I’ve always liked flags and often wonder whether I ought to have been a professional vexillologist.
This is the flag being used by swathes of the opposition in Libya. It is the Libyan flag that was flown to celebrate independence from the Italians. It was finally taken down in 1969 to be replaced by a pan-Arab red, white and black tricolour, according to Al Jazeera. This in turn was replaced by the current all green flag, intimately associated with Gaddafi, in 1977.
The red band on this flag, as ever, signals the blood of those who fought for freedom. The black band is thought to refer back to an older flag, the green band is for prosperity, apparently, [I'd have thought it would be Islam...] and the sickle and start represent the main religion, Islam (too?).
Here’s hoping that this flag can be held aloft at the UN sooner rather than later.
It was fascinating following Tunisia’s upheavals via Twitter. The first thing that struck me was how often trending tweets were (completely) wrong. Twitter is great for disseminating information extraordinarily quickly. An interesting tweet can be recycled at the touch of a button and, if it is on a trending topic, the tweet is exponentially repeated. There is only the (at times) gullible judgements of those re-tweeting there to stop a false rumour from being re-tweeted ad nauseam.
The first falsehood that I’m aware of was when the Foreign Minister’s webpage was hacked and a fake resignation letter was posted. Quite the interesting bit of gossip, this was whipped around the twittersphere at pace as news. Then were rumours that the President’s family had left for Malta and that an escape route had been planned for his imminent escape: two days before he finally left. When he did finally leave Twitter was comically bad at predicting where. Malta. Sardinia. Paris. Malta. Qatar. Malta. UAE. Saudi. Sudan and so on.
This is not to criticise Twitter as much as to prompt people to step back for a second and think about what Twitter actually is: a 21st century gossip super-highway.
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Most of the tweets on Tunisia’s developments were of a breathless fervor; joyful that the dictator was leaving. While, of course, it is most certainly a good – great – think that Tunisia’s dictatorial leader has left, there was rarely any consideration of what was next. Indeed, many people appeared to simply assumed that things would automatically, ipso facto, be better with Ben Ali gone. While – again – I fervently hope that this is the case, it is far from a given conclusion. Today, looting and vigilantism has become a minor civil war between loyalists and the Army. Next? Who is to say? Even if there is no descent to civil disorder, I fear that peoples’ expectations now are sky-high and no politician operating within the constraints of a country that has gone through such a transition (perhaps badly wrecking one of its key national industries: tourism) can possibly compete.
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So will Tunisia’s example lead to sweeping revolutions across the Arab world? History suggests not. Strangely enough we seem to have some kind of innate belief that such events often cascade across regions in a domino effect. Yet this is simply not true. It is worth noting that (Stephen Walt beat me too it) neither the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism nor the Iranian Revolution led to any kind of ‘indigenous’ sweep of similar revolutions in nearby countries. Where neighboring countries did begin to follow, say, Communism, this was hardly the likes of the ‘natural domino effect’ that we think of but under the Soviet or Chinese boot or extreme pressure.
Moreover, not only have other Arab regimes now been forewarned as to the consequences of such demonstrations, but Tunisia is hardly going to seem like a glowing advert for a post-dictatorial state in the coming few weeks and months.
Morocco is the latest (of many) countries to ban Al Jazeera from operating within its borders. The Ministry of Communication withdrew Al Jazeera’s accreditation for not undertaking “serious and responsible journalism” and following “numerous failures in (following) the rules”.
The Communications Minister insisted that Al Jazeera systematically refused to be objective and sought to tarnish Morocco’s image.
These claims are strenuously denied by Al Jazeera.
The dispute centers around Al Jazeera’s coverage of Islamists in Morocco and their Western Saharan issues. Since the Casablanca bombing in 2003 killing over 40 people, AFP reports that over 2000 people have been arrested. The long-running saga of Western Sahara and the Polisario Front is a sore topic for the Kingdom and is a firm ‘red line’ over which reporting is all but banned.
Indeed, Al Jazeera was banned in 2000 and the Moroccan Ambassador briefly withdrawn from Doha over coverage of the issue. Relations were mended and in 2004 Qatar even brokered a hostage exchange between the Polisario Front and Morocco for the return of captured Moroccan troops. Releations worsened again in 2008 when Al Jazeera was banned from covering the Maghreb countries from Rabat and Al Jazeera’s Morocco bureau chief was convicted of “disseminating false information” regarding security forces clashes in Sidi Ifni.
Morocco’s banning of Al Jazeera is widely seen as a backward-step for the country which was, at one stage, slowly liberalizing its grip on social and political spaces. Now it joins its neighbors Algeria and Tunisia as countries with closed Al Jazeera offices; not necessarily a group of countries that Morocco wants to join.
Libya’s national embarrassment Leader has taken a decidedly underhand jibe at Qatar’s Emir Hamad Al Thani. Gaddafi opened the Arab summit which he is hosting in his home town of Sirte in Libya proclaiming that Arab citizens are “waiting for action, not words and speeches”. The irony that he said this in a speech clearly being lost on him.
Later on when Qatar’s Emir stated correctly that Arab leaders have achieved too little, Gaddafi replied that his guests – including 13 heads of State – would not do much better. He then said of the tall and heavy Emir that he is “better than me at filling a void” before laughing uproariously at his own joke. As soon as he finished laughing there was a barely audible sound of every Libyan cringing with (yet more) shame as their glorious leader humiliated their country for the n’th time.
I feel exceedingly sorry for State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. On Tuesday he was commenting on Libya’s absurd call for an absurd Jihad against Switzerland. He replied that it reminded him of Gadaffi’s absurd speech to the UN:
I can recall lots of words and lots of papers flying all over the place, not necessarily a lot of sense.
To this mildest of quips, Libya is threatening to take some kind of action against US business interests in Libya. I’ve no doubt that the basket-case Gadaffi will use this incident to embark on another absurd rant about some absurd topic. The man is just such an idiot.
If one had only to contend with his rants that would be one thing, but his anti-Swiss crusade began after his son brutally attacked hotel staff at a Hotel in Switzerland. Hannibal’s history as a monumentally unpleasant person is well documented xxx . The sooner that Gadaffi the elder lays down his costumes and retires to the OAPs home where most senile people of his age go, the better. And the sooner Hannibal seeks help or is imprisoned for his actions, the better.
AA Gill, the outrageously talented Times of London journalist, has written a piece on Algeria. It’s not without its holes (or, rather, so I’m told) but, at the end of the day, it’s written by AA Gill and thus always worth the read for he writes like no other.
Algeria’s football team arrived in Cairo to play their crucial World Cup qualifier only to have their bus assaulted with stones. Four players were injured and one had to be taken to hospital. In a PR exercise worthy of Iraq’s Comical Ali, a police spokesperson said that none of the Algerian players had been injured.
There is hugely bad blood between the two football rivals stemming mostly from the infamous 1989 encounter which Egypt won 1-0. After the game there was widespread rioting and a former Algerian footballer blinded Egypt’s team doctor in an assault. Charming.
Update: Via MEI and Sandmonkey, I’ve got a fre updates on all the shenenegans that have been going on:
There is a football tradition of killing owls in order to jinx your opposing team. It has been relayed to me that an Owl holocaust was started last week and is continuing until this very moment.
Tamer from the popular TV show el beit beitak went on TV a couple of days ago and informed the egyptian audiences of the Hotel the algerian team will be staying in, and urging the egyptian people to “go there and hang out” until the day of the game.
Egyptians dying for a ticket to the Game attacked all ticket selling centers in droves today. The Elite Heliopolis Sporting club managed to secure a couple of thosunad tickets to sell to its members, only to have word of this reaching the egyptian population and having hundreds of egyptians storm into the private club to get their hands on tickets. 40 police cars were called to secure the facility.
Algerian airlines has donated 3000 free tickets to hardcore algerian fans in order not to have their team stand by its lonesome against the cheering might of 80,000 egyptians.
What an embarrassing joke of a leader. If he hates the UN that much he should withdraw Libya. I’m sure they’ll be missed. Gaddafi perfectly highlights exactly what happens when a dictator takes charge of a country for four decades: no one is willing to stand up to the ‘dear leader’ and explain just how cringe-worthy his adolescent behavior is for fear that they and their family will be ‘disappeared’ the next day.
I hope to start listing the reactions from around the Arab world to Al Jazeera. In the past, these have ranged from the withdrawal of Ambassadors to the shutting down of electricity in main cities to avoid citizens watching an Al Jazeera documentary.
Here is Doha’s Centre for Media Freedom commenting on the Moroccan authorities:
The Rabat appeal court reduced the fine against Hassan Rachidi, Al Jazeera’s former bureau chief in Morocco, for “putting out false information” to 30,000 dirhams (about US$ 3,600) yesterday.
The ruling came a year to the day after the satellite TV channel’s frequency was withdrawn, which meant its North African news programme could no longer be broadcast from Rabat.
The Moroccan authorities charged Rachidi under article 42 of the press law after he reported on air that several people had died in clashes between police and inhabitants of Sidi Ifni, in the south of the country, in June. The journalist quoted inaccurate statements made by a human rights organisation.
Although the channel later issued a denial, Rachidi was fined 50,000 dirhams and the communications ministry withdrew his accreditation. He has since left Morocco and gone to work at Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar.
“Al Jazeera’s presence in Morocco is particularly important because it challenges other governments in the region which refuse to let the channel in”, the Doha Centre said. “Its journalists must be allowed to work freely.
“Unfortunately, the decisions taken against Al Jazeera by the Rabat authorities in 2008 were a sign of growing official tension against the channel. The sudden, groundless ban on the regional news programme broadcast from Rabat, which was an important platform for many Moroccan politicians and human rights activists, was a striking example.”
Al Jazeera opened its Moroccan bureau in 2004 and launched the North African news programme two years later.
Haaretz confirms what has been on the cards for some time now: Mauritania are severing diplomatic ties with Israel. At the end of last week, the Israeli embassy in the capital Nouakchott, closed the embassy and returned to Tel Aviv. This followed the withdrawal of the Mauritanian ambassador to Israel last month. The break in relations is due to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. This leaves Jordan and Egypt as the only countries in the region to retain official diplomatic ties with Israel. Qatar, who had an Israeli trade office stationed in Doha until recently, severed their ties last month in the wake of the Gaza conflict too. Whilst the loss of diplomatic relations with Mauritania will not have any immediate practical ramifications for Israel, this further loss of ‘friends’ and soft power in a region where they are already bereft of both, can only increase their sense of isolation and count as a firm step back in the peace process.
