Hollow border back and forth covers weakness on both sides

After several months of grumbling from Mohamed VI of Morocco, Algeria set up 23 new guard posts on its border with Morocco. The excuse was to limit smuggling and other illegal activity, and it is unlikely that this constitutes as a serious effort to build up the military’s presence on the Moroccan border. For one thing, if the move were for anything other than defensive/law enforcement purposes, the troops would not have been moved to where they were, west of Tlemcen. There are already enough military positions near that segment of the border — for good reason — and a seriously beefed up position there would include placing anti-aircraft or surface to surface missile batteries in the east of the country (or moving ones already there). It is posturing, at very best. The King’s command that Algeria immediately re-open its border with Morocco is premised on trade and the economic implications of the borders’ closing, indeed, the head of the IMF has even appealed to the two countries to set aside their divisions in the name of the economic integration of North Africa. This is an argument that carries little weight with the Algerian ruling establishment, which as a rule carries a great deal of distrust towards Morocco, and likely covers less liberal motivations.

The extinction of Tcawit?

Chaouia is not a written language and based on the fact that it is not taught in schools, it may soon become extinct. Being that the Chaouia are predominantly rural and secluded, speakers often code-switch to Arabic, French or even English to discuss non-traditional technology and sociological concerns.

“Chaouia,” English Wikipedia, as of 24 November, 2008.

Is this not true of most Berber languages in Algeria, and North Africa more generally? I don’t think that’s the result of Chaouia speakers being “rural and secluded,” as much as it just not having the vocabulary to describe certain things, as is the case in other Berber dialects, both in urban and rural areas. I’m not a linguistics student or expert, but I don’t think that code-switching in Chaouia is the result of its speakers being rural, just based off of the fact that I’ve heard urban speakers do it more frequently than I have in villages.

I was also troubled to read first sentence, which suggests that Chaouia is on the verge of extinction: This is the case with many languages in Algeria, and that Chaouia is not written does not help its struggle. But I find the suggestion that it would soon go extinct somewhat hyperbolic. There are something like 2-3 million people  speaking it (that have been counted), and there are not estimates for many areas where it is spoken. Just a thought, since the post I had prepared for today (about the tensions between Algeria and Morocco) was mistakenly deleted from my computer by a friend.

I encourage people more engaged in and educated about linguistic matters than myself to comment and add their opinions to the matter. Is Chaouia likely to go extinct? What is the affect of rural living vs. urban life on Berber languages generally? These are question I am not qualified to answer, but would like to get some insight on.

Why Most Arabs don’t care if Zawahiri casts slurs on Obama

Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command Ayman al Zawahri attacked Obama as a “house Negro,” a racially-charged term used by 1960s black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe black slaves loyal to white masters.

“You represent the direct opposite of honorable black Americans like … Malcolm X,” Zawahri said in an 11-minute recording publicized on the Internet on Wednesday. It was al Qaeda’s first high-level commentary on Obama’s election on November 4. Bin Laden could also release a message on Obama within the next two weeks or so, one analyst said.

Zawahri criticized Obama’s support for Israel and plans to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where he said they were destined to fail. He urged Islamist fighters to keep striking a “criminal” United States until it withdraws from Muslim lands.

The recording was distributed on a videotape that carried pictures of Obama at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and Malcom X, flanking Zawahri in the center.

“Al-Qaeda scorns Obama with racial slur,” Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, 20 November, 2008.

If you listen to the clip in question, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri actually calls Obama abid al-beit, or “house slave.” Yet al Qaeda translates it as “house Negro,” which is the term that Malcolm X used. I guess they wanted to keep the parallel exact?

In any case, I wonder if this message might actually play better in some parts of the Arab world than we think. Yes, it’s a pretty crude racial epithet, and for a pan-Islamic movement that encompasses Sudanese, Uzbek, and Indonesian members along with the core group of Arabs, it’s probably going to ruffle some feathers. But there is a surprising amount of anti-black racism in Arab countries, and Zawahiri may be hoping to tap into that to drum up new recruits.

“One oddity about the al Qaeda tape,” Blake Hounshell, FP Passport, 20 Novemeber, 2008.

Here is the problem with both of these extracts: Abid عبد does, in fact, literally mean “slave”. When used in everyday conversation to refer to persons with dark skin or of African lineage, it has much the same meaning as “nigger” does in English. While many Arabic-speakers use the term to refer to dark skinned peoples and blacks in everyday speech, rather casually, it is almost never a term of endearment and it never quite loses its hostile and ugly connotation[s]. It resembles the manner in which “nigger” was used during the 19th and early 20th centuries to refer to blacks in the United States. It was considered well and normal. So too with abid. I would translate abid al-bayt عبد البيت not as “House Negro,” but as House Nigger.

With this in mind, though, one has to consider that the use of abid al-bayt may well be deliberate. African-Americans deliberately use the term “House Nigger” to refer to “self-hating blacks” or “Uncle Toms”. Zahwahiri’s usage of the term may well be an appropriation of this usage. That is not all, though. It is likely also evidence of a deeply ingrained (and very common) racial prejudice among Arabic-speakers regarding people of black African ancestry, despite al-Qaeda’s diversity. This prejudice is found throughout the Arab region, from the Gulf to North Africa. Usage of the term is likely an appeal to the term’s double meaning.¹

Regarding the query as to how it might “play” in the Arab world: It has been my general observation that most Arabs have very little sympathy for African-Americans and even less for Arab of African descent. That is not to say that many Arabs do hold such sentiments: most Arab-Americans said that they would vote for Barack Obama and I know for a fact that there are Arabs who genuinely identify with the African-American struggle and harbor a great deal of sympathy for their historic plight.² I would say that those are in the minority, though. Arab (and Middle Eastern) societies regard blacks in a vastly different manner than do Americans, and not for the better (not that America has something to brag about in that regard). Servile background is callously frowned upon and darkness equated not only with evil, but stupidity, ugliness, and criminality as well.

I do not, therefore, believe that this kind of language would make Arabs more sympathetic to the president-elect. Indeed, since Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emmanuel, a fervent support of Israel, as chief of staff many Arabs have begun to weary of Barack Obama. This process was precipitated when he came out as the most ardent of Israel supporters at the AIPAC convention this summer. Qaddafi has for one said that Obama will be forced to “act more white than any of the whites” because of his blackness, something many Arabs might agree with. (I say this based on conversations and comments from friends who travel more widely in the Levant than I do. I’ve heard similar comments about Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice from many Palestinians and Algerians: I heard almost identical comments from Algerians about Rachida Dati after she became pregnant by an invisible man). It would be wishful thinking to believe that a great number of Arabs to pity a leader of African descent who has taken just about every policy line available that was contrary to what the “Arab Street” would desire (aside from Iraq, but even in that his position has been crafted such that it does not appear to please Arabs). I would take the initial part of Hounshell’s query and flip it around: Zawahiri’s comment will probably play better among Arabs sympathetic to his message (such tapes tend to preach to the choir) with the addition of racial overtones. It will probably not gain him any new Somali, Kenyan, Senegalese, or Nigerien recruits, but it will not decrease the number of Arabs seeking his company.

Keep it real

And people wonder why Barack Obama, like his Democratic predocessors, spits in the face of Arabs and Muslims.

Oui, nous pouvons? Maybe.

I hope to bring great change . . . to my height

Abdelaziz Bouteflika was quick to congratulate Barack Obama on his electoral victory this month. Leaders in France, Russia, Germany, Kenya and elsewhere also greeted the new American president enthusiastically. In the Levant, where Americans are most heavily invested, there was a recognition that Obama is but a man, and that despite their hopes the first black American president would not significantly change course on Middle Eastern affairs, at least as far as evidence presently indicates. Algerians, themselves dealing with matters of their own presidency, watched the election from a somewhat different vantage point (though surely not necessarily exceptional).

From Brakna…

I am getting word that Sidi has dissolved parliament from his residence in Lemden — this isn’t confirmed though. Don’t blame me if it pans out in falsehood. More after class!

Update: Not the case. Moving on…

Another link

A look at Algeria and the coup, from Taqadoumy (Arabic).

Coming up

After talking to people in Algeria by phone (Batna, Algiers, Constantine, and Cherchell), I have decided to write another post on Algeria’s reactions to Obama’s election. They are particularly interesting, as I see it, as they seem to differ from what I have heard from others in the Arab region in a few ways, which I will highlight in that post. I think it is more significant on some levels for Algeria than it is for other Arab states (not in terms of US foreign policy, but in terms of domestic political discourse). In the meantime, since I am in that sort of mood, listen to this Reda Doumaz song or join me in giggling at this German. I will post this afternoon.

Houria Aichi links

Thanks to the person who sent me these video links of Houria Aichi.

Fast links

These items have caught my fancy over the last week or so.

A good Economist article on the moral dimensions (or lack there of, as many Western writer increasingly look at it) South Africa’s foreign policy. It is more intelligent than the one authored by a certain Kurchick in 2007, to which I responded, as it recognizes the importance that national interests and identity politics plays in the formation of foreign policy, even for Africans.

David Brooks explains why the Republicans will move further to the right in coming years, and will suffer at the polls for it.

The value of “talking” is making itself apparent to some of those for whom it has hitherto remained opaque.

For Iran’s leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the “great Satan” here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.

[. . .]

“People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous,” Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. “The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack,” Taeb said.

The pitiful thing is that over last year or more few commentators brought up such an argument, including those obsessed with the idea of regime change for regime change’s sake.

A conference of Algerian activists, academics, intellectuals and so on and so forth, put together a declaration on the necessity for political change in Algeria. Barack Obama was not the keynote speaker. Nevertheless, Brahim Younessi believes that “change is inevitable” in Algeria.

L’Express considers the risks of a third term for Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Andrew Sullivan, rather pretentiously, on why he blogs.

China is building an aircraft carrier.

Imagine that a hydrogen bomb fell in your tomato field.

To reiterate what I and others have been stressing for a long time:

China and India’s explosive rise today has disturbing similarities to the rapid growth of Germany, Japan, and the United States in the years leading to World War I. At that time, everyone paid a terrible price because the global system failed to reconcile its old and new powers. China’s and India’s huge scale will make those historic problems of the twentieth century seem comparatively trivial. Moreover, the old problem of making room for rising powers will be hugely complicated by an impending ecological crisis. We are unlikely simply to “grow” out of our economic conflicts.

[ . . .]

For both America and Europe, however, too much success in the twentieth century has become a danger for the twenty-first. Both are trapped in unproductive nostalgia. America’s continuing anxious pursuit of hegemony threatens its national prosperity and crowds its liberty. We should recognize the lingering unipolar view for what it is: a facile doctrine that masks a too ardent taste for domination. Purging America’s political imagination of its unipolar bias is an urgent task for liberals and conservatives alike.

“How Europe Could Save the World,” by David P. Calleo, in World Policy Journal, Fall 2008, Vol. 25, pgs. 7, 11.

A European Obama? Eventually, maybe.

“In Europe there is still a long way to go,” said Cem Özdemir, who is about to make history in Germany as the first politician of Turkish descent to take the reins of a political party (he’ll be co-leader of the Greens). “The message is that it’s time to move on in Europe. We have to give up seeing every political figure from an ethnic minority as an ambassador of the country of his forefathers”.

Time to scrap the baby talk and get back to reality: “Obama cannot expect a peaceful term in office“.

Let us enjoy the moment. Nothing has improved yet, but to ensure that things will improve, Obama will need more than his own good intentions. He will also need the good will of people who could not abide him until now.

The best intentions often yield the most onerous circumstances with the most modest results.

Sidi’s out

Sidi was released this week, as readers probably know. Reactions to and comments on this will be forthcoming either tomorrow or the next day. So will comments on last week’s AU statement on the Mauritanian sitution.

Where’s Waldo?

A sampling of representatives of Bouteflika’s tool coalition Algeria’s diverse national community.

Amendments so fast they blur

The battle has been won. The constitutional amendments removing presidential term limits and reorganizing the upper echelons of the executive branch passed in parliament 500 to 21, with 8 abstentions. The vote was recorded by raised hands and not by secret ballot, a cause for irritation in the opposition. Of those opposition parties in parliament, only the RCD opposed the amendments. The amendments allow for endless presidential terms and establish the office of Prime Minister in place of the Head of Government, along with multiple vice Prime Ministers. Ouyahia will almost certain assume this office and Le Soir believes that Abdelaziz Belkhadem and Tayeb Iouhi are likely candidates for Vice Prime Ministerships. It also included language that guaranteed the right of women to participate in politics. Bouteflika’s remarks to parliament can be seen here, via El Moudjadhid.

The politics of hopelessness

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the enduring importance of the War of Independence in Algerian politics. This was prompted by a question about Noureddine Ait Hamouda’s comments earlier this year regarding the handling of funds pace the Ministry of Veterans Affairs. Claiming to have served in the War of Independence, in any respect, be it throwing stones, bombing French encampments, or commanding guerrilla units, is considered a sacred pass time in Algeria. Its legacy is held in the highest regard: Algerians regard the War as their finest hour. The outrage over Ait Hamouda’s comments, however, is only partially a result of patriotic sentiment. It is more the result of corrupt politicians and their patronage networks aggressively seeking to obscure their misconduct under a cloak of green and white. At least, this is how I see it, and how many others do.

Boutef vs. Barack

The young Mr. Bouteflika.

In addition to the previously mentioned reactions offered by the selection of Algerian newspapers from last week, there is one from the 5 November issue of Le Matin (which I neglected to include in the previous round up), which I think is particularly relevant. It contrasts progress in the United States with progress in Algeria, noting that African Americans have seen the expansion of their social and political rights over the past half century or so, culminating in the election of Barack Obama, while Algerians — independent for a similar period of time — are seeing “new generations remain excluded” from the political process.

History will record that Barack Obama, 47, became the first African American elected president of the United States the [same] week that in Algeria, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 72, violated the Constitution to stay in power.

Obama was born on 4 August 1961, when Bouteflika the master negotiator had already helped in the overthrow of the GPRA and scheduled the fateful coup.

Obama is the youngest president of the new generation. In a country where black people really enjoyed their civil rights for barely half a century, the Democratic candidate made a special way and embodies the face of a rejuvenated America and at peace with itself, the incarnation of the dream of civil rights activist Martin Luther King.

Bouteflika is the old president who the the new generation flees on boats of uncertainty. Bouteflika embodies despair.

Barack Obama emerged from Anonymity one evening in July 2004, when Bouteflika began his second term.

Barack Obama became president one evening in November 2008, when Bouteflika assured his third term.

History will record that this was the evening of our powerlessness.

Grendel and a gnome, with a cauliflower

Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika (C) smiles as he walks with former state Presidents Chadli Bendjedid (R) and Ali Kafi during a reception to celebrate the 54th anniversary of the start of the National Liberation War in Algiers November 1, 2008. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra (ALGERIA)

Russia: Organizing the passing of gas?

On paper at least, the budding “Gopec” appears nearly as formidable as the 48-year-old oil cartel. The troika control 57 per cent of known natural gas reserves – about the same proportion of crude reserves held by the three leading Opec members. North America and non-Russian Europe have only 5.3 per cent and are increasingly reliant on gas for heating and power generation.

That is where the similarities end. Unlike petroleum, natural gas is still for the most part split into regional markets served by pipelines. It is supplemented by a growing market for liquefied natural gas that, like crude, can be shipped to the continent where it fetches the highest price. Notwithstanding Gazprom’s sway over the European Union and success in bullying former vassal states, the economics of the two markets are different enough that a successful gas cartel is a pipe dream for now.

“Controlling Gas,” FT, 27 October, 2008.

The idea of a natural gas cartel is an interesting one for many reasons. While it is true that the three countries mentioned in this post, Russia, Iran, and Qatar, control over 50% of the world’s natural gas reserves, it is less true that these countries would form such a cartel for political and economic reasons. I have written before on why Algeria — which holds the world’s 4th largest gas reserves and is a major LNG producer — has not hopped onto the bandwagon. Libya’s reasons are similar. Such countries already control their energy markets to a great extent through their state energy firms. They rather enjoy having countries compete for their gas because of Russia’s bad attitude. Russia’s motivation in proposing the organization is so that it can use the body as a weapon against countries with which Qatar, Algeria and Libya have little interest in quarreling with, even if it does bring great financial gain. They have and will continue to speak in amiable terms of the idea, but none of these countries are willing to cede the necessary amounts of sovereignty over their energy resources to make Russia content with such an organization. It would be a vehicle for Russian bullying, of non-gas exporters and the member states. It is indeed a pipe dream, like other Russian grabs at great power influence. The politics of a “gas OPEC,” at the very least in the short and medium term, are not favorable.

Algeria and Obama [Reactions, not policy]

I was asked in an email to round up Algerian responses to the American election. To put it into two words: massively enthusiastic. The emphasis seems to be on the fact that (1) Obama is the first black president of the United States of America (I have had conversations with elderly Algerians who seem to find this to be especially remarkable, for reasons I will elaborate on below) and that (2) Americans voted in large numbers, with the implication being that the election of Obama signals some great change in America’s disposition towards the world. Most articles are light on Obama’s policy prescriptions, and focus primarily on his symbolism.

More promises!

So, the Messiah has come. I will post on my own reactions (especially to his victory speech, which to me was quite obnoxious; this is a time for leadership not puppies and bumblerush for disingenuous white liberals university students and vapid liberals (which are not mutually exclusive and do not make up the whole of the Obama camp) to pat themselves on the back with) and reactions in the Algerian media during the rest of the week,  in addition to updates on Algeria — and that country’s false prophet — along with more Mauritania business.