News about situation in Arabian countries keeps coming in a terrifying pace. Places where revolutions have already died out still feature the destabilizing processes. The countries where the revolutions are still ripening, however, show the signs of their inevitability. Arabian revolutions cause the distraction even among the so-called political elites — how else can we explain an attempt of Kazakhstan UNESCO representative to hijack the plane travelling from Paris to Rome and send it to Tripoli?
News about situation in Arabian countries keeps coming in a terrifying pace. Places where revolutions have already died out still feature the destabilizing processes. The countries where the revolutions are still ripening, however, show the signs of their inevitability. Arabian revolutions cause the distraction even among the so-called political elites — how else can we explain an attempt of Kazakhstan UNESCO representative to hijack the plane travelling from Paris to Rome and send it to Tripoli?
Egypt — not a foreclosure yet
Al-Jazeera TV-channel has recently covered the report of Egyptian investigative committee that was created to look into the reasons of Egyptian revolution. It was published on the 19th of April this year and confirms responsibility of former President Mubarak along with Habib Al-Adli — former Minister of Interior, Security and Police Forces — for deaths of the demonstrators. Report voices up the following numbers: 846 people dead and 6.500 wounded. Having reviewed the evidence (testimonies of eyewitnesses, video materials and documents) committee has come to a conclusion that Mubarak was aware of everything and approved the actions of his subordinates, who ordered to shoot at civilians.
Omar Marwan, committee representative has made a curious statement regarding the mass prison breaks, committed by criminals, which aggravated the chaos in the rebellion-clasped country furthermore. A lot of people used to claim that they were inspirited by authorities themselves in order to distract the protesters and mislead the global opinion. According Marwan, Egyptian authorities had nothing to do with those breaks. While examining the territories of the detention centers, committee members have found cartridge cases from weapons that are not in use in Egypt. Prisons were attacked by well-armed and perfectly-trained groups of militants. Might it been the Al-Qaida’s contribution to the Egyptian revolts?
Southern Egyptian province of Qena has been revolting for two weeks now. Radical Muslims protest against the appointment of Christian governor Emad Mikhail. Muslim Brotherhood has blocked the highways and railroads between Cairo, Luxor and Aswan. In Al Minya — another southern province — two people died during the religious clashes last week, mind that it were Muslims who stood guard at the Coptic churches. On Great Friday — that Copts celebrate along with the rest of the Christian world — about a thousand of Muslims held a demonstration in 60-thousand strong Abu Carcass in this same province — they, however, intended to pacify Christians and protect Coptic temples. Bedouin movement enlivened at the Sinai Peninsula — for now they demand just autonomy from the state, not sovereignty yet.
Chaotization of a post-totalitarian society is a thing we’re all quite familiar with, but in case of Egypt it may also have a foreign-policy aspect. Protracted conflict with the neighbors, caused by division of Nile water may aggravate straight to the warfare. Historical strife between Egypt and Sudan that share the water resources in the 75:25 ratio (which suits neither of them) worsened with the Ethiopian discontent, which provides 86% of the Greater Nile inflow for the account of Blue Nile but get only 1.1% in exchange. Ethiopia along with Burundi started to build dams and other hydro-technical constructions at the tributaries of Greater Nile that caused Egyptian and Sudanese protests, who faces the risk of reducing water supply volumes. In 2010 Ethiopia concluded an anti-Egyptian alliance with Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. Burundi — which is capable of stopping the inflow of White Nile into Greater Nile — also supports this alliance. Add the Southern Sudan that gained independence in the beginning of this year to the African puzzle. Water is a vitally important resource in Africa and while neighbors were afraid to spoil the relations with Mubarak’s Egypt, which had a powerful army, today’s Egypt — already weakened, yet not quite democratic — may become a tidbit for its rivals.
Libya: rebels’ resemblance to the “civil population” is vanishing
Situation in this country remains being a no-win one. Rebels control the East of the country and Gaddafi’s troops control the West. Libyans have split into two camps. The first one supports Gaddafi; the second one supports the rebels. Tuaregs, controlling the Sahel routs, expatriates from the Black Africa, whom Gaddafi once dreamed to make the spine of Afro-army of and even female snipers from faraway Columbia, as some media claim — they all fight for Colonel. Rebels have jihadist volunteers, not all of them connected to Al-Qaida. Some of them are Muslims, fighting the regime of “unfaithful” Muammar Gaddafi.
Situation that was described in the UN Security Council resolution #1973 dated by the 17th of March has changed beyond recognition: “…full-fledged and regular attacks upon civilian population that take place in the Libyan Arabian Jamahiriya right now” — the ones that “might be considered crimes against humanity” (it is an excerpt from resolution) — have changed its nature. “Civilian population”, protection of which has brought the Security Council resolution to life was turned into not quite civilian one, thanks to the efforts of France and Italy. Military instructors of these European countries started to teach Libyan citizens science of war.
Decision of Berlusconi, who kissed Gaddafi’s hand, and Sarkozy, who tried to wash away the accusations of using the Libyan money to fund his campaign, made the application of UN resolution an absurdity. Now the rebels, taught by the Western military experts, can hardly be considered a “civilian population”. They turned into a party of the conflict. We may certainly predict that it would be impossible to adopt a new resolution regarding Libya in a situation like this. Russia wouldn’t abstain from the vote this time, but would rather use its veto right. From one hand, we supposedly have the much-talked-about Columbian female snipers, from the other one — European military experts, who have changed the status of rebels. So that’s a dead-end then.
Is Bahrain turning into a Saudi protectorate?
Simultaneously with that we witness the aggravation of Persian-Arabian conflict in the Gulf area. Bahraini parliament — which the representatives of Shiite movement Al Wefaq have left (mind that it’s not a political party, which are forbidden in Bahrain) — has approved the project of emergency bill, stipulating the foundation of Gulf Confederation, which intends to “consolidate the Arabian cooperation”, especially in the fields of defense, oil industry and foreign policy. That’s how this step is explained: “Bahrain holds a strategic situation due to its natural resources and should become a financial center of the region. This also makes it a desirable subject for other countries”.
We really don’t have to specify that “other countries” really mean Iran. At the same time, Saudi troops (more than a thousand soldiers) and the UAE police forces still remain in the country. This intervention was sharply condemned by Tehran, which the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) interpreted as “interference into the internal affairs” of the country. Manama’s agreement with other GCC members makes the legal ground for this intervention, though. Responding to Iranian threats to send its troops to Bahrain, Iranian embassy in the country was closed, and its building was given to one of the ministries. In fact, diplomatic ties between Iran and Bahrain have been broken and there’s a single step to an outright conflict left.
In a situation like that, Bahraini authorities undertook steps to create the Gulf Confederation and not from the scratch. GCC, which exists from 1981 and includes Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia, was a rather amorphous international institution even despite its decisive attempts to adopt a united financial system. The decision was made as far back as in 2009, but afterwards Oman and the UAE have renounced the idea. Remaining participants of a currency union scheduled to impose the new monetary unit — “khaleeji”, which means “of the Gulf” in Arabian — by 2013.
Passing Bahrain foreign and defense policy into authority of Confederation (or Saudi Arabia, if we call spade a spade) means giving up the state sovereignty in fact. What has made Bahraini King behave like this? He seemingly has certain apprehensions concerning the future — even in spite of hosting the largest American military base in the region. This fact apparently indicates the weakening role of the United States in Arabian world. Several years ago American military base was the best guarantee of preserving the regime of Bahraini minority, though today it looks as if it’s not enough anymore.
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