Links for 11/5/07

What I've been reading while not blogging:

• Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World - Very good academic roundup of recent trends
• How to Understand Islam - The New York Review of Books - I'm not sure about this review, but worth reading
• Le philosophe et le président : une certaine vision de l’Afrique - Sarkozy steals from Hegel to be a better racist - excellent piece
• Rice, Others Told to Testify in AIPAC Case - Top administration officials drawn in by lobby lawyers
• Diana Johnstone: "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" - BHL says everybody is a nazi, and anti-Americanism is anti-Semitism. There's no business like Shoah business! Also see this month's Serge Halimi piece in Le Monde Diplomatique
• waterboarding.org - All about everybody's torture technique.
• Envoys Resist Forced Iraq Duty - US diplomats not happy about being made to go to Iraq. OK, let's get everybody out then!
• Ahmed Rashid - A Second Coup in Pakistan - Superb piece on Musharaf's antics by one of the best experts on the subject
• Tariq Ali: Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night - Another take on the coup within a coup.
• Denshawai,1906, by Alain Gresh - Colonial episode that galvanized Egyptian nationalists
• Precocious: Condi’s Party Starter - Obnoxious, shallow man wants party diplomacy
• Le Maroc hausse le ton face à l'Espagne à propos de Ceuta et Melilla - Morocco unhappy with royal visit to Spanish enclaves
• Palestinian police seal refugee camp - Fatah fights Fatah

Comments

[SP]

Tariq Ali's a brilliant chap but he does love the nuttiest theories. WTF is this about:
"Hamid Mir, one of its sharpest journalists, reported yesterday afternoon that according to his sources the US Embassy had green lighted the coup because they regarded the Chief Justice as a nuisance and 'a Taliban sympathiser'."

[arabist]

Yes that piece was quite lame compared to the Rashid one. i do think that the Musharaf regime has tried to suggest that its opponents are all Taliban sympathisers, though. And certainly if you look at the US response it's essentially an endorsement of the coup -- "democracy must be restored as soon as possible" as Rice said, which means not for a few years and not immediately. Some good discussion of the US language here

[Abu Muqawama]

I disagree. Musharraf is facing a mini-revolt within the Army (units are refusing to fight Al-Qaeda supporters in the FATA and elsewhere), and the US fails to see how declaring martial law somehow gives him more power over the Army. The US can be -- and has been -- duped by anti-terror rhetoric from Musharraf, but in this case, the ruse is too transparent.

And second, I am shocked -- shocked -- that you're not a fan of the State Department's 25-year old non-Muslim outreach coordinator to the Islamic World.

[arabist]

I'm skeptical about US policy towards Pakistan (or anywhere else) ever being about democracy... we shall see. What you say about the army might be right, and it's certainly hard to see what new leverage over them Musharaf gets.

On the other item, I don't care that he's not a Muslim (I don't think that should ever matter in appointing officials) but am rather concerned by his simplistic views and the fact that he neither studied the Middle East nor speaks decent Arabic -- he's a Latin America expert, isn't he? He sounds like a better educated Michael Totten.