have bolted from the group and are now active oppositionists. They include men like Tharwat El-Kherbawy, a lawyer who has written books about the Ikhwan and the triumph of its conservative wing in the run up to the revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011; Mohammed Habib, a former deputy to the group’s supreme guide, who claims he was outmaneuvered by hardliners when they allied with Mubarak in exchange for their support of a dynastic transfer of presidential power; and Ibrahim El-Zafarani, a physician who, as a political prisoner in the late 1990s, participated in vigorous debates over politics and theology with inmates Aboul Fotouh and his rival, Khairat El-Shater, widely thought to be currently the most powerful man in the Ikhwan.

Ibrahim El-Zafarani, who launched his own party last year, echoes Aboul Fotouh’s warning against mixing politics and religion. “A political party is different from a religious movement,” he said in an interview last year. “Religious values are absolute while politics is about negotiation and compromise and debate. The Brotherhood combines these two at its peril.”

Schismatics like El-Zafarani, who believe the Ikhwan has become corrupted by power and should return to its traditional mission of da’wa, or propagation of the faith, are emboldened with each mistake made by a blunder-prone, Brotherhood-led government. As a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Youth Cadre, Mohammed El-Gebba manned barricades during the revolution and fought pitched battles with pro-regime forces in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. He left the Ikhwan last year and is mulling a bid for a parliamentary seat in legislative elections tentatively scheduled for October. “I was shocked Brotherhood leaders allowed their personal interests to clash with the values of Islam,” said Gebba. “If there is anything good from them being in power, it’s that they’ve exposed themselves for what they are.”

Gebba, an acolyte of both Habib and Aboul Fotouh, said the Ikhwan has thoroughly and irreparably discredited itself among Egypt’s orthodox Muslims, as well as its secular ones. He is concerned that the elections may lead to violence, and perhaps a military coup, but he says moderate Islam will prevail. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s core membership is a tiny fraction of Egypt’s population, and they are losing popularity. Egyptians don’t trust anyone anymore. There will be clashes, but the outcome will be the end of the Ikhwan as a political movement.”

Money trouble

Since he won the presidential election last June by the thinnest of margins, Mohamed Mursi, a former Brotherhood leader, has antagonized ordinary Egyptians by attempting to colonize key government posts with his former apparatchiks. (Morsi resigned from the Ikhwan ahead of his inauguration to preserve a veneer—however fig-leaf thin—of independence.) Having declined to form a coalition government, the blame for nearly twelve months of failed leadership rests exclusively on his shoulders. The Egyptian economy is on the verge of bankruptcy, with its foreign reserves reduced to USD 13.5 billion, about a third its pre-revolution level, and the Egyptian pound’s value is tumbling. Inflation and unemployment are creeping higher even as economic growth trundles at a mere 2% this year, unchanged from a year ago.

With Egypt desperate for hard currency, Mursi and the International Monetary Fund have yet to agree on the terms for a proposed USD 4.8 billion rescue fund. In December, negotiations collapsed when the president withdrew his support for IMF-prescribed austerity measures after they were rejected by leaders of his own party. Some observers now believe it is too late for an IMF rescue to have much of an impact.

Instead, the Mursi government has turned to friendly governments in Libya and Qatar for lifelines worth several billion dollars, which has kept the nation afloat at the expense of popular anxiety about the political price of such largesse. “For a year, we’ve been agonizing over whether the IMF deal will come through,” said Wael Ziada, the head of research at Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes, “but the hard fact is we’ve had transfers from Libya and Qatar worth twice the IMF package and that’s done nothing to stop the decline in reserves. The current fiscal path is not sustainable.”

Despite its commitment to free-market economics, the Ikhwan in power has unnerved businessmen and investors with what they say is the arbitrary, if not politically motivated, application of tax law. Investigations into the Sawiris family’s Orascom group of companies, capitalization of which dominates the Egyptian stock exchange, is thought to be less a judicious probe than a shake-down of a prominent Coptic Christian family and a warning to their coreligionists. Although they comprise about 15% of the population, Egypt’s Copts account for an outsized share of economic output. The Orascom investigation is only one reason why many Coptic families with the resources to emigrate are doing so.

“The Islamists are the new businessmen,” says Basant Mousa, who runs a media company that focuses on Coptic issues. “They think they can just fill the void.”

The future

In less than a year at the helm of the state, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s other Islamist movements have vindicated those who warned that religious orthodoxy is irreconcilable with democratic ideals and that the Ikhwan‘s leadership culture—hierarchical, authoritarian, opaque—is unsuited for popular governance. With elections looming, the Mursi government has precious little time to redeem itself. The Brotherhood retains its ability to deploy supporters to the polling booth, which could be enough to see it through another election cycle. Few would doubt, however, that the future of Egyptian democracy resembles less the Ikhwan‘s aggrandizing, exclusivist species of politics than it does the more accommodating kind promoted by Aboul Fotouh and his comrades in self-exile.

That of course assumes Egypt’s revolution survives a military coup, which an astonishing number and diversity of Egyptians seem to be anticipating with relish. “One day the poor people will come after the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Ibrahim Zahran, an energy consultant and leader of a liberal political party. That’s when the army will intervene. That is the best solution.”

Kamal Helbawy is less optimistic. At 74, he was one of the eldest members of the Ikhwan until he resigned from the group last year. He dreads the prospect of a coup, although he said it is not the worst possible legacy of the Mursi administration. “The worst scenario and the most likely,” he said, “is an onslaught of extremism and sectarian conflict. Then the Americans will interfere militarily to control terrorism in the Sinai peninsula and elsewhere.”

Helbawy, who joined at the Brotherhood when he was 12 years old, laments what he described as the perversion of the group’s charter, established in 1928, from an evangelical movement to a political machine with little regard for the revolution’s liberal ideals. “The Ikhwan should be an academy for developing the character of Egypt’s youth to prepare them for their professions, including legislators,” he said. “Its leaders had the resources to both guarantee the democratic path and to satisfy the revolution’s demands but they only did the former. They were reluctant to join in the early days and after the revolution succeeded they declined to sustain it. That’s why I resigned from the group.”

With a flourish, Helbawy plucked a volume from a bookcase in his office and displayed it to a visitor. It was a copy of Mursi’s first budget, and it was titled “The Greatest Constitution for the Greatest People.” Such hyperbole, Helbawy said, “is the propaganda of autocracy. It’s something you would expect from Berlin or Rome in the mid-20th century. What Egypt needs today is a liberal Islamist. We need this for Islam, particularly as it relates to women, governance, the environment, globalization and Western philosophy as it may apply to us. This is the future.”