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.”

Tunisian police fire tear gas as clashes broke out with radical Islamists on May 19, 2013. KHALIL/AFP/Getty Images

TUNIS, Asharq Alawsat—Clashes between Salafist extremists and security forces in Tunisia and Kairouan on Sunday have left one Tunisian citizen dead. Eleven policemen and 3 protesters were also injured in the clashes that followed the government’s decision to ban a conference planned by hardline Salafists.

A number of neighborhoods in Tunis witnessed the conflict as security forces successfully prevented thousands of Salafists from attending their conference in Kairouan.

The extremist organization announced yesterday that it would hold its annual conference in Kairouan, but did it not ask permission from the Tunisian state, which it does not recognize. Authorities banned the conference and deployed numerous security reinforcements in the city.

In response, the Salafists decided to move their conference to the Al-Tadamon neighborhood in the western suburbs of the capital. Clashes between security personnel and the extremists broke out in Al-Tadamon and adjacent neighborhoods.

Police fired tear gas and warning shots in the air to disperse protestors, who threw stones at the police. Military aircraft circled over the area.

The Ansar Al-Sharia page on Facebook stated that the police had arrested Saifuddin Al-Rais, the official spokesperson for the militant group. The time and place of his detention was not immediately clear.

In a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat, Mohamed ben Salim, the agriculture minister and a leader in the Ennahda party, said that any illegal actions “must be confronted with appropriate force, without the exclusion of political affiliation.”

Written by Monji Saidani

Scanograms #1, Image 09, Samira in her wedding gown, the first Christian wedding in Lod after 1948. (DOR GUEZ/THE MOSAIC ROOMS)

Guez’s Palestinian Christian grandmother and her family were forced out of their hometown of Jaffa during the 1948 war. They relocated to Al-Lydd, which was renamed Lod by Israeli conquerors, where Guez’s mother was born and where they lived as one of the few remaining Palestinian families. Guez’s father’s Tunisian Jewish family moved to Lod in the 1950s, one of many Jewish immigrant families to settle in the newly formed Israel.

Dor Guez
40 Days Scanogram, 2012
Courtesy of the Mosaic Rooms

Guez’s latest exhibition, 40 DAYS, is currently showing at the Mosaic Rooms in London. It focuses on the Christian Palestinian and minority experience, offering a nuanced understanding of Palestinian and Israeli society. Through a mix of photography, documents and video installations—some of which depict the artist’s maternal relatives, who speak Hebrew—40 DAYS helps to dispel generalizations by inviting the viewer to question their ideas of ethnicity and nationalism. The exhibition also challenges assumptions about the state of Israel, and about Palestinian ethnicity being equated only with the Muslim faith. However, Guez edges away from the exclusively religious aspect of the Christian Palestinian identity; as he says, “It’s a culture, not just a faith.” Instead, the exhibition presents a picture of a very humble existence through scenes of familiar and mundane activities.

Minorities are often hit the hardest in times of unrest, and these communities in the Middle East have suffered under the effects of globalization, nationalism and cultural changes. While this suffering has been due mostly to the erosion of their cultural groups, it also arises from insufficient awareness of their situation. “Generally, the position of a minority—everywhere in the world—is not only a question of been outnumbered, it also relates to media coverage, history and writing,” Guez says, although he does point out that “the topic of minorities in the Middle East, like the Christian Palestinians, is actually been heard more and more in the last few years, especially after the Arab Spring.”

Memory, Guez says, is what motivates him artistically. Perhaps preserving their memories is one way as an artist to preserve the existence of these communities. Photographs of desecrated grave sites bearing the sign of the cross in Lod cemetery form a main component of 40 DAYS. The force that was used to carry out the vandalism is evident by the fact that the sturdy stone grave coverings have been broken into pieces, revealing the bones of the deceased. Guez’s late grandfather, Yaqoub Monayer, captured the images to take to the police as evidence. When they failed to find the perpetrators, the photos were returned to him and were subsequently put away in a kitchen drawer. There, they were left for years to deteriorate, and became stuck together in the humidity. The photos of the grave sites have been scanned and enlarged and show the tearing around the edges, which presents them as objects with their own story, their own memory.

40 DAYS is a means of preserving the intricacies of the everyday condition of a minority community; it also serves to resurrect buried and suppressed individual memories. In one of the scenes in the video installations, we see a close-up of Guez’s grandmother’s hands as she thumbs through the images, pulling the stuck ones apart, causing the tearing. In discussing the event, she recalls that one of the graves belongs to her mother. Guez has said that the photos “tell the story of what they refuse to talk about directly.” A second photo in the exhibition, of the wedding of his grandparents, was discovered by the artist in a plastic bag under the bed. The wedding took place in Al-Lydd just one year after the 1948 war.

Watermelons under the bed. DOR GUEZ/ MOSAIC ROOMS

Guez says of his grandfather, “He had an enormous influence on my education, and on the way I relate to my cultural and political environment—he had a strong influence on my visual expression.” In the film, Watermelons under the Bed, we see Guez’s grandfather, a former fruit seller, lying in his bed with his back to camera, discussing the changing times. Every now and then, he turns around eagerly, to test the quality of watermelons that are handed to him. In another shot, he is seen peeling prickly pears in the kitchen. Both fruits have symbolic meaning for Palestinians and Israelis.

In the same video, an adult subject who is being interviewed is discouraged from talking about politics by his mother, who is off camera. As a member of a small community, she is clearly cautious about discussing such matters. “What am I, a child?” he asks.

Perhaps this is the generational gap that Guez mentions. “A lot of political Palestinian movements across the Middle East were actually founded by Christians. Personally, I think that the first and maybe the second generation after 1948 are more cautious [about discussing politics]—definitely not the third.”

As a member of this more outspoken third generation, Guez’s desire to record and preserve the history of his family and his people is admirable, and extends beyond this exhibition. He is currently assembling an online database that includes thousands of images from the Christian Palestinian diaspora. It is, as Guez states, a community project, as individuals contribute their own family photos to the archive. “In my eyes, the subject matter is not a story of one community, but the story of us all as individuals facing cultural changes. It is a personal reflection about questions of identity, culture and memory.”

40 DAYS runs at the Mosaic Rooms in London until June 6, 2013.

An Egyptian protester shouts slogans during a demonstration in Cairo against sexual harassment on February 12, 2013. KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

Actor Waleed Hammad dressed up as a woman and walked Egypt’s streets for an investigative television report into what it feels like to be sexually harassed. The program aired earlier this month, and perhaps best exemplifies one of the major achievements of the January 25 revolution: the heightened awareness of the endemic sexual harassment of women on Egypt’s streets. Hammad’s video footage of his secret assignments, as well as the widespread coverage his story has received, would have been unthinkable before the uprising.

Yet there is still a long way to go. Last month, the minister of information, Salah Abdel-Maksoud, responded to a female reporter’s question on media freedoms with, “Come here and I’ll show you.” In the Egyptian dialect this turn of phrase is widely considered to carry sexual connotations. His comment highlighted yet another aspect of the already multi-faceted causes behind sexual harassment in Egypt.

Here was a government-appointed official shamelessly making a sexual remark to a female reporter in front of a crowd and television camera crews—yet Abdel-Maksoud saw no problem with his quip. In fact, it was the second time he has been found making similarly inappropriate comments. During an interview with a female Syrian television host, he said, “I hope your questions are not as hot as you are.” Clearly, Abdel-Maksoud is a man with a sense of patriarchal and misogynistic entitlement, not to mention his outright unprofessionalism.

His remarks were not just an affront to one female reporter or television host, but many Egyptians. Egypt’s masses are closely following any false moves made by politicians in the muddled post-revolutionary era, and never before has the media scrutinized Egypt’s politicians and ministers so closely.

With sexual harassment already a widespread problem, there has never been a more crucial time for the government to move away from patriarchal or misogynist constructs that will only provide Egyptian men with a further sense of entitlement—not just in the sexual harassment of women, but in wider issues vis-à-vis women’s socio-political rights.

Abdel-Maksoud’s commentary also unwittingly raises another key issue. The post-revolutionary period has seen Egypt fall victim to a simplistic Islamist-versus-secularist duality, and the remarks made by Abdel-Maksoud highlight the limitations of viewing things through such a blinkered lens. There is no doubt that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist factions has seen a trickledown effect onto Egypt’s streets, where men who identify themselves as Islamist have falsely used the political power of the Brotherhood to force women to conform to their Islamic standards. Just this past February, my own sister was told by a man to “not talk to me until you cover your hair” in a public hospital—a very worrying sign of the entitlement some may believe they have, with the endorsement of an Islamist president and government.

But this binary falls apart with the example of Abdel-Maksoud. For all the talk among the secular or liberal opposition that a Muslim Brotherhood government would inevitably see a clampdown on women’s rights in the public and private spheres, Abdel-Maksoud is not an Islamist. Appointed by Prime Minister Kandil in August 2012, he is a secular professional and a former member of the journalists syndicate. The perpetuation of sexual harassment is not the monopoly of a single political party, but a phenomenon present across the political spectrum.

We should, of course, celebrate that issues such as sexual harassment are garnering widespread media coverage. With men such as Hammad taking a very proactive stance on the issue and raising awareness, the Egyptian public will become better educated on the realities of sexual harassment for Egyptian women.

With extensive media coverage comes the broadcasting of the more unsavory actions and words of Egypt’s leading figures, which is both a necessity and potentially harmful. Perhaps the most worrying part of this incident is what follows it: how many Egyptian men heard his remarks and felt they were given carte blanche to address Egypt’s women in such a derogatory manner?

Safwan Dahoul. CELIA TOPPING

This is the first body of work the artist has painted since his enforced move to Dubai from his native Syria, about eight months ago. It is therefore not difficult to comprehend the emotional, physical and psychological turmoil that has informed this shift, considering the ongoing violence in his homeland.

Dahoul seems a little uncomfortable when he is asked to explain the meaning of his latest works, even in conversation with his gallerist and friend, Khaled Samawi, who founded the Ayyam Gallery and who is translating for him. Dahoul explains that he believes the artist has no place at the exhibition after the work has been created. The work should speak for itself; it is open to interpretation, and he does not want to impose what he believes on the viewer.

However, as Stephen Stapleton, Director and Founder of Edge of Arabia, who is collaborating with Ayyam on Dahoul’s exhibition, comments, “now is a very important time for these dialogues to be opened up. Despite the deluge of media coverage, it is rare to get a subjective, poetic voice such as Dahoul’s.”

DreamP50 Safwan Dahoul. THE ARTIST/AYYAM GALLERY

Dahoul continues, explaining how the game is of fundamental importance to him. Never one to have played by the rules—he was told at art school never to paint in black and white—he feels the artist must enjoy and amuse himself in his studio, and not take himself too seriously. As several of the young Ayyam artists who were Dahoul’s students can testify, being overly serious and scholarly is not part of his make-up. However, he hastens to add, “It’s the work, the art itself, which is serious.”

The presence of recurring imagery and symbolism in Dahoul’s work is as evident in this new collection of work as ever. “I have a problem with existence and why we exist,” he explains, “so you need to have a certain set of symbols that support you and keep your feet on the ground.” For example, in discussing one of the key works from his Repetitive Dreams series, “Dream 42,” which depicts a giant sofa in a checkerboard effect with the numbers 1 to 2011 painted in the small squares, Dahoul talks about the chair representing the galaxy/ It is an idea he borrowed from The Verse of the Chair in the Qu’ran. If human existence began in square 1, and ended in 2011, when he finished the painting, there are still countless more squares on either side of the numbered ones. Dahoul is basically saying that “who we are in our own history, compared to the galaxy, is insignificant.”

Samawi has said that he believes Syrian art, such as that of Dahoul is “hyper-expressionist” because it is so deeply rooted in personal experience, thoughts and dreams, and so portrays what lies at the very heart of human existence. One of the latest key works, which perhaps best represents this, is “Dream P50,” a striking work depicting an angel figure looking back at the viewer, cowed, ashamed and fearful, with a city laid out in lights in the background. Above the city, the clouds are dark and foreboding and the bottom half of the painting fades to black. It is a melancholic image, filled with dread and disquiet. The mountain from which the angel views the city is Mount Qasioun, which overlooks Damascus. “Every person has his own angel, even a city has an angel to look after it,” says Dahoul. “But this angel has screwed you,” says Samawi. “It was supposed to look after Damascus, and look what’s happened…. What is the angel going to do for your city?” he demands. It is with great sadness that Dahoul turns to his friend and says, “She’s not going to do anything.”

Safwan Dahoul, Repetitive Dreams, May 9 –June 15, 2013, Ayyam Gallery London and Edge of Arabia May 8 –June 2