Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Gulf fears of Muslim Brotherhood.  Following the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia and Egypt, Dubai’s police chief Dahi Khalfan has issued a warning about the threat to the other Arab Gulf states.  In remarks reported on 25 March, he told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas: “My sources say the next step is to make Gulf governments [their ruling families] figurehead bodies only without actual ruling.  The start will be in Kuwait in 2013 and in other Gulf states in 2016.”  The states he is referring to are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Khalfan said that the process will begin in Kuwait because “it is ready more than any other Gulf state...this is a strategy”.  In an election on 2 February, Sunni Islamists won more than 20 seats in Kuwait’s 50-member parliament.  Earlier this month, Khalfan threatened to arrest leading Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi after he criticized the UAE for deporting Syrian protesters.

*** Jordan to allow ‘Support Jerusalem’ march.  On 25 March, the Jordanian authorities confirmed that they will permit a planned march to the Jordan Valley on Friday 30 March in support of Jerusalem.  The authorization came after the organizers said that there was no intention to storm the Jordan-West Bank border.  Kathem Ayesh, a Muslim Brotherhood council member and an organizer of the march, said: “This will be a peaceful rally in support of Jerusalem, not a call to storm Jerusalem.”  The rally comes under the umbrella of the Global March to Jerusalem which hopes for demonstrations in as many as 80 countries, with rallies planned on the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories in Egypt and Lebanon as well as in Jordan.

*** Russia adjusting to Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy.  Mikhail Margelov, the Russian president’s special representative for cooperation with African countries, has said that “increasing Islamist influence” is the main trend that will determine the future of North Africa in the foreseeable future.  Speaking on 22 March, he talked about a “green arc of instability from...Nigeria to the Horn of Africa”.  He believes that the Arab Awakening has destroyed the historical counterbalance to this trend, namely the secular regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.  As a result, Margelov says, there is a “situation of general tension [giving] rise to high uncertainty of predicting a specific course of events or unrest in this or that country of this vast region”.

However, Margelov also added: “The fact that political realities show that most of the parliaments in certain North African or Arab countries are getting Islamic parties means to us only one thing – we should establish dialogue with them.”  He pointed out that Islamic parties are now in power in Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and the Gaza Strip, and he said that “this does not mean that Russia is having hang-ups about it or is afraid...”