Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 12/21/2022

• Can debt relief save the Red Sea’s coral reefs?

  tags: COP Egypt Tunisia Jordan environment climate debt analysis opinion Belize

  • despite contributing little to greenhouse gas emissions, debt-laden developing countries appear likely to suffer the costliest effects of global warming.

  • A landmark deal in Belize may provide a path for the Arab world’s poorest countries to tackle these vexing challenges in tandem, combining debt relief with climate change mitigation.

      

    The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation with global reach, helped Belize obtain over $350 million to service its government debt in exchange for the Central American country dedicating more resources to environmental protection and marine conservation.

  • Beyond the significance of a developing country receiving debt relief for toughening environmental policies, Belize oversees a series of coral reefs whose preservation the Nature Conservancy coded into the historic agreement. Arab countries such as COP27 host Egypt likewise have a number of coral reefs, among them species that have demonstrated impressive resilience against global warming.
  • saving Egypt’s coral reefs will require greater action, likely from world powers

  • A 2019 study found that climate change could cost Egypt as much as 95 percent of its revenue from tourism to the coral reefs, so world powers will likely have to come up with millions or even billions of dollars more.

      

    Egypt hardly finds itself alone. In the first half of 2022, the government debt of Jordan—home to its own prized set of coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba—reached $41 billion, 88.4 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Meanwhile, in Tunisia, coral reefs near the resort destination of Tabarka appear set to suffer as climate change batters the country and the Tunisian economy falters, depriving authorities of the funds necessary to fund marine conservation.

  • pairing debt relief with marine conservation, as well as more general measures for environmental protection and climate change mitigation, a boon for Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other coral-rich countries in the Arab world

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 12/04/2022

• The dwindling promise of popular uprisings in the Middle East

  tags: Egypt Tunisia Iran Israel Palestine israelpalestine Syria Yemen analysis opinion uprisings surveillance technology repression

  • The scenes emerging from Iran today elicit a mix of reactions across a region still reeling from the dark legacy of the “Arab Spring,” which itself came on the heels of the “Green Movement” protests in the wake of Iran’s 2009 presidential election. Many Arabs cannot help but recall the sense of hope that reverberated from Tunisia to Yemen, only to be shattered by unyielding repression, war, and the resurgence of authoritarianism. Subsequent protest waves, including those that began in 2019 in Lebanon, Iraq, and Sudan, were similarly met with brutality, co-optation, and dissolution.
  • Over a decade on from the Arab uprisings, the path toward democracy and freedom for youth across the Middle East has become more treacherous than ever, as liberation movements find themselves fighting against stronger, smarter, and more entrenched regimes that have adapted to modern challenges to their domination.
  • Technologies that many hoped would help to evade state censorship and facilitate mobilization have been co-opted as repressive surveillance tools.
  • many of the region’s youth have become immobilized by revolutionary fatigue left by the tragic, violent trauma of the Arab Spring’s aftermath
  • Breakthroughs in surveillance methods are allowing intelligence outfits across the Middle East to infiltrate just about every crevice of civil society, making it almost impossible to communicate or organize without the government’s knowledge. Some of the most sinister of these weapons have been manufactured in Israel, which has emerged as a leading global exporter of surveillance technologies that are now being deployed against oppressed populations worldwide.
  • The prospect of acquiring dystopian surveillance tech like Pegasus has become a driving motive for authoritarian Arab leaders in their rush to normalize relations with Israel, against the will of their people
  • While arming themselves with the latest repressive tools, autocratic regimes across the Middle East continue to be encouraged by their external benefactors to prioritize security and foreign interests at the expense of democracy and human rights at home
  • with the United States declining as a global hegemon, authoritarians are selling their allegiances to the highest bidder, with human rights, democracy, and accountability falling further by the wayside.
  • Since 2011, Russia has doubled down on its support for some of the most brutal regimes in the region.
  • About 60 percent of the region’s population are under 25 years old, and the dire socio-political and economic conditions that much of the Middle East’s youth face have changed little since the thwarted revolutions of 2011. Youth unemployment has, in fact, worsened over the past decade, increasing from 23.8 percent in 2010 to 27.2 percent in 2020. The lack of opportunities continues to fuel brain drains and mass migration across the region.
  • dictators driven by paranoia have continued to hollow out civil society, ensuring that no viable political alternative to their rule exists. Press freedom across the region has declined drastically; Egypt, for example, has become one of the world’s top jailers of journalists since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in a military coup in 2013. In Tunisia, President Kais Saied has undone many of the country’s democratic advances by dissolving the government and enhancing his powers through a new constitution.
  • This aggressive trend has intensified in Palestine, too. Following the 2021 Unity Intifada, Israeli forces arrested hundreds of political activists and are now stepping up efforts to target civil society and human rights groups that expose Israeli war crimes and rights violations. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has entrenched its role as a subcontractor of the Israeli occupation, stepping up arrests of political activists and resistance fighters alike across the West Bank at Israel’s behest.
  • A recent study by The Guardian and YouGov found that although a majority of respondents in Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, and Egypt do not regret the uprisings, more than half of those polled in Syria, Yemen, and Libya say their lives are now worse
  • By shutting down spaces for Iranians to realize their imagined future, Iran’s leaders have ensured that any substantial transfer of power will be violent

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 11/08/2022

• Rescue charity to take Italy to court over migrant boats standoff | Migration News | Al Jazeera

  tags: migrants migration law Italy Egypt mediterranean maritime NGOs Tunisia

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 10/31/2022

• Millions at risk of climate displacement in Middle East – Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East

  tags: climate migration agriculture water food security MENA Egypt Jordan Iraq Algeria Morocco Tunisia

  • According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), “roughly 90 percent of refugees come from countries that are the most vulnerable and least ready to adapt to the impacts of climate change”.
  • By 2060, Egypt’s already stretched agricultural sector could shrink by as much as 47 percent, researchers predict.
  • Globally, the World Bank estimates that by 2050, if nothing is done to prevent it, there will be 216 million people internally displaced by climate change, including 19.3 million in North Africa.
  • Some seven percent of people in North Africa — where densely populated coastlines are among the world’s most threatened by rising waters — live less than five metres (16 feet) above sea level, according to the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed).
  • Climate-induced urban migration can “increase the pressure on natural resources”, according to economist Assem Abu Hatab, “thus leading to social tensions and violent conflict” in a region where agriculture currently accounts for 22 percent of employment.

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 05/10/2022

• Huawei in North Africa: Lots of Good PR, Not a Lot of Tech Transfer – The China Africa Project

  tags: China MENA Africa northafrica Egypt Algeria Tunisia Libya Morocco telecoms technology investment trade security regionalism

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 01/10/2022

• What does 2022 hold for democracy in the Middle East?

  tags: authoritarianism analysis opinion democracy MENA ArabWorld Tunisia Sudan Egypt Syria Yemen UAE

  • “It was hoped that because of [the Arab Spring revolts of 2011 and the Iranian Green Movement in 2009], the ground had shifted in the direction of democracy but for various political, not religious, reasons, this did not happen,” said Dr Nader Hashemi
  • Dictators and despots all over the Arab world have benefited from the myth of authoritarian stability, which many in the West fully embrace. After the Arab Spring revolts, widespread violence unleashed across the MENA region led many cynics in the West to conclude that Arabs shouldn’t be entitled to democracy
  • many regimes in the MENA region concluded that the messiness which followed the Arab Spring stemmed from their perceived failure to be sufficiently authoritarian
  • With strong support from some Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – chiefly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the patron of the counterrevolution – the leaderships in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and other Arab states have been emboldened in their crackdowns on civil society and pro-democracy movements
  • “Not only have these regimes not paid a price for their ruthless suppression of civil society but many of them have been rewarded by Western democratic governments. Last year, for example, Emmanuel Macron hosted Egypt’s fascist dictator in Paris and gave him the ‘Legion of Honor’ award for great leadership and statesmanship. A month earlier, Germany did something similar.”
  • Biden’s administration is quite like Donald Trump’s in terms of being indifferent to democratisation in the Arab world
  • Just as the Obama administration never determined that Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi’s ouster in 2013 resulted from a “coup”, the current leadership in Washington has refused to designate either last year’s autogolpe in Tunisia or General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s takeover of the Sudanese state as a “coup”. The Biden administration’s responses to both have been mild and cautious.
  • n Washington, there will be more of a willingness to accommodate greater autocracy in countries that have official diplomatic ties with Israel or at least are non-confrontational toward Tel Aviv
  • “The pandemic has helped authoritarian regimes reassert control over society and environmental conditions have increased the level of suffering, despair, and mass pauperisation. For many people in the region, the focus is on survival, not democratisation.”
  • Citizens of MENA countries are willing to die for democratisation, exemplified by recent events in Sudan

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 08/02/2021

• Will Biden Help Revive the Arab Spring, Starting with Tunisia?

  tags: US USA Tunisia Egypt politics authoritarianism analysis opinion democracy Biden

  • Saied’s so-called emergency measures remain in place, and the U.S. State Department said Wednesday that no further action has been taken. “We are monitoring and engaged,” a State Department spokesperson told Foreign Policy. Some activists and regional experts say more concrete forms of pressure from the United States are needed. They say preserving democracy in Tunisia will be a test of U.S. President Joe Biden’s central commitment to what he has called a “defining question of our time”—that is, “Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world?” 
  • Critics like Dunne say the administration has fallen seriously short of what Blinken, in a major March 3 speech, said would be a new U.S. policy to “incentivize democratic behavior” and “encourage others to make key reforms … [and] fight corruption.”
  • What is at stake is far more than a somewhat dysfunctional democracy in a nation of 12 million people on the periphery of the Arab world, some experts say. Tunisia’s democratic survival is a test for the whole Middle East—and, indeed, could help provide a long-term solution to the ongoing problem of Islamist terrorism. 
  • “If this administration wants to be serious about protecting democracy as a broad policy approach, there are really few places more significant.” It wouldn’t cost a lot, Feldman points out. But making clear that Saied’s moves are unacceptable would “show we actually believe in democracy and we’re not being merely situational about it.”
  • the Arab tyrannies and monarchies have been urging Saied on toward more authoritarianism and lumping Ennahdha together with extremist Islamist groups
  • A report this month from Human Rights First indicated that the restoration of Arab dictatorships may be generating a new generation of terrorists; in Egypt, a harsh crackdown on democracy and human rights activists by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former general who seized power in 2014, has led to active recruitment by the Islamic State in Egypt’s prison system. 
  • hortly before Saied’s takeover, the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation approved nearly $500 million in aid to strengthen Tunisia’s transportation, trade, and water sectors. Saied’s government is also seeking a three-year $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, which answers to pressure from Washington and other major capitals. Washington has other leverage as well: In 2020, the United States signed on to a 10-year military cooperation program with Tunis, and the two sides regularly hold joint exercises. And in the last decade, Washington has invested more than $1 billion in the Tunisian military, according to U.S. Africa Command.
  • “It’s time to stop saying it’s early days [for this administration] because we’re six months in and there is no palpable new approach.” In February, the Biden administration approved a $197 million sale of missiles to Egypt days after the Egyptian government detained family members of a U.S.-based Egyptian American human rights activist.
  • The president is as much a practitioner of realpolitik as he is an advocate of democracy, and it’s clear his main interest is not in nurturing new democracies but in herding together the mature industrial democracies against major authoritarian threats such as China and Russia.
  • democracy has not been terribly rewarding so far for Tunisia. Saied’s power grab was actually popular among large masses who have complained of rampant corruption and are suffering terribly for basic needs.
  • Tunisia has had no support for its transition within the Middle East North Africa region and far too little support from other democracies in Europe and the United States
  • “I think we often forget that democratic revolutions are almost never successful on the first attempt,”

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 07/30/2021

• EXCLUSIVE: Tunisian prime minister was assaulted in palace before coup | Middle East Eye

  A wild, thinly sourced, but at least somewhat plausible story

  tags: Tunisia Egypt UAE Algeria US USA coup politics military

  • MEE understands that the individuals present were Egyptian security officials who have been advising Saied before the coup and directing operations as it was taking place. It is unclear what role they played in Mechichi’s interrogation. 

     

    “[Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-] Sisi offered to give Saied all the support he needed for the coup and Saied took it,” one of the sources said.

     

    “Egyptian military and security people were sent to Tunisia with the full support of MbZ [Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi], the source added.

  • The moves undertaken on Sunday closely follow a plan of action outlined by Saied’s close advisors in May and published by MEE at the time.

     

    The plan outlined a purge or wave of mass arrests that would take place after the announcement of what is referred to as a “constitutional coup”.

  • presidential sources told MEE that Saied instructed his officials to draw up a list of targets of people who could be arrested. 

     

    To pave the way for this, Saied assumed control of both the civil and military judiciary and declared himself attorney general.

  • In a decree issued late on Tuesday, Saied sacked Brigadier-General Judge Tawfiq al-Ayouni, who headed the military courts. 

     

    The president also dismissed a number of senior government officials, including the secretary general of the government, the director of the prime minister’s office and a number of advisors.

  • the Supreme Judicial Council rejecting Saied’s decision to place himself as the effective senior law officer of the government. 

     

    The council said in a statement after meeting with Saied that they emphasised the independence of the judiciary and “the need to distance it from all political disputes, and that judges are independent, and there is no authority over them in their judiciary except the law, and they carry out their duties within the scope of the constitution”.

  • Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has told both Saied and leading opposition politicians that Algiers will not accept Tunisia falling under Egypt’s political and military influence
  • Algeria regards both Libya and Tunisia as its legitimate spheres of influence. Algeria will be especially concerned about the presence of Egyptian security officers in the palace in Carthage on Sunday.

  • In January, Mechichi changed 11 ministers as part of a reshuffle which was widely seen as replacing allies of Saied with those of Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia.

     

         

     

     

     

    Saied, however, refused to invite the new ministers to swear the oath of office, stating that the changes were marred by “violations”.

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 05/25/2021

• Hip Hop Finds Its Groove in North Africa | Newlines Magazine

  tags: music hiphop Maghreb MENA Morocco Tunisia Algeria Egypt France Italy Belgium language colonialism identity identities

  • Pop music in the region today truly represents the Westernization of classical Arabic music defined by traditional elements of improvisation (where songs often last as long as an hour), instruments native to the region like the oud, and maqam, which is a system of melodies and pitches native to Arabic music. Classical Arabic artists like Oum Kulthum and Asmahan thrived on this style and are considered icons of Arabic music because of their ability to evoke emotion through their artistry.

    But in conjunction with colonization, Arabic music began to shift from its classical roots with the Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932, organized by King Fuad of Egypt. This symposium brought together renowned composers and ethnomusicologists from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe who created a set of proposals for the modernization and standardization of Arabic music, one of which was the incorporation of European instruments into Arabic ensembles because “such instruments possessed tremendously varied, expressive means and depictive powers.”

    The other notable event that pushed this modernization further was the introduction of the phonograph to the region. Phonographs could only play songs for a limited duration, making the traditional improvisation and hour-long running times of classical Arabic music nearly impossible.

    The final nail in the coffin was the burgeoning film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in Egypt, the cultural epicenter for creative output in the Middle East and North Africa. Movies were heavily Westernized at the time, forcing directors and producers to modify accompanying music to incorporate Western-style elements in their instruments and duration.

  • a new movement is rising in North Africa.

    Rappers and emcees from the region are boldly approaching hip-hop and the larger Arab music landscape by exploring taboo themes and proactively deconstructing societal markers of North African identity. They are experimenting with beat production and dialect as they go about creating a space for their music and for these conversations to be held in a public domain. This is not a knock on the Levantine or Khaleeji rap scenes; there are many artists who are doing this currently. But North African emcees are using their lyrical flows and melodic rhythms to grapple with the essential question of identity. The music sounds fresh and breathes new life into the pop-dominant Arabic music scene.

  • A vast majority of North African rappers primarily use their regional Arabic dialects and French in their music. But many artists, specifically North African artists based in Europe, also use Spanish, Dutch, and English on their albums. A few artists will even use all four languages in one song.

  • French colonial policy in Algeria, she explained, aimed to violently prevent and suppress the teaching of Indigenous languages like Tamazight. France intentionally stoked tensions between Indigenous Imazighen and ethnic Arabs by implementing unjust laws seeking to tear at the societal fabric of the country and destroy Algerian identity.

    France implemented similar policies in other North African countries as well, actively working to create sectarian tensions that led to ethnic and linguistic divides that, in turn, led to brutal, violent conflicts and suppression of Indigenous culture.

  • Dialect and slang are important in rap, Boubaker stressed, because “it is a question of using a popular spoken language in constant evolution and which incorporates foreign influences.”
  • Many emcees, more so than their Levantine or Khaleeji counterparts, utilize Afropop and Afro-fusion rhythms in their music as a nod to their home continent.
  • Afrobeats is a fusion of hip-hop, dancehall, soca, and other Black genres that can be identified by its use of African drums and a 3/2 time signature — different from a Western 4/4 time signature — that gives the genre its trademark dance tempo
  • For North African artists, use of these rhythms can be traced back to Black North Africans and Indigenous communities who are descendants of the slave trade. Boubaker shared that the different genres, namely gnawa in Morocco, diwan in Algeria, and stambali in Tunisia, are the result of a distinct weaving between the musicalities of North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Black Sufi tradition that can lead to a state of trance.
  • The stambali genre, Boubaker elaborated, is sung in a language derived from a mixture of Tunisian Arabic and the Houassa language spoken by the Hausas, a people of the Sahel, mainly in northern Nigeria and southern Niger who were part of the slave trade to Tunisia.
  • “Moroccan artists, early on, primarily referenced Malcolm X as a way to make the connection between race, Blackness, and Islam in the U.S. and embraced their own African identity through their music,” Almeida said. “The African theme has been going on for a while now.”
  • While Moroccan and Egyptian emcees found early opportunities, Tunisian and in particular Algerian artists did not have that initial access.

  • In Algeria, however, while the rap scene was up and coming, Almeida said the government actively worked to shut it down, which, she said, “really crushed everything.”

    That now looks different, with Algerian rappers even drawing influences from raï music and sampling prominent Algerian artists in their music.

  • Algerian artists of the 1990s and up to the present day are now primarily recording their music in France, Spain, and other European countries to then broadcast back to Algeria and the rest of North Africa. This is a subtle but noticeable diversion away from seeking opportunities in the traditional Middle East/North Africa hubs of music and culture such as Cairo, Beirut, and Baghdad.
  • “We just have to go back to our history, and we need to start loving ourselves and we need to recognize who we truly are because we’re not Arabs. 100% being Egyptian and being Moroccan is straight up being African and straight up being proud. And this is why I never have any issue representing mahraganat in my music because this is Egyptian music. I’m proud of my double cultures. I’m proud of my continent, and I really want to showcase it everywhere.”
  • North African rappers today are using hip-hop to express what it means to be who they are in the context of their country, their continent, and their lived experiences. And while there is a deep and painful colonial history associated with this music, the artistic yield has been profound not just for the region but the world.

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Daily Egypt and Tunisia links 05/03/2021

• Ten Years After the Arab Spring, Tyranny Lingers On | Newlines Magazine

  tags: uprisings opinion analysis Tunisia Egypt Bahrain Syria Yemen Iran KSA Saudi Iraq Sudan Algeria Lebanon politics authoritarianism

  • The initial impulse behind the uprisings, the very impulse that led Bouazizi to self-immolation, lay in the fact that humiliated peoples, suffering from economic dislocation, political repression, and denial of basic human rights had grown impatient with their status as subjects and had risen, demanding their rights as citizens. Wealth redistribution, social justice, and good governance were as equal for those demonstrating en masse as regaining their lost karama — their dignity
  • Most of the political and intellectual debates that animated the early stages of the uprisings had their roots in the reformist movements and the intellectual ferments and the drive to modernize Arab societies that began in the first half of the 19th century
  • The Arab uprisings began as spontaneous protest movements led first by middle-class students and professionals who were then joined by workers and other social groups. The Islamists, skeptical at first, joined later. In a political landscape bereft of organized liberal and secular mass movements or political parties, with only defunct old Arab nationalists and leftists, it was a question of time before the Islamists would control the political square and hijack the uprisings.
  • the repressive regimes shared one thing in common: All reacted with brute force to peaceful calls for empowerment and accountability.
  • Some of them, particularly those ruling heterogeneous states, brazenly weaponized religion, regionalism, sectarianism, and tribal and ethnic cleavages in their societies to divide and crush the uprisings
  • a stagnant economy remains the greatest threat to Tunisia’s stability and a major source of Tunisians’ discontent. Tunisia’s robust civil society made it possible, even during periods of political and security tensions, to conduct executive, legislative, and municipal elections democratically, although elected officials still display some of the discredited habits of the ancien régime. Ennahda, the main Islamist movement, proved adept at political transformation when its founder Rachid Ghannouchi declared the moderate Islamist party was abandoning political Islam. Ten years on, Tunisians are openly critical of their government’s failure to address their economic needs, forcing the youth either to immigrate to Europe or to join radical Islamists abroad. Ten years after Mohamed Bouazizi’s fiery end, disillusionment is the national mood.
  • The political, social, and cultural maladies afflicting Arab societies that were supposed to be swept away by the young activists have proven to be immovable
  • That does not mean that the spirit and the yearning for empowerment that animated the early phase of the uprisings have been irrevocably defeated. In recent years we have seen the populations in majority Arab states like Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon erupt in fury over their ossified, repressive, and venal regimes. In Sudan, the protests forced the military to oust Omar al-Bashir, their tormentor for 30 years. In Algeria, the mass protest forced the stagnant regime to end the 20-year reign of the ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In both countries we have seen a glimpse of the hope and enthusiasm that animated those who went to the streets in 2011. So far the positive changes in Sudan and Algeria are not fundamental, but at least the protests have shaken two stagnant and moribund regimes.
  • The protests that rocked Iraq and Lebanon in 2019 also brought to the fore a new, emergent reality. Despite or partly because of the uprisings, the Middle East is less Arab today than at any time in a century. Iran is the dominant force in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Israel owns the skies over Syria, while Iran, Turkey, and Russia carve up zones of control and influence on the ground. In Iraq, Turkey has established military bases, and Iran pulls the strings of many militias. In Libya, Russia and Turkey continue to play their cynical proxy wars. In this “wounded time” many Arabs are living in the shadows of their more powerful neighbors.
  • The uprisings faced not only entrenched ruling classes but also deep-rooted patriarchy and religious and cultural traditions that are not amenable to swift and significant social and cultural change.

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