Fri. 25 Mar. 2011

DAILY TELEGRAPH Syria's Ba'athist regime forced to offer concessions ….……..1 Syria: how the al-Assad family has dominated ……………...3

EURASIA REVIEW Syria: Amazingly, The Next Crucible of Revolution in the

Middle East? ………………………………………………...4

HAARETZ Caution: Region under construction ……………………..…10

JERUSALEM POST 'Russians won’t retract anti-ship missile sale to Syria' ……..15

HUFFINGTON POST Tik Root, Middlebury Student, Missing In Syria …………..16

NYTIMES Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt ……………16

WASHINGTON POST Egypt’s Facebook revolution faces identity crisis …….……20

YEDOTH AHRONOTH Israel’s war and peace ……………By Shaul Mofaz….……26

ASIA TIMES Syrian sauce for the Chinese gander …………………….....29

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HOME PAGESyria's Ba'athist regime forced to offer concessions Syria's feared Ba'athist regime has been forced to offer political concessions to street protesters in an unprecedented attempt to quell a week–long uprising that has left dozens dead. By Adrian Blomfield, Thomas Harding and Richard Spencer in Tripoli Daily Telegraph,25 Mar 2011

President Bashar al–Assad offered to lift a draconian state of emergency that has been in force in the country since 1963 after more than 20,000 protesters marched through the southern city of Daraa yesterday, defying a crackdown by the regime's forces.

The president, who inherited control of Syria when his father died, boasted recently that his country was immune to the protests sweeping across the Middle East and north Africa.

But yesterday he started to talk of political reform and press freedom just as other embattled leaders have done.

A resident of Daraa said the town was full of troops, everything was closed and the streets were empty. Protesters have called for more demonstrations today.

In Libya, coalition forces stepped up their action against the military assets of Col Muammar Gaddafi.

A French fighter jet destroyed the first Libyan warplane to breach the no–fly zone. The plane was destroyed as it came in to land after being spotted flying near the city of Misurata in violation of the UN resolution.

Forces loyal to Col Gaddafi were in negotiations to surrender to rebel troops near the town of Ajdabiya in what could be a turning point in the conflict, it was reported last night. A rebel commander said local mullahs had been used to mediate.

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Nato also agreed to take over control of military operations in Libya from the US this weekend after Britain appealed to allies to put a quick end to the "appalling violence" in the country. A spokesman for the Gaddafi government in Tripoli, meanwhile, claimed that civilian casualties were close to 100.

In Yemen, the veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh was reported to be discussing a deal under which he would resign within days in favour of a transitional government after weeks of unrest.

HOME PAGE Time Magazine: 'With Syria on the Brink, Assad Promises Reform'..

Montereal Gazette: 'Assad promises Syrians new freedoms'..

National Post: 'Assad promises reform after 37 killed in Syria'..

Bloomberg: 'Syria Says Demands Are 'Legitimate,' May End Emergency Law'..

Washington Post: 'Syria's Bashar al-Assad faces most serious unrest of his tenure'..

Washington Post: 'Syrian city calm after weeklong, deadly crackdown; more protests planned'..

Business Week: 'Syria's Assad May End Emergency Law After Protests, Adviser Says'..

Guardian: 'Syrian people outraged over government shootings in Daraa'..

Star Tribune: 'Syria: Assad offers concessions'..

Boston Globe: 'Syria may lift some laws seen as repressive'..

Jerusalem Post: 'Assad pledges new rights as 20,000 march for 37 dead'..

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HOME PAGE Syria: how the al-Assad family has dominated Syria's modern history has been inextricably linked with one family. In 1963, Hafez al-Asad, who flew British-made Meteor jets in the country's air force, sided with a revolution led by the Arab-nationalist Ba'ath party.Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor,Daily Telegraph,24 Mar. 2011,

He rose from major to general inside a year – and, in 1970, promoted himself to president.

Mr al-Asad ruled through a powerful – and brutal – network of spies and informers. His dogged secularism, though, won the backing of religious minorities, like the al-Assad family's own heterodox Alawi sect and Christians, as well as women.

From 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood began to emerge as a magnet for resentment against the regime. In 1982, Mr al-Asad put down an Islamist uprising by bombarding the town of Hama; killing tens of thousands.

Bashar al-Asad, who took power after his father's death in 2000, tried different strategies, releasing prisoners, shutting down the notorious Mezze prison and encouraging intellectual debate. The Damascus Spring, as it was called, proved short lived – but a new wave of repression only temporarily put the lid on resentment.

Syria's leadership claims that the unrest has been fuelled by jihadists, a claim that is not wholly unfounded. In 2008, jihadists set off a car bomb at a check-post leading to a Shi'a shrine; later, a jihadist website called for the fall of the Syrian regime.

Last summer, the government banned women wearing the niqab, or full-length veil, from university campuses, and earlier removed upwards of 1,000 school teachers who wore one from their jobs.

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Syria: Amazingly, The Next Crucible of Revolution in the Middle East? Andy WorthingtonEurasia Review,24 Mar. 2011,

Last week I wrote an article about the unexpected awakening of popular unrest in Syria, when an unprecedented “Day of Rage” against the Ba’athist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad was called by protestors in Damascus, and was followed the day after by another protest in which respected opposition figures — both Arabs and Kurds — called for the release of 21 political prisoners out of the many thousands of “prisoners of conscience” held in Syria’s notorious prisons. These include Far Falestin in Damascus, whose reputation for torture was such that, when George W. Bush and his close advisors were looking for countries where men and boys seized in the “War on Terror” could be tortured, Syria was chosen, along with Egypt, Jordan and Morocco.

Since last Wednesday, the ripples of dissent in Libya have spread, leading to major unrest in the southern city of Dara’a, where, last Friday, protests about the arrest of a group of 15 schoolchildren who had dared to scrawl graffiti on a wall explaining that “the people want the overthrow of the regime” escalated into something far more grave, when the security services opened fire, killing three protestors in cold blood. Dubbed “Dignity Friday” by protestors, who had been using social networking sites to coordinate their activities, the clampdown in Dara’a immediately echoed throughout the region, where other protests had been taking place, and the next day, as the Guardian explained, “a much larger, angrier crowd — estimated to number as many as 20,000 — turned out for the burial of the previous days’ victims.”

For a country generally stunned into public silence since 1963 by emergency laws that prohibit any demonstrations against the regime — and by vicious reprisals on the rare occasions that dissent has previously threatened the regime — two protests in the

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capital in a week (even before the bloodshed in Dara’a just days later) was extraordinary, and the government’s response indicated how — despite the small number of people involved — senior officials were clearly rattled. A small clip of the “Day of Rage” was made available on YouTube, where it has, to date, been seen by over 125,000 people, but the response to the call for the release of the 21 political prisoners was even more significant, because of the government’s overreaction.

Of the 150 protestors last Wednesday, the majority were themselves human rights activists — or relatives of the 21 political prisoners whose release the protest was designed to secure. The 21 include Kamal al-Labwani, a Kurdish doctor and artist, and one of the most prominent members of the Syrian opposition movement, who was imprisoned in 2007; Muhannad al-Hassani, the Kurdish president of the Syrian Human Rights Organization, who was imprisoned in June 2010; Ali al-Abdallah, imprisoned two weeks ago — not for the first time — for criticizing Syria’s close relations with Iran, as a member of the “Damascus Declaration” group, which has long called for Syria’s transition to a democratic nation; and Anwar Bunni, a human rights lawyer and activist, and another member of the “Damascus Declaration” group, who was imprisoned in April 2007.

At noon last Wednesday, as announced in advance, the group of protestors –including Kamal al-Labwani’s son and six other relatives, human rights activists Mazen Darwish, Suhair Atassi and Sereen Khouri, and former prisoners of conscience Nahed Badawiya and Kamal Cheikho — gathered outside the Interior Ministry in Damascus to present a petition calling for the prisoners’ release. However, as a human rights activist who was at the demonstration explained:

When we got to the ministry, we could see that there were a lot of security services around. I saw five buses full of security members parked 300 meters from us. At first, an employee from the Ministry of Interior came out and told us that the families of the detainees would be allowed to present the petition to the minister.

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We asked for five minutes, as some families were still arriving. When a few families raised photos of detained relatives, the security services suddenly attacked us and beat us with black batons.

Providing corroboration, the daughter of a prominent political prisoner stated:

We had barely taken my father’s picture out when men ran toward us and started beating us. They beat my mother on her head and arm with a baton. They pulled my sister’s hair and beat her as well until my uncle managed to get her away. We started running away, but they followed us.

Afterwards, witnesses stated that 40 of the protestors has been seized by the security services, and only six were known to have been released — including Mazen Darwish, Tayeb Tizini, the celebrated author and professor of philosophy at Damascus University, and Hassiba Abdel-Rahman, a former prisoner of conscience, jailed in 1979, 1986 and 1992 for having belonged to the “Labor Party of Syria” and for meeting members of Amnesty International.

It was reported that violence had been used on some of the protestors, and that “security services interrogated each person separately and asked him for the password to his Facebook account.” One demonstrator told Reuters that the security services “pulled Suhair by her hair and took her away,” and Mazen Darwish explained to the BBC that he was set free “only after being held for five hours in the military security branch’s detention centre alongside 20 others, including women.” He also said, “When I showed them my international press card, they shouted and said, ‘Why were you standing among protesters and not among the journalists?’”

The next day, the Syrian government announced that it was charging 32 of the prisoners, and released a list of 25 names, including rights activist Suhair Atassi and four relatives of Kamal

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al-Labwani. The prisoners were charged with “attacking the reputation of the state, provoking racism and sectarianism and damaging relations between Syrians” — the type of Orwellian “crimes” that plague the charge sheets of anyone who publicly dares to criticize the Libyan state.

Expressing dismay at the charges, Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a news release, “Like many of the political prisoners whose release they were calling for, protestors appear to have been arrested simply for the peaceful expression of their views. The Syrian authorities must immediately release all those arrested in the last two days for merely attending peaceful protests, and stop these attacks on freedom of expression and assembly.”

The events of March 16 — and the resonant history of those held in Damascus, with their long and determined commitment to democracy and human rights — provided an important historical weight to the infectious eruption of violence in the south, although clearly, if a tipping point is to be reached, many different elements of dissatisfaction, bubbling under the surface for decades, will have to prove impossible for the President al-Assad’s regime to suppress, as Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Candian citizen rendered by the US for torture in Syria during the “War on Terror,” explained in an article for the Guardian on Wednesday. After explaining that he knew, from personal experience, how Syria’s human rights situation had degenerated under Bashar al-Assad, Arar proceeded to analyze the Syrian people’s reluctance to embrace revolution, noting, for one thing, their “ethnic divisions”:

The ruling Alawite minority, to whom Assad belongs and whose members have full control over sensitive military and intelligence posts, is only one of many. There is also the powerless Sunni majority, Christians, Kurds, Ismailis and Duruz. There are also over 1 million old Palestinian immigrants and, more recently, more than 1 million Iraqi refugees have decided to make Syria their home. All these groups have competing and conflicting

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interests. These ethnic divisions make it extremely challenging to have a unified popular voice, but what is encouraging is the fact that the Syrian youth who are leading this non-violent reform movement have made it clear that it is purely secular in nature and they will not allow it to be hijacked by any opportunist ethnic group or opposition party.

At present, it is unclear whether the necessary tipping point for revolution has been reached, although it is starting to look like it has, for two reasons. The first is the anger that was expressed even before the clampdown, when, as Rania Abouzeid explained in a perceptive article for Time:

[D]escriptions of the uprising in Dara’a were dramatic. The alleged details included dozens of young men pelting a poster — in broad daylight — of a smiling President Bashar al-Assad; a statue of his late father and predecessor Hafiz al-Assad, demolished; official buildings including the ruling Ba’ath Party’s headquarters and the governor’s office burned down. “There is no fear, there is no fear, after today there is no fear!” hundreds of men chant, captured in shaky mobile phone footage allegedly taken on Monday.

The second reason is the entrenchment and escalation of those sentiments, as the state’s violence has continued to escalate over the last few days. After the shooting in Dara’a last Friday, the security forces have been on the offensive, as the Guardian reported, noting that they have responded to protests “with water cannon, teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition,” and that “The total death toll now stands at 16,” after the authorities “launched an assault on a neighbourhood sheltering anti-government protesters, fatally shooting at least nine in an operation that lasted nearly 24 hours,” according to witnesses. As the Guardian explained, “At least six were said to have been killed in an early morning attack on the al-Omari mosque” in Dera’a, and police “shot three other protesters in the city centre after dusk,” according to a local activist.

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To his credit, the President responded swiftly to the deaths, “sending a high-ranking delegation to deliver his condolences to the families of the dead,” as Time reported, and also sacking the governor and releasing the schoolchildren whose graffiti set the chaos in motion, although reports of the scale of the assault on the people of Dera’a have continued to grow alarmingly over the last 24 hours, which can only devalue the President’s efforts.

As Channel 4 News reported, claims of fatalities have been revised steeply upwards, and now range “from 32 to more than 100,” with Amnesty International also reporting that the number of human rights activists who have “disappeared” has also increased sharply from the 32 charged in Damascus last week to a total of 93. As Channel 4 News also noted, chillingly, “Here in the newsroom, we have watched amateur footage on ‘YouTube’ which suggests that armed troops did open fire protestors in Dera’a. In scenes too shocking to broadcast, demonstrators lie motionless, some in pools of blood.”

Moreover, as Arabic language websites have been reporting, the protesters have not given up, and have, instead, given the government “until Friday morning to meet a list of demands relayed back to the President by his delegation,” as Time explained, which include the lifting of the emergency law and the release of all political prisoners. If their demands are not met, they have promised that this Friday will be the “Friday of the Martyrs,” not just in Dara’a but throughout the country.

That sounds ambitious, but on the other hand, one thing we should all have learned from events in the Middle East this year is that movements can grow so swiftly that the unthinkable can become possible, and those of us in the West can only watch in wonder.

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Caution: Region under construction Popular uprisings and internecine hostilities will lead to the redrawing of regional maps, which will be a far cry from those underlying the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement and other accords By Aluf Benn Haaretz,25 Mar. 2011,

The struggles for survival of Libyan Col. Muammar Gadhafi, Syrian President Bashar Assad and their counterparts elsewhere herald the last days of the Sykes-Picot agreement from World War I, which in effect divided the region of the Middle East into separate states. Now it is apparent that maps drawn in the coming years will show new or renewed independent states such as South Sudan; Kurdistan; Palestine; maybe also Cyrenaica in eastern Libya; the Western Sahara, which will no longer be in Moroccan hands; reconstructed Southern Yemen; and Gulf states that will separate from the United Arab Emirates. It's even possible that there will be a split in Saudi Arabia between "the state of the holy sites" in the Hejaz and the petroleum powers in the east, and of Syria into Sunni, Alaouite and Druze states. The basis for these divisions will be implementation of the principle of self-definition of nations and tribes, which until now unwillingly and without any alternative have been wrapped up together in the same national package with their foes.

The foreign policy of Israel, even before statehood, has always been built upon the rivalries of Arab and Muslim neighbors. Furthermore, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic unity has relied to a great extent on hostility toward Israel, which for its part has preferred the separatism and nationalism of its neighbors. The more states there are in the region in the future, the easier it will be for Israel to maneuver among them.

The borders in the Middle East were determined between 1916 and 1922 in negotiations involving the European powers, conducted in majestic palaces by officials wearing suits and ties. Those borders are being redrawn in the 21st century by force, by

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wars and by popular uprisings. This began with America's invasion of Iraq eight years ago, which crushed the central regime and created de facto ethnic enclaves. It continued with the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which led to the establishment of a de facto state controlled by Hamas, and later with the referendum on the partitioning of Sudan at the end of a long and cruel internecine war there. The process has been accelerated with the recent revolutions in the Arab countries, which are still in their early stages and have already led to a war in Libya.

In his new book "How to Run the World" (Random House ), which was published just before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Parag Khanna, a researcher at the New America Foundation, predicts a world comprising 300 independent, sovereign nations in the next few decades, as compared to about 200 today. At the basis of this fission is what Khanna has called "post-colonial entropy": Many states have developed from former colonies, he observes, and since their independence have "experienced unmanageable population growth, predatory and corrupt dictatorship, crumbling infrastructure and institutions, and ethnic or sectarian polarization." Exactly the same reasons can be used to explain the current vicissitudes in the Arab countries.

In many cases, writes Khanna, current borders are the cause of internal strife - for example, in failed states like Yemen, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In his view, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not "America's wars," but rather "unexploded ordinance left over from old European wars, with their fuses lit on slow release."

America is not to blame for the Congress of Berlin in 1884, which divided up Africa without taking its inhabitants into account, or for the British partition of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But America - together with the other powers - can and must help today with solving the resultant problems. Nor only by drawing up new borders or in votes at the United Nations, but also by building infrastructures that will provide sound economic foundations to

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the new countries, and will free them from dependence on powerful neighbors like Turkey and Israel.

In the early 20th century, the Western powers controlled Asia and Africa and identified a wealth of assets in the Middle East. In 1916, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot - a British official and a French diplomat, respectively - drew up an agreement on behalf of their governments describing a tentative division of the Ottoman Empire, which was fighting alongside Germany against the Allies. The document and map they came up with were theoretical and the chances they would be implemented seemed slight: The Turks were still far from defeat and the Western armies were bleeding along Europe's western front. In essence, Sykes' and Picot's governments coveted Syria and most of Palestine for France, and what was later to become Iraq for Britain.

In his fascinating book "A Peace to End All Peace" (1989 ), American historian David Fromkin describes how the great powers shaped the map of the Middle East in World War I and thereafter. According to Fromkin, the anti-Semitic view that the Jews had the ability to influence those powers and foment conspiracies underlay the diplomacy of the Western countries, which hoped to harness Jewish might on their behalf.

After reaching the agreement with Picot, Sykes was about to set out for Saint Petersburg, the capital of the czarist empire, to present the details to the Russians - who had always wanted to gain control of Istanbul and have access to the Mediterranean Sea. En route, Sykes met Capt. William Reginald Hall, head of Royal Naval Intelligence, in London and showed him his map. Hall told him Britain should send its forces to Palestine and only then would the Arabs switch to its side in the war. "Force is the best Arab propaganda" to use when dealing with the Arabs, the intelligence officer explained to the diplomat. (Or translated into our present-day Israeli lingo: "The only thing the Arabs understand is force." )

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Sykes was convinced the agreement he had concocted with the French would satisfy Sharif Hussein of the Hejaz, the progenitor of the Hashemite dynasty, who sought independence for his people from the Ottoman Empire in exchange for support of the British. And then Hall surprised his British interlocutor by introducing a new factor into the power equation: The Jews, he said, had "a strong material, and a very strong political, interest in the future of the country." Sykes was dumbstruck. He had never heard of Zionism before then. He rushed to a meeting with the Jewish minister in the British war cabinet, Herbert Samuel, for an explanation.

This was the start of the process that would lead later to the Balfour Declaration, the conquest of Palestine, the establishment of the British Mandate, and the appointment of Samuel as its first high commissioner. At this point were sown the seeds of Arab anger at the Western powers, which had dismantled and then reassembled nations and states in the Middle East and promised Palestine to the Zionists.

The final borders in the Middle East were set by then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill at the Cairo Conference in 1922, which separated Transjordan from the boundaries of the Palestine Mandate. The Israeli right mourns that "tearing apart" to this very day.

With the end of colonialism, maintenance of those borders constituted the basis of political order in the region, even though it left many peoples unsatisfied - for example, the Kurds, who were split up among Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. The reaction to colonialism was Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabism, which reached its peak in the union of Syria and Egypt (the United Arab Republic ) at the end of the 1950s, though it did not last long. Now, nearly 100 years after the talks between Sykes and Picot, the United States' withdrawal from Iraq will afford the Kurds a chance for independence, despite Turkey's opposition. For their part, the Palestinians are working on international

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recognition for their country by this coming summer, despite Israel's objections.

Other "artificial states" like Libya, which was made up of three former Italian colonies, as well as Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia, could all disintegrate. In all of them there is serious internal tension among tribes and groups or a minority government imposed on the majority. Yemen was divided in the past and could once again split into north and south. In Saudi Arabia, distances are vast. But how is it possible to partition Jordan, where the Bedouin and the Palestinians are mingled? The redrawing of borders is not a panacea.

Meanwhile, the war in Libya is splitting it de facto between Cyrenaica, the bastion of the rebels in the east, and Tripolitania, under Gadhafi's control. The Western powers' entry into the war on the side of the rebels shows they want to create a protectorate under their influence adjacent to the border with Egypt, which is at risk of becoming an Islamic republic hostile to the West. It is hard to find any other strategic rationale for the decision to become involved in Libya.

The battles between the British forces and Rommel's in World War II were fought exactly in those same places and had the same aim: protecting the eastern flank of Egypt and the Suez Canal. Rommel and Montgomery fought there well before oil was discovered in Libya.

The West, like Israel, prefers a fragmented and squabbling Middle East and is fighting on several fronts against pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism led by Osama bin Laden (and, in different ways, also by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ). Therefore, it is possible to assess that the West will not try to thwart the process of fission in the countries of the region, but rather will contribute to it.

Israel is directly involved in the struggle over the establishment of an independent Palestine and the shaping of its borders, and would

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be significantly affected by the disintegration of its neighboring states, chiefly Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. A smart Israeli policy, which correctly identifies the opportunities inherent in the emergence of new states and knows how to take advantage of these opportunities, will be able to leverage the inevitable process to reinforce Israel's power and influence in the region.

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'Russians won’t retract anti-ship missile sale to Syria' Kremlim tells PM sale is a "done deal"; source says Russians believe 20 Yakhnot missiles will not tip Israel's strategic balance. Herb Keinon,Jerusalem Post,25 Mar. 2011,

The Russian sale of Yakhnot anti-ship cruise missiles to Syria is a “done deal,” and Moscow has no intention of scuttling it, the Kremlin told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Moscow on Thursday, according to a senior Israeli diplomatic source.

According to the source, the Russians said that from their point of view, Israel enjoyed a clear qualitative military superiority in the region, and the sale of 20 of the missiles to Damascus would not tip the strategic balance.

The missile deal was signed some two years ago, and ever since then Israel – to no avail – has turned to numerous officials in Russia in an effort to cancel the deal.

Israel is concerned that the missile could end up in Hezbollah’s hands, and that in the Mediterranean Sea the Yakhnot is an offensive weapon.

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Tik Root, Middlebury Student, Missing In Syria Huffington Post,03/24/11

A Middlebury College student's father says his son has gone missing in Syria, the Burlington Free Press reports.

Pathik "Tik" Root, 21, has not been heard from since Friday.

The Middlebury student had been studying Arabic in Damascus. He had previously been studying in Egypt but eventually evacuated during the protests earlier this year.

According to the Associated Press, Root's father, Tom, "says he feels his son was watching a demonstration and was picked up."

A State Department spokeswoman told the AP that American and Syrian authorities are working to find the student.

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Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt Michael Slackman,NYTIMES,24 Mar. 2011,

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

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As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins. Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.

Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is also regarded warily by some religious Egyptians, who see it as an elitist, secret society. These suspicions have created potential opportunities for other parties.

About six groups from the ultraconservative Salafist school of Islam have also emerged in the era after President Hosni

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Mubarak’s removal, as well as a party called Al Wassat, intended as a more liberal alternative to the Brotherhood.

In the early stages of the revolution, the Brotherhood was reluctant to join the call for demonstrations. It jumped in only after it was clear that the protest movement had gained traction. Throughout, the Brotherhood kept a low profile, part of a survival instinct honed during decades of repression by the state.

The question at the time was whether the Brotherhood would move to take charge with its superior organizational structure. It now appears that it has.

“The Brotherhood didn’t want this revolution; it has never been a revolutionary movement,” said Mr. Zarwan of the International Crisis Group. “Now it has happened; they participated cautiously, and they realize they can set their sights higher.”

But in these early stages, there is growing evidence of the Brotherhood’s rise and the overpowering force of Islam.

When the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressed the crowd in Tahrir Square this month, Mohamed el-Beltagi, a prominent Brotherhood member, stood by his side. A Brotherhood member was also appointed to the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution.

But the most obvious and consequential example was the recent referendum on the amendments, in the nation’s first post-Mubarak balloting. The amendments essentially call for speeding up the election process so that parliamentary contests can be held before September, followed soon after by a presidential race. That expedited calendar is seen as giving an advantage to the Brotherhood and to the remnants of Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which have established national networks. The next Parliament will oversee drafting a new constitution.

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Before the vote, Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood leader and spokesman, appeared on a popular television show, “The Reality,” arguing for the government’s position in favor of the proposal. With a record turnout, the vote was hailed as a success. But the “yes” campaign was based largely on a religious appeal: voters were warned that if they did not approve the amendments, Egypt would become a secular state.

“The problem is that our country will be without a religion,” read a flier distributed in Cairo by a group calling itself the Egyptian Revolution Society. “This means that the call to the prayer will not be heard anymore like in the case of Switzerland, women will be banned from wearing the hijab like in the case of France,” it said, referring to the Muslim head scarf. “And there will be laws that allow men to get married to men and women to get married to women like in the case of America.”

A banner hung by the Muslim Brotherhood in a square in Alexandria instructed voters that it was their “religious duty” to vote “yes” on the amendments.

In the end, 77.2 percent of those who voted said yes.

This is not to say that the Brotherhood is intent on establishing an Islamic state. From the first days of the protests, Brotherhood leaders proclaimed their dedication to religious tolerance and a democratic and pluralist form of government. They said they would not offer a candidate for president, that they would contest only a bit more than a third of the total seats in Parliament, and that Coptic Christians and women would be welcomed into the political party affiliated with the movement.

None of that has changed, Mr. Erian, the spokesman, said in an interview. “We are keen to spread our ideas and our values,” he said. “We are not keen for power.”

He would not comment on whether the Brotherhood had an arrangement with the military, but he said the will of the people to

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shift toward Islam spoke for itself and was a sign of Egypt’s emerging democratic values. “Don’t trust the intellectuals, liberals and secularists,” Mr. Erian said. “They are a minor group crying all the time. If they don’t work hard, they have no future.”

But the more secular forces say that what they need is time.

“I worry about going too fast towards elections, that the parties are still weak,” said Nabil Ahmed Helmy, former dean of the Zagazig law school and a member of the National Council for Human Rights. “The only thing left right now is the Muslim Brotherhood. I do think that people are trying to take over the revolution.”

Egypt is still a work in progress. Ola Shahba, 32, a member of a group in the youth coalition behind the protests, said, “After the results of the referendum, we need to be humble.”

The coalition and others have said they see the overwhelming approval of the amendments and the rise of the Brotherhood as worrisome, and as evidence that more liberal forces need to organize in a more effective outreach campaign, and fast.

“Freedom is nice; so is democracy,” said Rifaat Abdul Massih, 39, a construction worker. “But I’m a Christian, and we are a bit worried about the future. I voted ‘no’ to give more time to the secular parties. I don’t want to have the Muslim Brotherhood here right away.”

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Egypt’s Facebook revolution faces identity crisis By William Wan, Washington Post,Wednesday, March 23,

A 30-minute walk from Tahrir Square, in a dark, dilapidated room lighted by a single, bare bulb, members of the April 6 movement are meeting to decide the group’s future.

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What began as a subdued discussion has become a bitter debate.

“Who are we?” one member demands. “A resistance group? Civil rights organization? Lobbying and pressure group?”

“Should we even exist anymore?” another asks. “We accomplished our mission. Mubarak is gone.”

The group’s identity crisis has been spurred in recent weeks by rapid growth — from a fledgling Facebook page created to support workers who were planning a strike on April 6, 2008, into an organization that played a central role in Egypt’s revolution. It now claims more than 20,000 members and roughly 200,000 followers on Facebook.

Most are educated professionals in their 20s and 30s. They have experience in opposing government but little in reforming and working with it. And the divisions emerging in the group and others have been deepened by the fractured, everyone-gets-a-voice nature of the Internet, which once united the protest movement.

When one member suggests that the group become a political party, the meeting turns into a full-fledged shouting match. Politics — with its accompanying machinations of power, self-interest and corruption — are what pushed Egypt into a three-decade authoritarian regime, one member says. Why not focus on activism instead of wasting time on a political party?

It was, in many ways, so much easier during the revolution.

For those heady 18 days, Egypt’s young activists shared one vision and focused all of their efforts — tweets, Facebook posts, videos and blogs, as well as fists and stones — toward that goal: taking down Hosni Mubarak, the autocrat who had ruled Egypt for 30 years.

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But now, with that goal accomplished, other targets have sprung up. There are, as some activists put it, as many goals and visions as there are Twitter accounts.

Some want to start building the infrastructure for Egypt’s new democracy. Others think that, as long as vestiges such as Mubarak’s decades-long emergency law remain in place and political prisoners remain in jail, the revolution cannot end. Then there are those who worry about the stalled economy and say the time for strikes has passed.

Even the physical space they once shared, Tahrir Square, has become a place of division as demonstrators have clashed violently with other Egyptians over whether protests should continue.

At the heart of the swirling chaos is a big question: Who speaks for this new Egypt and for the millions of protesters who made it possible? It is a call every group is rushing to answer in a bid to claim legitimacy, influence and, ultimately, the power to shape what kind of country will emerge from this time of transition.

Lack of structureThe meeting at the group’s headquarters — a gutted house donated by a sympathetic businessman — ends up running late into the night. A few April 6 members linger afterward and explain that such intense debates have become common among many youth movements.

There are disagreements over whether to negotiate with the military council running Egypt’s transitional government or to boycott it. There are divisions over whether to hold protests every day or only on Fridays, when more people participate.

Part of the problem, for groups such as April 6, is organizational structure, or lack thereof. Youths in Egypt proudly point out that theirs was a leaderless revolution, a deliberate philosophy born in

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part out of the nonviolence books and Serbian Otpor! movement that inspired the April 6 founders.

The problem also has to do with the movement’s origins online, where everyone has a right to post a comment. In the days after the revolution, the group tried applying similar principles to meetings, giving everyone who attended two minutes to speak. The resulting marathon sessions went on for hours with little consensus.

But the leaderless philosophy extends far beyond the April 6 group. During the revolution, several youth groups banded together to form the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution, a loose-knit board that included two representatives from each faction. Since then, the coalition — which has played a large role in negotiating with the Egyptian military — has studiously avoided anointing any leaders.

In fact, before Mubarak stepped down, when one of the coalition’s members, Google executive Wael Ghonim, was released from captivity, some youth activists said they had asked Ghonim to scale back his media appearances. They noticed that media coverage had begun to identify him as the face of the revolution. Since then, he has largely faded from the spotlight, granting few interviews and restricting his public comments in recent weeks to Twitter and Facebook.

“Our reasoning is this,” said Muhammad Adal, 23, a core member of April 6. “A leader can be arrested, slandered, dragged down into the mud. But if your leader is an idea, this is something no one can kill.”

Movement without endAlthough the revolution has ended, the impulse to revolt has only increased since Mubarak stepped down Feb. 11.

Each day, there are dozens of protests — by women for equal rights, by Coptic Christians against discrimination, by high school

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students against exams, by drivers angry about the price of gas. Even ballet dancers and musicians at Cairo’s opera house have held sit-ins over pay.

But perhaps the most surprising attempt at reform has come from within the Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as one of the most powerful political forces in post-Mubarak Egypt.

After being banned for years by the old regime, the Brotherhood is trying to become a legal political faction without panicking some Egyptians who worry that the group’s ultimate goal is to install an Islamic government.

Youths in the Brotherhood, however, have threatened to mobilize their own mass protests unless the group overhauls its leadership. They have asked for more transparency, a greater role for women and a modern media strategy.

In the earliest days of the revolution, Muslim Brotherhood youths rushed to protest, even as their elder leaders hesitated. In forming their movement, young members of the Brotherhood say they are drawing upon lessons from those days.

“Each night during the revolution in Tahrir Square, after the skirmishes, we talked with other youths and among ourselves,” said Kamal Samir Fargallah, 38, a business consultant, whose first act after the revolution was to create a Facebook group, as he had seen other groups do, calling for reform in the Brotherhood. “It was the first time we youths from different movements sat together. We learned from each other,” he said.

But even as they push to build a more modern, moderate Brotherhood, the group’s younger members know they risk alienating its leadership, which is still firmly in charge.

“It’s delicate,” said Mohammad al-Kassas, a youth leader in the Brotherhood. “For that reason, you see the overt attempt online, but underneath that are quiet efforts as well behind the scenes.”

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Sitting at a downtown coffee shop in a slate-gray suit with a smartphone in each coat pocket, Samir spoke cautiously, playing down the divisions and being careful to avoid criticizing the old guard.

“We have the same goals. It is simply a difference in speed,” he said. “The old leaders are driving at 80 kilometers an hour because this used to be outlawed. We are pointing to the new speed limit, asking why not go 120?”

But half an hour into the conversation, in a moment of candor, he said: “In the future, the young people will be the leaders of Egypt, even in the Muslim Brotherhood. This is what the revolution showed all of us. The young are the only ones with the flexibility to adapt.”

Struggling to be heardBut not everyone has so easily found a voice in the new Egypt.

Among the several hundred young and old protesters sporadically converging at Tahrir Square, many have grown angry and disillusioned with the youth movements, which have mostly abandoned Tahrir, returning only on Fridays, the biggest day of protests.

As they point out, key demands from the revolution remain unmet: the release of political prisoners, elimination of the emergency law, a civilian-led transitional government.

“Why is it that only these youth leaders get to negotiate with the government? Did we not fight the revolution so that we would all have a voice?” Osama Ibrahim, 36, an elementary school music teacher, asked on a recent day in Tahrir Square.

Ibrahim hitchhiked to Cairo from his home two hours north in Kafr el-Sheikh on Feb. 2, after he saw pro-Mubarak forces attacking protesters on the news. He stayed in Tahrir for weeks,

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braving tear gas, fighting off thugs, sleeping on the ground, sharing a blanket with other protesters.

But these days, the joy he felt when Mubarak finally stepped down has turned to bitterness. He is protesting as hard as ever, but no one, he says, is listening.

The biggest danger to the country now, he says, is the fact that the military was put in charge of the transition. And the only way to solve it, he said, is with a transitional presidential council that includes civilians — an idea that was popular during the revolution but has since largely been abandoned.

He tried calling, texting and sending Facebook messages to the now-prominent figures of the youth coalition to make his point. He tried handing out fliers and mobilizing fellow demonstrators.

Then, with two like-minded men, he began plotting a new course, a plan lifted straight out of the youth activists’ playbook. Convening on a recent Friday at an Internet cafe, Ibrahim and his collaborators logged on to Facebook and created a page to launch a new movement.

The only question remaining was what to call themselves. It had been just weeks since Mubarak stepped down, since Ibrahim and others in the square had won back their country, but already he could feel it slipping away.

After much debate, they finally settled on a name: the Movement to Save the Revolution.

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Israel’s war and peace Shaul Mofaz says Israel needs to end Hamas rule in Gaza, strive for real peace process Shaul Mofaz Yedioth Ahronoth,24 Mar. 2011,

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In recent days, the State of Israel has been under a murderous terror offensive. This reality of bombs and missiles at our cities is intolerable. We shall never reconcile ourselves to a reality where children are murdered while sleeping. We shall never reconcile ourselves to a reality where missiles, rockets and mortar shells are fired at our territory and threaten our citizens and children. We must not accept a reality where schools in Eshkol, Beersheba and Ashdod remain closed.

Our children in Jerusalem, Beersheba, Itamar and Gaza-region communities deserve the same level of security enjoyed by our children in Tel Aviv. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda cannot divide Israel along boundaries determined by missile ranges.

The continuation of this terror offensive must prompt us to undertake strategic action to end Hamas’ rule in Gaza. This is not about directing meaningful fire at open spaces, and we must not only focus on the rocket launching cells.

We must carry out methodical, ceaseless operations against anyone affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Terror group members cannot be divided into operatives and a “back office.” The lives of anyone associated with Hamas and terrorism must become an inseparable part of the equation involving attacks on Israeli communities.

Should the State of Israel fail to root out terror hotbeds in the Gaza Strip, terrorism will only grow. We must not allow Hamas to drag us into a war of attrition. We shall not be hostages in the hands of terror and we shall not let those who fire missiles determine our daily routine.

Israel has the means to curb this terror. This is what we did at the height of the suicide bombing wave in 2002. Under the lead of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, we struck the terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. The results of Operation

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Defensive Shield are apparent to this day. We have now reached the moment of decision in the Gaza Strip as well.

Time working against usSince the early days of Zionism, the State of Israel has been facing three major theaters. The first one is the terror front, which hit us this week. This terror is brutal, unrestrained and lacks morality and humanity.

The second front is the international theater. There too we’ve been contending, for more than 100 years now, with arguments that undermine our very right to live and exist in this country. On this front, we are facing an unprecedented nadir.

In the past two years, the Israeli government has been prompting growing international isolation. It is a government that adheres to the notion of “sit and do nothing.” Unequivocally, the diplomatic impasse facilitates international isolation and a difficult, painful confrontation. Our ability to contend with terror effectively is decreasing in the face of a deep de-legitimization process.

The third front is domestic, and here we see the conspicuous inability of our leaders over the years to take a decision on Israel’s permanent borders. Here too, for more than two years now, the Netanyahu government has done nothing. Speeches are not enough and plans are insufficient. A government must execute, lead and make difficult decisions. Prime Minister Netanyahu is an utter failure in this respect. This failure is tying the defense establishment’s hands in its war on terror.

Netanyahu’s inaction is prominent, yet he is not alone. Past Israeli governments partly attempted to contend with these issues and failed. In the early 1990s, we saw the failure of the diplomatic process, because the terror infrastructure was not thoroughly addressed simultaneously. In recent years we are experiencing the opposite process – a war on terror that is not accompanied by a diplomatic horizon. These two processes are destined to fail if they are not integrated.

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The time has come to show responsibility and say in a clear voice that only a combination of an uncompromising war on terror alongside the start of a genuine diplomatic process will ensure our existence as a Jewish democratic state. On one hand, we must strike the terror groups that wish to exterminate us and fight them mercilessly, without hypocrisy or doublespeak.

On the other hand, we must raise the banner of peace, embark on a diplomatic process with the Palestinian Authority and with the Syrians, and secure Israel’s final-status borders once and for all. The need to take such action is growing in the face of the current Mideastern earthquake.

The Netanyahu government lacks the will, intention and political ability to take us there. Time is working against us, and our security and diplomatic situation is worsening every day.

Enough of this; the time has come to take action. This is the only way to secure our nation.

Knesset Member Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) is the chairman of the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee

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Syrian sauce for the Chinese gander By Peter Lee Asia Times,25 Mar. 2011,

For the Chinese leadership, the ominous tottering of Middle East dominoes - and the foundations of authoritarian doctrine - continues. The Chinese media have become fixated on Libya as an object lesson of the dangers of revolutionary and humanitarian enthusiasm run amok.

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Certainly, the Libyan adventure presents a less than edifying spectacle: Western military powers, led by France, exploited a United Nations resolution allowing humanitarian intervention to engage in a freewheeling attack against military assets of the Libyan government with the apparent motive of assuring the survival of rebel forces in the eastern part of the country.

The Barack Obama administration is trying to bolster the case for humanitarian intervention with the kind of loose, hypothetical talk that led to the invasion Iraq in 2003 to prevent potential mushroom clouds over Cleveland.

Politico's senior White House reporter Glenn Thrush revealed during a radio program that the administration was briefing congressional leaders with the dubious claim that "there could have been 50 to 100,000 deaths associated with allowing Muammar Gaddafi's forces to over-run Benghazi". [1]

It took Hafez al-Assad three weeks of shelling, bombing and ground operations against the virtually defenseless city of Hama, Syria to kill perhaps 35,000 people in 1982. That is currently the gold standard for massacres by Arab despots perpetrated on their own people. It is questionable whether Colonel Muammar Gaddafi would be in a position to exceed this figure in Benghazi, especially when reports indicate that the actual stock of trained rebel fighters opposing him there might only be on the order of 1,000. [2]

Gaddafi should be grateful that the State Department didn't declare he was planning to annihilate Benghazi's entire population of 700,000.

There is no good number for how many people have died to date in what the ex-Libyan ambassador to the United Nations characterized as the "genocide" of Libya, but the most detailed estimate is 2,000 - 500 of whom were Gaddafi loyalists. [3]

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Once the humanitarian needs of the Libyan rebels are met, short of regime change in Tripoli a friendly regime in eastern Libya would presumably be the absolute minimum outcome acceptable to France and Italy, which lean on Libya for energy supplies.

There is already an available precedent for partition of Libya, which would leave a pro-Western regime in Benghazi in control of most of Libya's petroleum resources and Gaddafi presiding over an impotent and defunded rump state; that would be the US-brokered peace agreement in Sudan, which led to the establishment of a pro-Western regime in Juba in control of most of Sudan's petroleum resources and left Omar Bashir presiding over an impotent and defunded rump state.

Funny coincidence if the West ends up on the positive side of the oil equation in both instances.

The Chinese government abstained from the UN no-fly resolution; since then media has been full of criticisms and dire warnings over the consequences of the Western military intervention.

On March 21, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson declared: China has noted the latest developments in the Libyan situation and expresses regret over the military strike against Libya. China always disapproves the use of force in international relations and maintains that the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and relevant norms of international law be adhered to, and Libya's sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity be respected. We hope to see Libya restore stability as soon as possible and avoid the escalation of military conflicts and more civilian casualties. [4] Xinhua also gave prominence to a report that called into question the "no boots in the sand" avowals of the West in enforcing the UN resolutions: the dispatch of the amphibious assault vessel USS Bataan, with 900 marines and perhaps three dozen attack helicopters, to join the Libya operation in the Mediterranean. [5]

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In what is unlikely to be a propaganda windfall for the United States, the Bataan gained a certain notoriety when it was identified as a prison ship used to detain terrorism suspects incommunicado in the Indian Ocean in late 2001 and 2002. [6]

In an ironic aside - and an indication of how murky things are over there - Time Magazine dug up a US Army report that Libya provided the highest number of anti-US foreign fighters in Iraq per capita based on their home country. They virtually all came from the impoverished and neglected environs of Benghazi, Darnah, Ajdabiyah, and Misrata - the heartland of the current rebellion. [7]

Certainly, there is plenty to criticize, and China is not alone.

The African Union, Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Brazil, and India have all repudiated the ad hoc intervention which, in addition to its myriad contradictions and dangers, has the additional disadvantage of being led by the French.

With implicit eye-rolling, Russia's RIA Novosti reported a news item that neatly encapsulated the opportunistic pandering of the rebels and the invincible self-regard of the French government: France says it feels a sense of responsibility for Libyan rebels after its flag was raised over the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, France's prime minister said on Tuesday.

"There is hope in Benghazi now, the French flag is being waved there, and also the flag of a different Libya which dreams of democracy and modernization," Francois Fillon told the French parliament. [8]To make things worse, France's Libyan adventure was reportedly concocted as a side project of France's much-mocked premier philosophical poseur, "intellectual dandy", and ubiquitous media hound Bernard-Henri Levy. Diane Johnstone writes in Counterpunch: Bernard-Henri Levy held a private meeting in Benghazi with Moustapha Abdeljalil, a former justice minister who has turned coats to become leader of the rebel "National Transition Council".

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That very evening, BHL [Bernard-Henri Levy] called Sarkozy on his cellphone and got his agreement to receive the NTC leaders. The meeting took place on March 10 in the Elysee palace in Paris.

As reported in Le Figaro by veteran international reporter Renaud Girard, Sarkozy thereupon announced to the delighted Libyans the plan that he had concocted with BHL: recognition of the NTC as sole legitimate representative of Libya, the naming of a French ambassador to Benghazi, precision strikes on Libyan military airports, with the blessings of the Arab League (which he had already obtained). The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, was startled to learn of this dramatic turn in French diplomacy after the media. [9] Writing for Stephen Walt's realist blog at Foreign Policy, Mark Sheetz of Boston College characterized BHL, perhaps with a tinge of envy, as "another vain French rooster strutting around looking for glory". [10]

For China, the temerity of France's philosophers in usurping the US role as the verbal and military scourge of inconvenient dictators is beside the point.

The issue in Libya is the astounding ease with which a regime that found itself at cross-purposes with the United States was unilaterally stripped of its legitimacy and exposed to military intervention through aggressive and creative interpretation of an ambiguous UN resolution - in a mere three days.

This issue is important enough that People's Daily has been carrying the propaganda burden itself, instead of relying on its stridently nationalistic but less official international mouthpiece, Global Times. A selection of People's Daily headlines provides a taste of the official Chinese mood: - China reaffirms its reservation to part of "no-fly zone" resolution on Libya. [11] - How humanitarian is Western intervention in Libya? [12] - Libya intervention: Driven by oil or humanitarianism? [13]

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China's liberal bloggers, on the other hand, appear to be brimming with enthusiasm for military intervention by Western democracies. On February 26, China's "Great River" - the nom du Web of journalist Zhang Wen - had already written a piece entitled "Support America Taking Military Action Against Libya".

Indeed, he supported US unilateral action even if UN sanction was blocked by "the resistance of some countries" aka China. This put him several steps in front of the Obama administration, which had serious reservations about intervention, was stampeded in abandoning its cautious stance by domestic and international pressures, and found it politic to proceed only after the Arab League and the UNSC were on board. [14]

(Zhang, with blog posts like "Why Is It That My Predictions So Accurate?" - "Answer: It's simple. One has to understand human nature and grasp the overall situation", seems a worthy contender for the crown of China's Bernard-Henri Levy.) [15]

China's most popular blogger, Han Han, also picked up the theme that human rights trumps national sovereignty - and that the need to protect people from slaughter is more important that what happens to the oil-with a post titled, "Dictators Don't Have Internal Affairs". [16]

Within the Chinese tradition of remonstrance by analogy, the implication is that sauce for the Libyan goose might also suit the Chinese gander.

Regardless of its duration or outcome, the West's oily, self-righteous, violent and disorganized adventure in Libya will probably provide ample grist for the China's government's propaganda mill. Whether it will shake the convictions of China's interventionist liberal hawks is another matter.

However, the matter of closest interest to Beijing may be the fate of another Middle East authoritarian government that has

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explicitly modeled its doctrine of economic development and political control on China's example.

That country is Syria, and the outlook for Bashar al-Assad's regime has darkened with a local manifestation of the regional unrest, in the southern town of Daraa. Syria is one of three Chinese strategic partners in the region, together with Iran and Turkey.

With its secular, single-party Ba'athist rule, its liberalized but state-dominated economy, its lack of an oil cushion, and hostility of the United States and its regional allies (last year Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that Syria had replaced Iraq in the "axis of evil", apparently to uphold the principle that the axis must always have three members - the other two are Iran and North Korea), Syria occupies a political and social space analogous to, if much smaller than, China's.

It also incorporates the characteristic Chinese problems of princeling rule and corruption. The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is the son of the previous president, Hafez al-Assad. His relatives pervade the government and economy and have aroused considerable resentment.

Syria's potentially fatal flaw, however, is unique to that nation. The Assad family and significant numbers of its ruling elite is drawn from the Alawi sect, an Druze-like esoteric faith whose claims to Muslim orthodoxy within the Shi'ite tradition are challenged especially by Sunni skeptics, but also by some Shi'ites. Alawites only make up 12% of Syria's population, while Sunni believers comprise over 70%. [17]

The government has attempted to compensate for its vulnerability to sectarian challenge by a commitment to secularism, nationalism and economic growth.

The government's insecurity was exemplified by its ferocious response to an armed challenge to its power by an alliance of the

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Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni elites in the 1980s. Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez, inflicted the Hama outrage in order to break the back of the Brotherhood in its stronghold.

Under Bashar, the regime has liberalized and done a relatively skillful job of surviving in a remarkably dangerous neighborhood while maintaining its foreign policy independence.

It was able to make a sufficiently convincing demonstration of its utility to the United States in the "war on terror" (while absorbing 1.5 million Iraqi refugees) to sidetrack plans by US hawks to turn left at Baghdad and march on Damascus. While reaching out to the West, Syria was also able to maintain its ties with Iran, improve its relations with Turkey, and avoid an attack by Israel.

Assad's persistence paid off as the Obama administration nominated Robert Ford as ambassador to Syria in December 2010, ending a five-year break in relations.

The Guardian's David Hirst acknowledged the nationalist foundation of Syrian government foreign policy, while denying it had actually taken root with the Syrian people: [Assad's] regime was chiefly stable, he said, because it was the true embodiment of the Arabs and Syrians' "ideology, belief and cause" - essentially the struggle against Israel and western powers standing behind it. It thereby boasted a "patriotic legitimacy" that all other regimes lacked.

But this argument, advanced by a despot in favor of his own survival, appears almost as delusional as those advanced by others - such as the al-Qaeda of Colonel Gaddafi's bizarre imagining. The patriotic card clearly counts for little with the Syrian public. [18] The Syrian government's attempts to bolster its legitimacy by shepherding the nation's economic development, on the other hand, have been only moderately successful.

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Professor Josh Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a specialist on Syria, told Asia Times Online: The Syrian leadership has often invoked the China model and something it would like to emulate - a one party state guiding the country toward capitalism and economic renewal. Syria, unfortunately, is not China. It has been unable to produce economic growth over 5% a year and unwilling to control rapid population increases that wipe out economic growth. Syria doesn't have the clout or competitiveness to open Western markets.

That said, the Syrian state may weather the present storm sweeping the Arab world, but it will be badly hobbled by the growing consciousness of its youth that they can question authority and push back against the authorities that run rough shod over their interests and can provide only a bleak future for most of them. The clashes in Daraa were triggered by the arrest of 15 teenagers for scrawling anti-government graffiti inspired by Egyptian and Tunisian slogans they saw on al-Jazeera. Protests followed the arrests, security forces opened fire and killed several people, and the protests/funerals grew and began to spread to neighboring towns.

The demonstrations have a certain sectarian aspect, despite the efforts of liberal sympathizers to spin the slogans as generic expressions of virtuous religiosity. The calls of "No Iran No Hezbollah" by orthodox Sunni townspeople imply an open challenge to their at best Shi'ite-esque and at worst heretic Alawite rulers.

The Syrian regime's guiding slogan over the past three decades has been the very Chinese "Stability and Security", as embodied in a perpetual state of emergency, single-party rule and a pervasive security apparatus.

However, on March 24 the government responded to the burgeoning crisis in Daraa by turning away from the tried-and-true

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practice of repression and announcing plans that, if carried out, would signal major reforms, as al-Jazeera reported: "I am happy to announce to you the decisions made today by the Arab Ba'ath party under the auspices of President Bashar al-Assad ... which include ... studying the possibility of lifting the emergency law and licensing political parties," the president's media adviser Buthaina Shaaban said at a news conference on Thursday. [19]The licensing of political parties is not necessarily a stepping-stone to liberal democracy.

Instead, Syria's government may have decided to take a page from the book of its ally, Iran.

Iran, in addition to its assigned role as nuclear bogeyman and threat to all that is good and right in the Middle East, is also a democracy, if profoundly flawed, one of the few functioning in that part of the world.

It is home to a welter of political parties that, in addition to expressing the desires of their constituents, also allow the regime to play divide-and-conquer with its rivals - and let pro-government parties take some of the heat and infamy for beating back the challenge from reformists.

Iran's government has also shown considerable success in resisting the 2011 revolutionary wave - at least for now.

In light of what is happening in Syria - and the experience of Iran - China may be forced to take another look at its most cherished, and self-serving, concept: the central importance and attractiveness of stability.

Stability is a product that authoritarian regimes want to sell but the people on the street aren't buying right now. Appeals to consider the virtues of stability has not put the brakes on any of the popular movements in the Arab countries.

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Stability is not, to put it mildly, a hallmark of Iranian society.

That presents a challenge to China, since the justification for the Communist Party's unpopular political monopoly (as opposed to its successful economic franchise) pretty much boils down to one word: stability. A March 10 People's Daily editorial laid out the defense of "stability" in an editorial entitled, China is definitely not the Middle East. It stated: The Chinese people, like the people of other countries, yearn for the lasting peace and stability. People in China, now better fed and better clothed, are striving to pursue their still better living standards; they are fully aware that the premise for the auspicious days is precisely the national stability and a harmonious society ...

Chinese people fear turbulence and worry about being led into troubles and so they ardently hope for stability, harmony and peace. They exert themselves to seek development wholeheartedly and still better livelihoods, and most of them long for a better quality of life. Hence, the only very few trouble makers cannot randomly make a crack up in the country even if they vainly attempt to make trouble.

The leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is laid on a very solid foundation in recent years. China held the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, all performed with flying colors. And the relief work in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake and the ensuing Yushu Quake rescue work, as well as the efforts to cope with the impact of the global financial crisis, and the latest Libya evacuation of more than Chinese 30,000 nationals - All these difficult matters were done so well. [20] However, the events in Syria imply that appeals to nationalism, patriotism, lunch-pail issues, the need to protect a vulnerable international standing in the face of Western hostility, and the craving for stability may not outweigh a popular yearning for instability: a desire to experience and participate in the enormous, exciting, and fundamentally empowering changes sweeping the world.

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If this attitude prevails in China despite its economic success - or if that success falters - the Chinese leadership may find itself in a losing battle to preserve its increasingly anachronistic and unwelcome single-party rule.

Instead, it may find it necessary to turn toward the messy, multi-party system that underpins the authoritarian rule in Russia and Iran - and may also become the standard in Syria - much earlier than it hoped and expected.

Notes 1. Click here for the broadcast. 2. Rebel Insider Concedes Weaknesses in Libya, New York Times, March 23, 2011.3. Casualties of the 2011 Libyan uprising, Wikipedia.4. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Jiang Yu's Remarks on Multinational Military Strike against Libya, Chinese Foreign Ministry, March 21, 2011.5. Libya: What is the role of the USS Bataan?, BBC, March 23, 2011.6. Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees, Guardian, June 2, 2008.7. Just Who Are These Libyan Rebels?, Time, March 24, 2011.8. Fillon says French flag raised over rebel-held Benghazi, Ria Novosti, March 25, 2011.9. Why are They Making War on Libya?, Counter Punch, March 24, 2011.10. Has the U.S. forgotten how to pass the buck?, Foreign Policy, March 23, 2011.11. China reaffirms its reservation to part of "no-fly zone" resolution on Libya, People's Daily, March 18, 2011.12. How humanitarian is Western intervention in Libya?, People's Daily, March 22, 2011.13. Libya intervention: Driven by oil or humanitarianism?, People's Daily, March 23, 2011.14. Click here for the Chinese text.15. Click here for the Chinese text.16. Click here for the Chinese text.17. 'Alawites in the Muslim World, Muslim Hope, May 2007.18. Even anti-western Syria is not immune to revolution, Guardian, March 22, 2011.19. Protests prompt Syria to pledge reforms, Aljazeera, March 24, 2011.20. China is definitely not Middle East, People's Daily, Mar10, 2011.

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

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Al Jazeera English: 'Syria braces for 'day of dignity' rallies'..

Jordan Times: 'Jordan stresses strong relations with Syria'..

Jerusalem Post: 'The emergence of Turkey’s hidden Jews'..

Guardian: 'Libya: the morality of intervention'.. by Bernard Kouchner..

Guardian: 'Was intervention in Libya right?'..

Independent: 'Escalation in revenge attacks pushes Israel closer to war'..

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