ESCALATING CONCERNS ABOUT MIDDLE EAST
There is no question but that our principal concern today is instability in the Middle East, and the unsettling changes the region faces are well illustrated by reports we have received in the 12 hours since publishing the latest issue of Courcy’s Intelligence Brief.
Below are five separate reports that we have received in the past 12 hours, each of which confirms or adds to our concerns about the region’s stability:
- JORDAN & HAMAS. We reported in the latest issue of Courcy’s Intelligence Brief that Jordan looks as if it is moving towards a rapprochement with Hamas. We pointed out that on 1 November, newly appointed Jordanian Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh had said that the expulsion of the Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and his advisors from Jordan 12 years ago was a political mistake made illegally. Also, after Khasawneh’s appointment two weeks ago, Meshal spoke to him on the phone to congratulate him on his appointment and the formation of a new government, and Hamas leader Muhammad Nazzal visited Khasawneh at his home last week.
Now we are hearing that Meshal may have met with the new director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) during a stopover at Queen Alia Airport on his way to Riyadh. This is being denied, but the reports are credible. In any event, what is certain is that Qatar is working hard to engineer a rapprochement between Jordan and Hamas, and Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim Bin-Hamad Al Thani is planning to accompany Meshal on a visit to Amman in the near future. It will be the first high-level meeting between Jordanian and Hamas officials since Hamas’s Amman office was closed in 1999. The Jordanian move to mend ties with Hamas is being matched by improving relations with Jordan’s own Muslim Brotherhood.
It is probable that the major Western powers are encouraging the rehabilitation of Hamas. The feeling in Western capitals is that the outcome of the Arab Spring, with the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, makes this unavoidable. That can be argued; but it adds to our own assessment that a key consequence of the Arab Spring will be to make Israel less amenable to compromise, not more.
- EGYPT & ISRAEL. The official Israeli version is that it has so far refrained from launching a major new attack on Gaza, in response to rocket attacks on Israel, because of Egyptian mediation efforts with Hamas and other rejectionist factions. The spin is positive, and it is undoubtedly true that Egypt is trying to calm things down. What Israel isn’t saying publicly, however, is that Egypt has also issued a serious threat. According to Palestinian sources, “prominent Egyptian security commanders” have warned Israel that Cairo would not permit a wide-scale Israeli operation in Gaza because the Egyptian position has completely changed since the revolution. Egypt is not threatening a direct military response, but it has said that the military would not be able (or willing) to prevent thousands of Egyptian youths marching towards the Israeli border.
- EGYPT DOMESTIC. The excellent BBC Monitoring Service, which watches the pronouncements of Egyptian clerics closely, reports today that there is increasing evidence of Egyptian Islamist activism ahead of upcoming parliamentary elections. Fatwas by prominent clerics have been issued against voting for supporters of the former regime, for liberals, or for Coptic candidates. Salafist preacher Sheikh Mahmud Amir, head of ‘The Group of the Supporters of the Muhammad Sunna’, has decreed: “Voting for these people is religiously prohibited. Whoever does this will be committing a major sin and should expiate for it.” In October Sheikh Umar Ahmad Sutuhi, the Secretary-General of the Higher Committee for the Islamic Call at Al-Azhar, issued a fatwa against voting for any member of the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). In fact he said “don’t even marry them”.
Ahmad Qasim, a Muslim Brotherhood leader from the Al-Fuyyam Governorate south of Cairo, who is standing in the election, told an election event that supporting the Muslim Brotherhood was “getting close to God in the service of the Egyptian people”.
Salafist sheikhs have proliferated in Egypt in the past decade, with men such as Muhammad Hassan, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, and Muhammad Husayn Yaqub attracting large followings. They have tens of thousands of followers, and their supporters tend to put complete trust in their sayings.
- EGYPT & IRAN. A report dated today (3 November) by Iran’s official government news agency IRNA gives considerable prominence to improving relations between Iran and Egypt, which have been poor since the 1978-79 Iranian revolution and the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Ties were severed in 1979. In line with previous reports published by Courcy’s Intelligence Brief, IRNA confirms that prominent Iranian leaders are now working for the establishment of “deep ties” with the new regime in Cairo.
- IRAN, TURKEY, AND THE KURDS. Most analysts say that Iran and Turkey are allied against the Kurds. However, we have been reporting for some time suggestions that Iran could be threatening Turkey with support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in retaliation for Turkey’s agreement to host elements of Nato’s anti-missile shield on its soil. Yesterday, the well-informed moderate Islamist Turkish paper Zaman carried a report confirming that Ankara does indeed believe that this is happening. It reported:
“Ankara has come to believe that Iran and Syria may be lending active support to this notorious armed group [the PKK] to hurt Turkey. Given the fact that 40% of the PKK militia is now in the Kandil Mountains, across the Turkish border in northern Iraq, and that the PKK is not currently fighting against Iran and Syria...a kind of deal may have been struck between the PKK and these two countries. Indeed, the PKK acts as though it wants to liberate a zone in southern Turkey, one end of which meets the Iranian border, the other the Syrian border. Thus the regimes in both Iran and Syria may not only be able to help each other through this area but also guarantee their existence.”
Our own view is that much more will be heard of the Kurdish question before the history of the Arab Spring can be written, and it has the potential to add another highly combustible element to an already combustible mix.
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