Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Jordan’s Islamists state new demands.  On 4 November, Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF), presented a list of demands for reform in a speech by Secretary-General Hamzah Mansur.  The speech was, in essence, the Muslim Brotherhood’s response to overtures from new prime minister  Awn al-Khasawinah. 

The key demand was for “the right of the people to form governments on the basis of a parliamentary majority” and the protection of parliament from early dissolution.  Mansur also called for the release of all political prisoners and for the end of the “intrusion” into public life by the security forces.  He said: “Enough of the security services’ interference in political and public life.”

Both the speech and the accompanying rally avoided Islamist rhetoric, and there also appeared to be a shift away from the traditional Islamist focus on the Palestinian cause.  But this is likely to be a tactical shift rather than a strategic reorientation.

On the Palestinian front, on 1 November Prime Minister Khasawinah 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. 

*** Turkey says no Arab Spring for the Kurds.  Yalcin Akdogan, political adviser to Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told the newspaper Zaman on 7 November that a crackdown on the Assembly of Communities of Kurdistan (KCK) was in part intended to thwart an attempt by the group to pursue its goals by “getting the people to pour out into the streets as in the Arab Spring”.

*** Kyrgyz leader bargaining on US base.  Kyrgyzstan’s new president, Almazbek Atambayev, campaigned on a promise to end the US’s tenure of the Manas military base in 2014.  The view in Moscow is that this is, pure and simple, a bargaining ploy to get more money out of the United States.  Judging by the US’s apparently relaxed attitude to the new president’s statements, this is also Washington’s view.

US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said: “We have concluded a firm treaty with with government [of Kyrgyzstan] on the use of the base through 2014...We expect to hold consultations with the new government concerning what will happen after 2014.  They have clearly intimated to us that they want to hold such a discussion.”