Bloggers bucking the Brotherhood in Egypt
By Daniel Williams
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/28/mideast/letter.php

CAIRO: Abdel Moneim Mahmoud once organized student elections, collected donations and educated chicken breeders about the dangers of bird flu as an operative for the Muslim Brotherhood. That all ended after he criticized Egypt's controversial Islamic political group on his blog, Ana-Ikhwan (I Am Brotherhood).

Mahmoud, 28, condemned its opposition to women and Christians holding high office in Egypt, including the presidency. He also questioned its slogan, "Islam is the answer" - a rallying cry of associated groups and imitators across the Islamic world - for implying that religious scripture should be the primary criterion for political action.

Brotherhood officials told Mahmoud to stop blogging or drop out of the organization. While he suspended active participation, he still considers himself a member. He is also unrepentant.

"The youth of the Muslim Brotherhood used to listen and obey," he says. "Some leaders don't like it, but we don't keep quiet."

Mahmoud is part of a new generation of Islamic-oriented bloggers in the Middle East whose willingness to air internal matters online has created as much of a stir as their opinions, says Diaa Rashwan, an analyst here at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

"What's new is this launching pad used by young people: the blog," he says. "They are loyal to the Brotherhood, but believe in open debate."

Until recently, political blogging in Egypt was largely the domain of secular democracy activists who reported on strikes and torture and promoted protests against the 26-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Brotherhood bloggers took their cue from those campaigners, says Mahmoud, a reporter for the independent, non-Islamic newspaper Al Dustour.

Two years ago, some Brothers, mainly in their 20s, began detailing the arrests and torture by the police of their own members. Some also turned to criticizing the Brotherhood itself. They released details of a draft political platform now being discussed internally that includes the ban on women and Christians leading a Muslim-majority country.

"We don't think these activities are harmful," says Magdi Saad, 30, marketing manager for a real-estate company who runs the blog Yalla Mesh Mohem (It Doesn't Matter). "We think we put a human face on the Brotherhood. The leaders were shocked."

Discipline has long been the watchword for the 80-year-old group. Public airing of internal debates was considered off limits, and membership lists and training information are veiled from public view, partly because Brothers have been perpetually subject to imprisonment.

During part of its history, members preached violent struggle against the government. In 1974, under the influence of what was then its younger generation, it disowned bloodshed, except in the case of armed action against the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq and by Palestinian groups including Hamas against Israel.

The Brotherhood is a model for Hamas and other Islamic political organizations such as the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. Unlike Hamas, it is not on the list of terrorist organizations compiled by the U.S. State Department.

Although Egypt's government legally bars the Brotherhood from politics, it is the country's largest opposition force. The group, which estimates its membership at more than one million, won 88 of 454 parliamentary seats in Egypt's 2005 elections by running candidates as independents.

Mahmoud and Saad have been jailed on occasion for their involvement in the Brotherhood, but they seem unafraid that their public exposure on the Web puts them in further danger. During interviews in public places, they spoke without looking over their shoulders. Such conversations were considered risky, even in private, a few years ago.

"The government knows who we are anyway," Mahmoud says.

Mustafa al-Naggar, 29, a dentist, says: "The government is happy to characterize us as a secretive organization; we don't want to play that game." In his Waves in a Sea of Change blog, he wrote, "It is not shameful to revise our ideas or change our positions." He also has suggested that members as young as 30 be considered in selecting Brotherhood leaders, instead of 40, which is now the case.

The Brotherhood acknowledges that blogging has created a division of opinion in the organization. Abdel Moneim Aly el-Barbary, a physician and high official, monitors the bloggers and estimates their number at about 150. He says he belongs to the faction that supports them; still, he wants them to avoid attacking personalities, be polite and keep their critiques positive.

It is better for members to air disagreements than let them fester in private, says Barbary, 55, who adds that restrictions should apply only to sensitive organizational issues such as finances. He also says blogging permits Brotherhood officials to see what the rank-and-file is thinking, since the leaders are frequently jailed and meetings of more than five people generally require permission under Egyptian law. "We have to adapt to modern times," he says.

Ali Abdul-Fattah, 50, another Brotherhood official, says it is common knowledge that members disagree on lots of subjects. Still, he opposes the trend.

"The bloggers have to be guided," he says. "The Brotherhood is immune from a split, but we don't want them to portray disunity."

Notwithstanding the youthful critiques, he says the Brotherhood's guidance committee, effectively its central board of elders, is firmly in charge. Asked whether the measure that prohibits women and Christians from the Egyptian presidency might be deleted from the final political platform, Abdul-Fattah says no.

"That won't change," he says. "Some things are fundamental."


Iran's al-Quds octopus spreads its arms
By YANIV BERMAN
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1225036820918

As the West anxiously scrutinizes every development in Iran's nuclear program, it seems the land of the ayatollahs has another frightening weapon in its arsenal that some experts believe may be equally dangerous - the Al-Quds Force (QF).

Operating out of the Iranian parliament's - and even the president's - reach, the clandestine QF answers directly only to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai.

Very few people know how much is spent on the QF's annual budget, which is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars. Iranian legislators are not allowed to examine the QF's expenses, nor are they expected to vote on its appropriations.

While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing his best to gain the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), to which the QF is subordinate, the president has no formal control over QF activities abroad.

The QF is one of IRGC's five arms, alongside IRGC's Navy, Ground Force, Air Force and the Basij (a 12-million volunteer force), which are all operating separately from the Iranian Army.

It is the external operations force of the IRGC, operating most extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, but also - it is reported - in other Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Qatar and more. It is also said to have been operating outside the Middle East, in Argentina and Austria, for example.

The QF was not established immediately after the revolution that brought the Islamists to power in 1979. The duties of the IRGC during the first few years included mainly the pursuit of counterrevolutionary movements inside Iran and the preservation of public order.

But already in those early stages, the Islamist leadership was not hiding its aspiration to spread the Islamic revolution to other countries.

"In the first days of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, we thought of the IRGC as a force whose aim was to defend the country inside Iran. We did not think then about [activities] outside Iran," Dr. Muhsin Sazegara, one of the founders of the IRGC, told The Media Line.

"Later, unfortunately, it went in other directions, to become something completely different," he said.

The exact time the QF was established is known to very few people and even Sazegara himself cannot provide a definite date. According to him, it was formed sometime in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, as a small unit. Gradually it developed into a division within the IRGC, until it finally became one of the IRGC's five arms.

After co-founding the IRGC, Sazegara served for 10 years in several top positions within the new Islamist regime, including political deputy in the prime minister's office and vice minister of planning and budget.

In 1989 Sazegara became disillusioned with the Islamist revolutionary government and since then has advocated for reform. Today he resides in Washington DC.

The Octopus

"The Quds Force had the lead for its [Iran's] transnational terrorist activities, in conjunction with Lebanese Hizbullah and Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS)," Lt.-Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the US Army's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), told a Senate committee on January last year.

The QF conducts its activities primarily within the territories of Iran's close neighbors - Iraq and Afghanistan - where the United States Army is currently operating. Its activities predominantly focus on training and supplying weapons to local groups, which are fighting the US Army and the local US-backed regimes.

"The training includes reconnaissance to pinpoint targets, small arms training, small unit tactics, terrorist cell operations and communications skills," a US military spokesman told The Media Line.

Additionally, QF operatives inside Iraq teach local terror movements assassination techniques, as well as the usage of improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades.

The US Treasury Department has long been focusing its attention on the QF, which according to its analysts has also provided a wide variety of weapons and financial support to the Taliban to further the group's anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan.

On October 25, 2007, the Treasury Department named the QF a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

According to Sazegara, despite the fact that the Iranian regime officially denied any involvement in Afghanistan, "commanders of NATO and some top Afghani officials have complained several times about Iranian equipment, which was distributed or transferred into Afghanistan for the insurgents."

Hizbullah - Party of God

In 1982, the IRGC established Lebanon's Hizbullah (Arabic for the Party of God). At that time, it is estimated, the QF was not established yet, but soon after its creation it became the official body responsible for Hizbullah activities in Lebanon and abroad.

According to the US government and various Middle Eastern intelligence agencies, the QF has long been providing Lebanon's Hizbullah with all types of support, including training, guidance and arms.

In addition to running training facilities in Lebanon, the QF has trained more than 3,000 Hizbullah operatives at its own facilities in Iran, wrote Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in an article last February.

One of these operatives was Hussein 'Ali Suleiman, who was recruited to Hizbullah when he was 15 years old.

In 2006, during the war between Israel and Hizbullah, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) captured Suleiman.

During his interrogation Suleiman stated that after his recruitment he underwent a 45-day military course at a Hizbullah base located in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. There he learnt how to use weapons, explosives and communication devices. Four months after Suleiman graduated the course he took another course, where he learnt how to fire anti-tank missiles, a skill much needed during the 2006 war.

After proving himself in various combat assignments along the border with Israel, Suleiman was chosen along with 40 to 50 other operatives to head to Iran, where he conducted two exercises in 2003.

On their way to Iran, Suleiman's group was taken by bus to Damascus Airport, from where it continued by plane to Iran. Needless to say that, unlike regular tourists, Suleiman's colleagues did not have to use passports or go through customs.

Hamas

Like Hizbullah the Palestinian terror movement Hamas is also a major beneficiary of Iran's generosity. Iran is not only sending money (a few million dollars each year), it also trains Hamas in its facilities in Tehran and elsewhere in the country.

Last September, a Hamas commander in Gaza gave a unique interview to the Sunday Times, where he confirmed that since Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, his organization had sent 150 operatives to Iran for training in IRGC's camps, while 150 more were currently undergoing courses.

The courses run for between 45 days to six months, at the end of which the brightest "students" undergo a trainers' course.

An unconfirmed report in Kuwait's daily A-Siyasa last September illustrated the control Iran has over Hamas. The paper reported a meeting that took place among Hamas' Political Bureau chief Khalid Mash'al, Iran's ambassador in Damascus and the head of the QF force in Lebanon.

Mash'al, the paper's sources claimed, agreed to Iran's demand that Hamas would no longer consider Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud 'Abbas' position legitimate after January 2009.

Sleeper Cells in the Gulf

In the past few months, an increasing flow of reports has pointed to the alleged existence of a network of Iranian spies spread across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, waiting for a signal from the Iranian leadership to destabilize local regimes.

Earlier this year, the Emirati-based daily Gulf News interviewed an exiled Iranian diplomat, who had served as Iran's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. In his interview, 'Adil Al-Asadi claimed that Iranian "sleeper cells were in place, ready to become operational."

Concerns in Kuwait regarding the possibility that a large espionage network has been deploying in the country have recently peaked.

One Kuwaiti member of parliament even stated in September that 25,000 QF members were living in Kuwait, disguised as workers.

"They are ready to follow any instructions they receive [from Iran]," MP Nasir A-Duweila warned.

A few months ago, Bahrain - another GCC member - convicted a five-member cell for terrorist activities. The defendants were charged with a variety of offenses, including receiving explosives and weapons training, engaging in terrorism overseas, and terrorism financing.

The Bahraini investigators revealed that several of the cell members traveled from Bahrain to Afghanistan via Iran.

"Bahraini authorities did not know whether the Iranian government actively facilitated the cell members' travel to Afghanistan, but given the regime's track record, Iran's possible involvement with the cell is worth exploring further," wrote Levitt and Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"I remember that once I had a debate with one of the members of IRGC's Strategic Studies Office," Sazegara said. "He emphasized that we planned to have Hizbullah cells in every Islamic country, to mobilize radical Muslims for improving and enhancing the Islamic revolution," added Sazegara.

Sazegara further explained that as the QF was being used to promote Iranian-style Islamic revolutions abroad, it was destined to become involved in terror activities.

Terror Activities Around the Globe

Though less extensive, QF's activities around the world have made considerable waves. In 1996, a truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia claimed the lives of 19 American service members. A federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the attack.

The QF was also blamed for supporting Bosnian Muslims against Serbian forces in former Yugoslavia.

But perhaps the most well-known act the QF was directly involved in outside the Middle East was the attack on the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires in July 1994, when a Hizbullah operative drove a car bomb into the building, killing 85 people.

In 2006, Argentina's General Prosecutor Alberto Nisman concluded in a report that the decision to attack the building was taken by the Iranian administration. Nisman also revealed that Ahmad Vahidi, the former head of the QF, was involved in the attack.

The Nuclear Threat and the QF

The nightmare of all intelligence agencies around the world is a terror group in possession of a nuclear bomb. The rising power of the Taliban in Pakistan, a country that has nuclear bombs in its possession, is causing much tension in neighboring India, as well as in the US and other countries.

The increasing political influence and economic strength the IRGC holds inside Iran, is causing similar stress.

The QF's strategy of forming Hizbullah cells across the Middle East, combined with Iran's progressing nuclear program, is alarming.

"I think the nuclear issue and the external activities of the QF can be considered to be in the same shop, because if Iran goes for nuclear weapons then they can be used also in terrorist activities. In some sense, one can consider these two threats as posing equally strong danger to the whole region," Sazegara concluded.


Lebanon's Enemy Within
Michael J. Totten
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/lebanon-s-enemy-within-13216

Israel is floating the idea of a non-aggression pact with Lebanon. It isn't at all likely to work. The odds are minuscule that Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah will go along. But Lebanon will hold an election in a couple of months, and the offer of a non-aggression pact should play well with Lebanese voters who are uncomfortable with or hostile toward Hezbollah's vision of perpetual war with the “Zionist entity.”

Negotiating with implacable and inflexible enemies is foolish. No sensible person suggests that the United States negotiate with Al Qaeda, for instance. Peace talks with Damascus won't get Israelis anywhere either. Syria's tyrant Bashar Assad needs a state of cold war with Israel to justify the oppressive policies against his country's own citizens, and bad-faith negotiations yield him some measure of international legitimacy he doesn't deserve.

Hezbollah is “moderate” compared with the worst jihadist groups out there, but it simply cannot survive in its current form if it isn't engaged in at least a low level of conflict. Almost every militia in Lebanon relinquished most, if not all, of its weapons at the end of the civil war in 1990. Hezbollah's rationale for refusing is that its fighters are the only ones in the country willing and able to prevent another Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Without the perceived threat of another Israeli invasion, the justification for Hezbollah's very existence collapses.

Israelis would therefore be naďve in the extreme if they tried to establish a pact with Hezbollah itself, or a pact with Beirut that required Hezbollah's cooperation. Hezbollah doesn't stick to agreements and is less trustworthy than even Yasser Arafat turned out to be, when the Oslo peace process fell apart with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. Hezbollah doesn’t even pretend to want peace and will almost certainly gin up another shooting war on the border. “See?” Hezbollah will say to fellow Lebanese after violently provoking the Israelis to cross the border again. “We told you. You need us.”

The successful negotiation of a genuine non-aggression pact that every party in Lebanon would adhere to is not going to happen any time soon. Just listen to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora: “Lebanon will be the last Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel.” He may be right, but not for the reason some people might think.Eli Khoury, Lebanese political consultant and founder of the excellent online magazine NOW Lebanon, explained it to me this way last year: “The last Arab country,” he said. “This is the statement of those who want to make peace but know that they can’t. They don’t want to get ganged up on by the Arabs. We are the least anti-Israel Arab country in the world.”

Lebanon probably really is the least anti-Israel Arab country in the world. It is certainly the most liberal, democratic, and cosmopolitan of the Arabic countries – at least the non-Hezbollah parts of Lebanon are. It is by far the most demographically diverse; roughly a third of its people are Christians, another third are Sunnis, and most of the rest are Shias. Iraq is the only Arab-majority country that can compete with Lebanon when it comes to ideological breadth. There are more opinions there than people, and more political movements and parties than even most Lebanese themselves can keep track of.

If you look at Lebanon's population outside the Hezbollah bloc – the majority of Christians, Sunnis, and Druze – you will mostly find people who are nowhere near hostile enough to Israel to be a serious threat. The Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese Armed Forces have had an unofficial non-aggression pact in place for decades. The Lebanese government does not and will not pick fights with Israel. Most Lebanese have negative opinions of Israel, but that doesn’t mean they’re interested in going to war. As a whole, they are much more hostile than, say, Europeans, but they're a lot less hostile as a whole than Palestinians.

Most were furious at Hezbollah for starting the last war in July, 2006, and they didn't get around to (grudgingly and temporarily) supporting Hezbollah until they felt Israel over-reacted by bombing Lebanese targets outside Hezbollah's strongholds. Some even supported Israel's initial counterattack--at least before the air force bombed Beirut's international airport. A huge number of Lebanese Christians were Israel's allies during the civil war, and even a large number of Shias from South Lebanon volunteered to fight Hezbollah and joined the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army until the year 2000. Last time I visited Lebanon with my colleague Noah Pollak, I found, for the first time, billboards and signs with messages like “Wage Peace” and “No War” throughout the country in regions Hezbollah doesn’t control. As soon as the 2006 war ended, the Lebanese government pushed back hard against Hezbollah and refused to back down until Hezbollah mounted an armed offensive against the capital in May 2008.

Israel is hardly well-liked in Lebanon, but neither is Hezbollah, and neither is Syria. Even though a non-aggression pact is likely to go nowhere right now, suggesting one to Lebanese may help clarify something: most Lebanese don't actually know that Israelis prefer peace to war. They should, but they don't. They've been soaked with so much disinformation and propaganda for so long, and there's still a great deal of anger left over from Israel's invasions in 1982 and 2006. Most of Hezbollah's less fanatical supporters are drawn from the ranks of those who sincerely believe Israel is a threat to them and that Hezbollah is their only defense. This is nonsense on stilts – Israel wouldn't have invaded Lebanon at all in 2006 if Hezbollah had not first attacked. But this perception persists nevertheless.

Israelis are surrounded by enemies. Lebanese, likewise, feel surrounded by enemies, but unlike Israelis, they don't have an army strong enough to protect them. Some aren't sure which country threatens them more: Israel or Syria. Syria is surely the greater threat; Israelis are only a “threat” insofar they are sometimes attacked from inside Lebanon and feel the need to respond. Syria isn't even remotely threatened by Lebanon, yet its government really does want to conquer the country again, or at least rule it from a distance through proxies.

This should be obvious to most Lebanese, but I know from conversations with people across the political spectrum that it isn't. Many don't know whether they should support the Hezbollah-led “March 8” bloc in next year's election, or whether they should support the “March 14” bloc led by those who kicked out the Syrians in 2005. The Syrian regime is currently pretending to be more benign that it really is by offering, for the first time ever, to establish diplomatic relations with Lebanon. Israelis are smart to signal, at the same time, that they sincerely do not mean Lebanese harm. No one in the Lebanese government or media will explain that to them. The “March 14” bloc is already sensitive to the near-constant accusation that it's a “Zionist hand.” Israelis need to get that message out by themselves.

Public opinion on the idea of a peace treaty with Israel is mixed. Some want a peace treaty now. Some even want an alliance with Israel, although they tend to keep quiet about that and are far more likely to share that opinion off-the-record with me than they are with their fellow Lebanese. Others don't want a peace treaty until outstanding issues--the supposed occupation of the Shebaa Farms, and the hundreds of thousands of unwanted and dangerous Palestinian refugees--are resolved. Even some otherwise sensible Lebanese I know wallow in conspiracy theories and believe Israelis want to conquer South Lebanon and steal water from the Litani River. Hezbollah's hard-core supporters don't ever want a peace treaty with Israel. But a non-aggression pact? An agreement that we’ll leave you alone if you leave us alone? Put that on a ballot in a popular referendum and it would pass overwhelmingly.

Of course, the Lebanese government wouldn't be strong enough to enforce it. Lebanon is tiny, weak, and under the gun from Syria, Iran, and their joint Hezbollah proxy. Too many Lebanese willingly submit to Syrian and Iranian vassalage, and they have by far the most well-armed private army in the country. Not even a non-aggression pact, let alone a peace treaty, is workable now.

Someday, though, all this will change. Sooner or later, Israelis will need to convince the people of Lebanon that they aren't a threat, that they don't want to invade, that they'd really rather open the border and have normal relations. Lebanon isn’t Gaza. Most of its citizens really do want peace and quiet. Someday that will be possible, and they need to know that Israel won’t be the obstacle.

There is a case to be made that Lebanese public opinion is irrelevant, since Hezbollah is strong enough to override the will of the state and the will of the majority anyway. Hezbollah, though, will not always be as strong as it is, and everything that weakens it – especially before an election – will help. Most Lebanese just want Israel and Syria to leave them alone. Damascus has no intention of leaving Beirut alone, but the overwhelming majority of Israelis have no interest whatsoever in more war with Lebanon. Lebanese need to know who their real enemy is before they go to the polls early next year and decide which kind of “resistance” makes the most sense.