EDITORIAL:Daily Times
It looks as if the richest monarchy in the Arab world and the largest global oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, may be getting jittery at the history-changing events developing across the Middle East. The ouster of decades’ long autocratic rule in Tunisia and Egypt and the wave of protests sweeping across Bahrain, Yemen and Libya have prodded Saudi Arabia into action to placate an ever-increasing disillusioned public. Returning home after three months spent abroad for medical treatment, King Abdullah announced an extravagant aid package — to the tune of $ 35 billion — aimed at benefiting lower and middle income groups and unemployed youth, and addressing housing problems and high-inflation rates besetting the Saudi economy. This is an attempt by the Saudi monarchy to throw money at the problem as though that is all that is required. The Saudi monarchy is watching closely the rising stem of revolts in the Arab world, deeming it necessary to address issues before the people take to the streets of Saudi Arabia. As most of the reforms in the package aim to address the woes of the youth, it is quite obvious that the Saudi rulers have taken note of the fact that it is the tech-savvy youth demographic that is most active and passionate in the Arab protests.
The Libyan uprising has been reduced to an isolated, hate-spewing dictator watching his iron-clad grip quickly loosening in the face of angry protests and Yemen is seeing nine ministers resign from public office. Inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab public has finally decided that it has had enough of autocratic regimes, and no place epitomises a seemingly unshakeable monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
There have long been opponents of the Saudi regime but they have always been silenced by the kingdom’s repressive laws and policies. Many political opponents and underground groups have long demanded more gender equality, free elections to municipal councils, etc. However, for a theocracy like Saudi Arabia, introducing reforms that endanger the political-religious status quo will be out of the question. While this aid package is a premeditated move to curb any rising dissent within the kingdom, it must be asked: how far will doling out money go if it is not accompanied by freedom? Money can only go so far when the inhabitants of an oil-wealthy country are boiling over with frustration over the denial of their political, civil, human and gender rights. *
Friday, February 25, 2011
Yemen steps up security in capital before rallies
Yemeni authorities stepped up security in the capital Sanaa on Friday ahead of rival rallies between government supporters and opponents, which the Interior Ministry said could be exploited by "terrorist elements."
Thousands of protesters calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule have been holding a sit-in outside Sanaa University, while his supporters have rallied in another part of the capital.
Seventeen people have died in the past nine days in a sustained wave of nationwide anti-Saleh protests galvanized by the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents. Saleh has said he will not give in to "anarchy and killing."
An Interior Ministry statement late on Thursday ordered security forces to "raise their security vigilance and take all measures to control any terrorist elements" who might take advantage of the protests to infiltrate Sanaa.
Saleh, a U.S. ally against a Yemen-based al Qaeda wing that has launched attacks at home and abroad, is struggling to end month-old protests flaring across his impoverished country.
He is also trying to maintain a shaky truce with northern Shi'ite Muslim rebels and contain a secessionist insurgency in the south against northern rule.
Witnesses said police in Sanaa had formed cordons round the rival groups of protesters and supporters, whose numbers were expected to swell after Friday prayers, to prevent either side from confronting the other.
A statement from the Yemeni embassy in Washington said Saleh had "demanded security services offer full protection for the demonstrators" and prevent direct confrontations.
"Furthermore, the government calls on protesters to remain vigilant and take all precautionary steps to prevent the infiltrations of individuals seeking to carry out violent actions," the statement said.
State news agency Saba said Saleh has also assigned a committee headed by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Megawar to open a dialogue with protesters to hear their demands.
Thousands of protesters calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule have been holding a sit-in outside Sanaa University, while his supporters have rallied in another part of the capital.
Seventeen people have died in the past nine days in a sustained wave of nationwide anti-Saleh protests galvanized by the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents. Saleh has said he will not give in to "anarchy and killing."
An Interior Ministry statement late on Thursday ordered security forces to "raise their security vigilance and take all measures to control any terrorist elements" who might take advantage of the protests to infiltrate Sanaa.
Saleh, a U.S. ally against a Yemen-based al Qaeda wing that has launched attacks at home and abroad, is struggling to end month-old protests flaring across his impoverished country.
He is also trying to maintain a shaky truce with northern Shi'ite Muslim rebels and contain a secessionist insurgency in the south against northern rule.
Witnesses said police in Sanaa had formed cordons round the rival groups of protesters and supporters, whose numbers were expected to swell after Friday prayers, to prevent either side from confronting the other.
A statement from the Yemeni embassy in Washington said Saleh had "demanded security services offer full protection for the demonstrators" and prevent direct confrontations.
"Furthermore, the government calls on protesters to remain vigilant and take all precautionary steps to prevent the infiltrations of individuals seeking to carry out violent actions," the statement said.
State news agency Saba said Saleh has also assigned a committee headed by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Megawar to open a dialogue with protesters to hear their demands.
Diplomats Try to Quell Bloodshed in Libya
The New York Times
BENGHAZI, Libya — International efforts to stem the bloodshed in Libya appeared to gain momentum on Friday, with the United Nations Security Council scheduled to meet to discuss a draft proposal for sanctions against Libyan leaders and NATO convening an emergency session in Brussels.
In Tripoli, meanwhile, antigovernment demonstrators pledged to take to the streets of the capital on Friday despite threats of a violent crackdown by pro-government mercenaries and security forces, as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi attempted to reinforce the city that remains one of his last strongholds in a widespread rebellion.
With the eastern half of the country now under control of opposition forces, rebels seeking to overturn Col. Qaddafi repelled a concerted assault by his forces on Thursday on cities close to the capital, removing any doubt that Libya’s patchwork of protests had evolved into an increasingly well-armed revolutionary movement.
The series of determined stands by rebel forces on Thursday — especially in the strategic city of Zawiyah, near important oil resources and 30 miles from the capital, Tripoli — presented the gravest threat yet to the Libyan leader. In Zawiyah, more than 100 people were killed as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces turned automatic weapons on a mosque filled with protesters, a witness said. Still, residents rallied afterward.
Colonel Qaddafi’s evident frustration at the resistance in Zawiyah spilled out in a rant by telephone over the state television network charging that Osama bin Laden had drugged the town’s youth into a rebellious frenzy.
“Al Qaeda is the one who has recruited our sons,” he said in a 30-minute tirade broadcast by the network. “It is bin Laden.”
Colonel Qaddafi said, “Those people who took your sons away from you and gave them drugs and said ‘Let them die’ are launching a campaign over cellphones against your sons, telling them not to obey their fathers and mothers.”
With the threat of a brutal crackdown looming, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, said he had called an emergency meeting for Friday afternoon in Brussels to discuss the situation in Libya. Humanitarian assistance and the evacuation of foreign nations would be the priority, he said.
In New York, the United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet Friday afternoon to discuss a proposal backed by France and Britain for sanctions against Libyan leaders, including a possible arms embargo and financial sanctions, though no definitive action was expected until next week.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has also said the bloc should consider sanctions such as travel restrictions and an asset freeze against Libya to try to halt to the violence there. Britain and Switzerland have already announced freezes on Colonel Qaddafi’s in country assets.
The violence on Thursday underscored the contrast between the character of Libya’s revolution and the uprising that toppled autocrats in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. Unlike those Facebook-enabled youth rebellions, the insurrection has been led by people who are more mature and who have been actively opposing the government for some time. It started with lawyers’ syndicates that have campaigned peacefully for two years for a written constitution and some semblance of a rule of law.
Fueled by popular anger, the help of breakaway leaders of the armed forces and some of their troops, and weapons from looted military stockpiles or smuggled across the border, the uprising here has escalated toward more violence in the face of increasingly brutal government crackdowns.
At the revolt’s starting point, in the eastern city of Benghazi, Fathi Terbil, 39, the human rights lawyer whose detention first ignited the protests, drew a map of rebel-held territory in striking distance of Tripoli. “It is only a matter of days,” he said.
A turning point in the uprising’s evolution was arguably the defection of the interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, an army general who had been a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi.
The break by General Abidi, who has family roots near the revolt’s eastern origins, encouraged other disaffected police, military and state security personnel to change sides as well. “We are hoping to use his experience,” said Mr. Terbil, who some called the linchpin of the revolt.
Opposition figures in rebel-held cities like Benghazi have been appearing on cable news channels promising that opponents of Colonel Qaddafi are heading toward Tripoli to bolster the resistance there. Their ability to carry out those assertions remains to be seen.
In parts of the country, the revolutionaries, as they call themselves, appear to have access to potentially large stores of weapons, including small arms and heavy artillery, automatic weapons smuggled from the Egyptian border and rocket-propelled grenades taken from army bases, like the Kabila in Benghazi.
Tawfik al-Shohiby, one of the rebels, said that in the early days of the revolt one of his relatives bought $75,000 in automatic weapons from arms dealers on the Egyptian border and distributed them to citizens’ groups in towns like Bayda.
So far, at least in the east, many of the weapons appear to be held in storage to defend against a future attempt by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake the territory. At a former security services building in Benghazi on Thursday, men in fatigues prepared to transport anti-aircraft and antitank weapons to what one said was a storage depot.
Like their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, the rebels in Libya have shown tech-savvy guile in circumventing government efforts to block their communication. To sidestep the government’s blocking of the Internet and curbing of cellphone access, for example, some of the more active antigovernment protesters distribute flash drives and CDs with videos of the fighting to friends in other towns and to journalists.
Mr. Shohiby began helping lead an effort this week to shuttle foreign journalists from the Egyptian border to towns across eastern Libya.
His network of contacts was built on the Internet: not on Facebook, but on a popular soccer Web site. “I have friends from east to west, north to south,” he said. “There are two guys in Sabha, one in Zawiyah, three friends in Misurata, for example,” he said, speaking of towns that were the scenes of some of the clashes on Thursday.
Still, Mohammed Ali Abdallah, deputy secretary general of an opposition group in exile, The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, said the government’s fierce crackdown made organizing the spontaneous uprising a continuing challenge, especially in heavily guarded Tripoli.
“It is almost like hit and runs,” he said. “There are almost no ways that those young guys can organize themselves. You can’t talk on a mobile phone, and if five people get together in the street they get shot.”
Nonetheless, protesters in Tripoli were calling for a massive demonstration on Friday after noon prayers, residents of the city and those fleeing the country said. In recent days, witnesses said, Colonel Qaddafi appears to have pulled many of his militiamen and mercenaries back toward the capital to prepare for its defense.
But despite the encroaching insurrection, Colonel Qaddafi appeared determined on Thursday to put on a show of strength and national unity, a stark turnabout from his approach so far.
Since the start of the uprising, his government had shut out all foreign journalists, cut off communications and even confiscated mobile phone chips, and other devices that might contain pictures, at the border from people fleeing the country. Libya had warned that reporters who entered the country illegally risked arrest and could be deemed collaborators of Al Qaeda.
But on Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi announced on television that the government would allow teams of journalists to visit Tripoli. Witnesses said preparations for the visit were already under way.
The soldiers and mercenaries who had previously roamed the streets had largely disappeared by the late afternoon, leaving only traffic police officers, and the capital’s central Green Square — the scene of violent clashes earlier this week — had been cleaned up. Two banners, in English, now adorned the square. “Al Jazeera, BBC, don’t spread lies that reflect other’s wishful thinking,” one read. The other: “Family members talk but never fight between each other.”
But the rebels’ unexpected strength was undeniable on Thursday as they appeared to hold or contest several towns close to Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli in the face of a coordinated push by his mercenaries and security forces.
In Misurata, 130 miles the east of the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces struck at rebels guarding the airport with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, The Associated Press reported. But the rebels seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them.
In Zuwarah, 75 miles west of the capital, the police and security forces had pulled out and a “people’s committee” was controlling the city, several people who had fled across the border reported. “The people are taking care of their own business,” said Basem Shams, 26, a fisherman.
In Sabratha, 50 miles west of the capital, witnesses reported that the police headquarters and offices of Colonel Qaddafi’s revolutionary committees were all in smoldering ruins. “We are not afraid; we are watching,” said a doctor by telephone from Sabratha. “What I am sure about, is that change is coming.”
In Zawiyah, an envoy from Colonel Qaddafi had reportedly arrived to warn rebels on Wednesday: “Either leave or you will see a massacre,” one resident told The A.P.
About 5 a.m. Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fulfilled their threat. Witnesses said a force that included about 60 foreign mercenaries assaulted a central mosque where some of the roughly 2,000 protesters had sought refuge. One witness said the protesters were armed mainly with rifles, sticks and knives, but after four hours of fighting they managed to hold the square.
About 100 people were killed and 200 were wounded, this witness said. During a telephone interview with him, a voice could be heard over a loudspeaker in the background telling the crowd, in an area known as Martyrs Square, not to be afraid.
“People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets,” one resident told The A.P. “This regime will regret it. History will not forgive them.”
Meanwhile, the violence sowed concern across the region and beyond. President Obama spoke Thursday, in separate calls, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the prime ministers of Britain and Italy, David Cameron and Silvio Berlusconi.
The White House said the leaders expressed “deep concern” over the Libyan government’s use of force and discussed possible responses, without specifying what steps they were prepared to take.
BENGHAZI, Libya — International efforts to stem the bloodshed in Libya appeared to gain momentum on Friday, with the United Nations Security Council scheduled to meet to discuss a draft proposal for sanctions against Libyan leaders and NATO convening an emergency session in Brussels.
In Tripoli, meanwhile, antigovernment demonstrators pledged to take to the streets of the capital on Friday despite threats of a violent crackdown by pro-government mercenaries and security forces, as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi attempted to reinforce the city that remains one of his last strongholds in a widespread rebellion.
With the eastern half of the country now under control of opposition forces, rebels seeking to overturn Col. Qaddafi repelled a concerted assault by his forces on Thursday on cities close to the capital, removing any doubt that Libya’s patchwork of protests had evolved into an increasingly well-armed revolutionary movement.
The series of determined stands by rebel forces on Thursday — especially in the strategic city of Zawiyah, near important oil resources and 30 miles from the capital, Tripoli — presented the gravest threat yet to the Libyan leader. In Zawiyah, more than 100 people were killed as Colonel Qaddafi’s forces turned automatic weapons on a mosque filled with protesters, a witness said. Still, residents rallied afterward.
Colonel Qaddafi’s evident frustration at the resistance in Zawiyah spilled out in a rant by telephone over the state television network charging that Osama bin Laden had drugged the town’s youth into a rebellious frenzy.
“Al Qaeda is the one who has recruited our sons,” he said in a 30-minute tirade broadcast by the network. “It is bin Laden.”
Colonel Qaddafi said, “Those people who took your sons away from you and gave them drugs and said ‘Let them die’ are launching a campaign over cellphones against your sons, telling them not to obey their fathers and mothers.”
With the threat of a brutal crackdown looming, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, said he had called an emergency meeting for Friday afternoon in Brussels to discuss the situation in Libya. Humanitarian assistance and the evacuation of foreign nations would be the priority, he said.
In New York, the United Nations Security Council was scheduled to meet Friday afternoon to discuss a proposal backed by France and Britain for sanctions against Libyan leaders, including a possible arms embargo and financial sanctions, though no definitive action was expected until next week.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has also said the bloc should consider sanctions such as travel restrictions and an asset freeze against Libya to try to halt to the violence there. Britain and Switzerland have already announced freezes on Colonel Qaddafi’s in country assets.
The violence on Thursday underscored the contrast between the character of Libya’s revolution and the uprising that toppled autocrats in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia. Unlike those Facebook-enabled youth rebellions, the insurrection has been led by people who are more mature and who have been actively opposing the government for some time. It started with lawyers’ syndicates that have campaigned peacefully for two years for a written constitution and some semblance of a rule of law.
Fueled by popular anger, the help of breakaway leaders of the armed forces and some of their troops, and weapons from looted military stockpiles or smuggled across the border, the uprising here has escalated toward more violence in the face of increasingly brutal government crackdowns.
At the revolt’s starting point, in the eastern city of Benghazi, Fathi Terbil, 39, the human rights lawyer whose detention first ignited the protests, drew a map of rebel-held territory in striking distance of Tripoli. “It is only a matter of days,” he said.
A turning point in the uprising’s evolution was arguably the defection of the interior minister, Abdel Fattah Younes al-Abidi, an army general who had been a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi.
The break by General Abidi, who has family roots near the revolt’s eastern origins, encouraged other disaffected police, military and state security personnel to change sides as well. “We are hoping to use his experience,” said Mr. Terbil, who some called the linchpin of the revolt.
Opposition figures in rebel-held cities like Benghazi have been appearing on cable news channels promising that opponents of Colonel Qaddafi are heading toward Tripoli to bolster the resistance there. Their ability to carry out those assertions remains to be seen.
In parts of the country, the revolutionaries, as they call themselves, appear to have access to potentially large stores of weapons, including small arms and heavy artillery, automatic weapons smuggled from the Egyptian border and rocket-propelled grenades taken from army bases, like the Kabila in Benghazi.
Tawfik al-Shohiby, one of the rebels, said that in the early days of the revolt one of his relatives bought $75,000 in automatic weapons from arms dealers on the Egyptian border and distributed them to citizens’ groups in towns like Bayda.
So far, at least in the east, many of the weapons appear to be held in storage to defend against a future attempt by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces to retake the territory. At a former security services building in Benghazi on Thursday, men in fatigues prepared to transport anti-aircraft and antitank weapons to what one said was a storage depot.
Like their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, the rebels in Libya have shown tech-savvy guile in circumventing government efforts to block their communication. To sidestep the government’s blocking of the Internet and curbing of cellphone access, for example, some of the more active antigovernment protesters distribute flash drives and CDs with videos of the fighting to friends in other towns and to journalists.
Mr. Shohiby began helping lead an effort this week to shuttle foreign journalists from the Egyptian border to towns across eastern Libya.
His network of contacts was built on the Internet: not on Facebook, but on a popular soccer Web site. “I have friends from east to west, north to south,” he said. “There are two guys in Sabha, one in Zawiyah, three friends in Misurata, for example,” he said, speaking of towns that were the scenes of some of the clashes on Thursday.
Still, Mohammed Ali Abdallah, deputy secretary general of an opposition group in exile, The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, said the government’s fierce crackdown made organizing the spontaneous uprising a continuing challenge, especially in heavily guarded Tripoli.
“It is almost like hit and runs,” he said. “There are almost no ways that those young guys can organize themselves. You can’t talk on a mobile phone, and if five people get together in the street they get shot.”
Nonetheless, protesters in Tripoli were calling for a massive demonstration on Friday after noon prayers, residents of the city and those fleeing the country said. In recent days, witnesses said, Colonel Qaddafi appears to have pulled many of his militiamen and mercenaries back toward the capital to prepare for its defense.
But despite the encroaching insurrection, Colonel Qaddafi appeared determined on Thursday to put on a show of strength and national unity, a stark turnabout from his approach so far.
Since the start of the uprising, his government had shut out all foreign journalists, cut off communications and even confiscated mobile phone chips, and other devices that might contain pictures, at the border from people fleeing the country. Libya had warned that reporters who entered the country illegally risked arrest and could be deemed collaborators of Al Qaeda.
But on Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi announced on television that the government would allow teams of journalists to visit Tripoli. Witnesses said preparations for the visit were already under way.
The soldiers and mercenaries who had previously roamed the streets had largely disappeared by the late afternoon, leaving only traffic police officers, and the capital’s central Green Square — the scene of violent clashes earlier this week — had been cleaned up. Two banners, in English, now adorned the square. “Al Jazeera, BBC, don’t spread lies that reflect other’s wishful thinking,” one read. The other: “Family members talk but never fight between each other.”
But the rebels’ unexpected strength was undeniable on Thursday as they appeared to hold or contest several towns close to Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli in the face of a coordinated push by his mercenaries and security forces.
In Misurata, 130 miles the east of the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces struck at rebels guarding the airport with rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, The Associated Press reported. But the rebels seized an anti-aircraft gun used by the militias and turned it against them.
In Zuwarah, 75 miles west of the capital, the police and security forces had pulled out and a “people’s committee” was controlling the city, several people who had fled across the border reported. “The people are taking care of their own business,” said Basem Shams, 26, a fisherman.
In Sabratha, 50 miles west of the capital, witnesses reported that the police headquarters and offices of Colonel Qaddafi’s revolutionary committees were all in smoldering ruins. “We are not afraid; we are watching,” said a doctor by telephone from Sabratha. “What I am sure about, is that change is coming.”
In Zawiyah, an envoy from Colonel Qaddafi had reportedly arrived to warn rebels on Wednesday: “Either leave or you will see a massacre,” one resident told The A.P.
About 5 a.m. Thursday, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces fulfilled their threat. Witnesses said a force that included about 60 foreign mercenaries assaulted a central mosque where some of the roughly 2,000 protesters had sought refuge. One witness said the protesters were armed mainly with rifles, sticks and knives, but after four hours of fighting they managed to hold the square.
About 100 people were killed and 200 were wounded, this witness said. During a telephone interview with him, a voice could be heard over a loudspeaker in the background telling the crowd, in an area known as Martyrs Square, not to be afraid.
“People came to send a clear message: We are not afraid of death or your bullets,” one resident told The A.P. “This regime will regret it. History will not forgive them.”
Meanwhile, the violence sowed concern across the region and beyond. President Obama spoke Thursday, in separate calls, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the prime ministers of Britain and Italy, David Cameron and Silvio Berlusconi.
The White House said the leaders expressed “deep concern” over the Libyan government’s use of force and discussed possible responses, without specifying what steps they were prepared to take.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)