Lifting the veil

An interesting piece of news in the Jordanian Arabic press this week relates to the arrest of 50 suspects who used the veil as a cover to carry out 170 crimes, ranging from shoplifting and stealing mobile phones to bag snatching and armed robbery. Amusingly, 27 of those arrested were men (and nearly all were Jordanian citizens). I’m not sure how they eventually tracked them down, maybe by their handbags and shoes, who knows?

Aside from the debate raging around gender equality issues in France and elsewhere, which carries with it a whole set of cultural and religious minefields, those wishing to ban the veil would probably garner more support if they confined their arguments to issues of crime and security. In the age of CCTV, what better cover is there for criminals than the veil?

Shooting yourself in the foot

AP Photo



The reaction of the Palestinian Authority to the explosive allegations made by PLO political section head Farouq Qaddoumi at a press conference in Jordan last week accusing Mahmoud Abbas of conspiring to kill Yasser Arafat has been depressing, yet entirely predictable.

Instead of challenging Qaddoumi to produce his evidence, the Fateh leadership has followed the well trodden path of other Arab regimes by punishing the messenger and closing down al-Jazeera’s operations in the West Bank, which was just one of many channels that broadcast the allegations.

The PA leadership has a long history of tensions with al Jazeera, which it has often accused of being a mouthpiece for Hamas. These claims, however, do not hold much weight and the real reasons are a lot more basic, i.e. that Arab leaders are simply unable to countenance any form of media criticism even when their reactions prove to be completely counterproductive. This is the case here. Aside from issues of freedom of speech and calling into question the PA leadership’s commitment to democratic values (slight at best), the decision just doesn’t make any sense.

Al-Jazeera remains by far the most popular and trusted news source in the Arab world. In addition to devoting a substantial proportion of its airtime to Palestinian affairs, the channel has arguably done more to promote a balanced view of the Palestinian issue worldwide than the Arab League has in its entire history. As such, it is held in deep regard by the majority of Palestinians. So why on earth would Abbas think it was a good idea to silence it and why do Arab leaders in general continue to undermine their own scant legitimacy through self defeating attempts to silence the media? There are no easy answers here, but fear, insecurity and overblown egos feature largely in the mix.

As such, not only will the PA’s actions further undermine its legitimacy, they will also add weight to Qaddoumi’s remarks and fuel conspiracy theories concerning the nature of the Arafat’s death and Abbas’ exact relationship with Israel. Furthermore, it also sends the wrong signal to the US concerning the possibility of a future Palestinian state based on the rule of law and democratic freedoms. At the same time it will give plenty of ammunition to those forces in both the US and Israel who argue that a Palestinian state would create more problems than it would solve, by adding yet another repressive dictatorship to an already problematic region. Despite its exposure of Israeli war crimes during the offensive in Gaza, al Jazeera continues to operate freely in Israel.

An interesting side take on this story was also the Jordanian government’s need to usher a quick apology to the PA for Qaddoumi’s remarks. The point here being that given the authoritarian nature of Arab regimes, the fact that he was even allowed to utter these allegations on Jordanian soil may imply the government had given its tactic approval. Fair enough, it’s understandable why Jordan would want to disassociate itself from the remarks, but nevertheless is indicative of the petty mindset of regimes throughout the Arab world that are struggling to come to terms with the concept of free speech and new media.

We don’t do protests

Yesterday saw another huge overreaction on the part of the Jordanian security forces to a demonstration calling for an end to Israeli agricultural imports. The demonstration was staged by Jordan’s pro-active professional associations – who became political active during the long years of martial law and to the government’s annoyance have remained so - despite many attempts by the authorities to convince them otherwise.

This time the associations were protesting against the import of Israeli fruit and vegetables, which they claim are grown in illegal West Bank settlements. The government denies these claims. Anyway, instead of letting the 300 or so protestors have their peaceful get together in front of the Agriculture Ministry and blow off a little steam, the government decided to send in the riot police who swiftly set about cracking a few heads on the grounds that the associations did not have the required permission to stage their protest.

And here is the rub of the matter: to stage any kind of gathering in Jordan you must have written permission from the authorities three days in advance. The problem, of course, is that such permission is really ever granted. When it is granted the protests are usually so staged that no self respecting activist would have anything to do with them.

A recent exception to this rule, of course, was during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza when the government bent the rules in order to allow the citizens to let off steam. However, as the Gaza protests snowballed, the authorities quickly stepped in to crush the demonstrations and deployed tanks on the streets around the Israeli embassy.

I remember as a journalist covering the al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day protest in downtown Amman and being surprised by the general lack of interest. Only a few hundred people had bothered to turn up. So I asked local shopkeepers how big this protest had been in the past and why people had lost interest.

The general conversation with several local shopkeepers went something like this:

Me: So how long have you had this shop?

Abu Ahmad: It’s been in the family for more than 30 years.

Me: How big were these marches in the past then?

Abu Ahmad: really big, lots of people.

Me: So what happened?

Abu Ahmad: They’re not free and haven’t been for a long time.

Me: How’s that? People are marching now and some even have their faces covered yet the security forces are not intervening. Don’t people care about Palestine anymore?

Abu Ahmad: Of course we do (angry). If these protests were free you would see hundreds of thousands marching all the way from here to al-Quds. Those you see taking part here are in league with the Mukhabarat. If normal citizens were to take part we would be dragged in for questioning.

I am not sure about the truth of these claims and people did seem to be taking part without any recriminations. Nevertheless, exaggerated or not, the claims of most of the shopkeepers I spoke do highlight the sense of fear held by citizens in Jordan with regards to taking part in demonstrations of any sort.

I also remember the reaction of the security forces towards Iraqis merely celebrating their football teams success in winning the Asian Cup final, mainly because I was interviewing an Iraqi girl among a crowd of jubilant fans (who hadn’t had much to cheer about for a long time) when a riot van pulled up and the police proceeded to beat the crap out of anyone within striking distance. The pretext this time was that the Iraqis had been firing guns in celebration. This, of course, was untrue and the real reason was more to do with the government not wanting such a large and visible Iraqi presence on the streets.

And also because in Jordan, the authorities just don’t like protests of any sort. Maybe a lot like Iran but probably even less tolerant.

Media, lies and Joe Biden

Getty images

Iran has not scored any global PR victories in recent weeks as opposition protests have been brutally quashed, activists arrested en mass and media and SMS networks closed down. Yesterday, Tehran announced that the clampdown would be extended to satellite TV and internet networks (even though satellite TV is already banned but many Iranians have access anyway). Although these measures against the media appear draconian through Western eyes, they nevertheless highlight the mindset of a regime locked into the past and which views recent events through the prism the British/CIA-sponsored coup of 1953 that toppled the popularly elected Mosaddaq government.

A key element in the toppling of Mosaddaq, following his sin of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, was the CIA’s support for a black media campaign to oust the elected leader. Iranian journalists and editors were paid directly by the CIA to publish disinformation to discredit the leader – everything from portraying him as a closet communist to being in cahoots with Israel. Many of the news articles were written in the US, translated, and passed on to Iranian editors on the CIA payroll to publish. Viewed within this context, the regime’s reaction and paranoia to the protests becomes slightly more understandable, though far from defensible. It also highlights the level of mistrust that needs to be overcome if any meaningful dialogue is to take place between Tehran and Washington (a good start would be for Obama to scrap the $400 million that Bush allocated to destabilize Iran).

However, unlike the foreign-engineered coup of the 1950s, the protests following the recent election results were domestically driven and were not aimed at toppling the regime, but rather an outpouring of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Iranians, much like people all over the world, are seeking greater personal and political freedoms and an environment in which they can raise their families in peace and security. They are also seeking an end to the regime’s confrontational approach with the US which defined the Bush-Ahmadinejad era, particularly in light of Obama’s Cairo speech and America’s desire to pursue dialogue to resolve the nuclear issue. However, unlike the popularly elected Mosaddaq government of the 1950s, they find themselves saddled with an ideologically bankrupt regime that defines itself solely through its opposition to the US and Israel. To their dismay, Iranians found that although Bush has faded into history, Ahmadinejad is still very much a part of the present.

And so too is the threat of military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ahmadinejad may have held on to the presidency but it has come at a huge cost to the regime, which has lost much legitimacy among large swathes of the population. The election fallout has also exposed the deep divisions within the ruling elites, making foreign interference more, not less likely. Perhaps more crucially, the regime crackdown has severely tarnished Iran’s international image. Relations with the EU, a long time advocate of a peaceful resolution to the nuclear issue, have frayed and those advocating a military solution have been strengthened. Israeli officials argue that Iran’s suspected rigged election and the brutal suppression of the demonstrations that followed indicate the pointlessness of engaging in dialogue with Tehran and that stiffer sanctions and the threat of military action are far more likely to bring about the desired results.

This makes US vice president Joe Biden’s comments during an interview with ABC this morning all the more ominous. During the interview Biden appeared to give the green light for an Israeli military strike against Iran. “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do so,” he said. Let’s hope the US vice president was just ratcheting up the pressure to push Iran into engaging in constructive dialogue. And let’s also hope that Biden let Israel know privately that a military attack is not a viable option.