Egypt’s Al-Sisi dragged the country into civil war

Egypt’s Head of the Armed forces’ call for people to authorize him for brutal crackdown of so called “violence and terrorism” resulted in massacre of hundreds pro- Morsi, anti-coup demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere in the country. The provocative talk by General Al-Sisi, the de facto ruler of the country since the ouster of de jure President Mohammad Morsi, is tantamount to pushing Egypt – the Arab world’s most populous country – into a civil war.

By reference to violence and terrorism, Al-Sisi actually meant the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Mohammed Morsi supporters who have been staging countrywide democratic demonstrations against the coup. Anatolia News Agency reported the death toll in security forces’ brutal crackdown at Rabaa Al- Adawiya square well over 200, more than 500 thousand injured.

On Saturday, condemning the massacre in Egypt; Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said “People were calling on their rulers to desist from the coup and give them back their president. But instead of listening to their people, the coup-stagers in Egypt have responded by sending their gangs with guns and bullets,”

This sinister modus operandi of polarizing society and demonizing political opponents was taken to new heights this week when Junta applied it’s well-thought-out plan to disperse the opposing demonstrators using pretext of fighting to eliminate terrorism and violence.

The atrocious old guards of Egypt are back with the reinstatement of Mubarak era cliques. Two years after Egypt bravely stood against tyranny; its military apparatus has cleverly reintroduced the former regime's men under the cover of so called second revolution.

The US and EU principal backers of the Egyptian Coup d’état that ousted President Morsi are merely condemning the violence, not the atrocities committed by Egyptian security forces. They are ingeniously choosing the words that do not directly implicate the Egyptian security forces of massacring the peaceful protesters, demanding for their legitimate democratic rights.  

Cornered and under enormous attack, the Muslim Brotherhood has proven more resilient than anticipated by its enemies. One needs to understand that the Egypt military coup was devised with one goal in mind and one goal only, the death of the Muslim Brotherhood in the birthplace of political Islam. 

The relentless countrywide protests and demonstrations that hundreds of thousands of people have been holding to express their opposition to the ouster of the first democratically elected President of the country made Junta exasperated.

History bears testimony to the fact that no country has ever won its civil liberties through the intervention of its military. One has only to look at Turkey and its hard-fought battle for freedom and democracy to realize that a military-installed government will only lead to a democratic void.

On Saturday Egypt's Junta installed Interior Minister; Mohammad Ibrahim speaking at press conference in Cairo vowed to restore Mubarak-era torture cells. In Ibrahim’s own words “The monitoring departments would be reactivated despite their dismantling having been a main demand of the January revolution. He also said the pro-Morsi protestors would be dispersed, and Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested. He described the closure of these departments after the January 2011 revolution– which toppled long-serving president Hosni Mubarak – as a "mistake.""This mistake is being rectified,”

The basic distribution of power within Egyptian society has not changed and will not change any time soon. The Military and the Muslim brotherhood led Islamists are the two main powerful blocks in the country.  The Western-oriented liberals do not have any real power and stand, as we are seeing now; they are only the fringe block striding on the Military’s shoulders.

Writing for the Hindu on July 27, 2013 eminent foreign policy expert Chinmaya R Gharekhan “The genie of people empowerment has come out of the bottle in the largest Arab country and it will definitely not acquiesce n a prolonged power grab by the army. Millions will again take to the streets if they feel their hard won power is slipping away from their hands. The ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes in Tunisia and Libya would no doubt draw their own lessons from the Egyptian upheaval”.

The ouster of Mubarak on 11 February 2011 was a stage managed arrangement on the behest of Egyptian deep state that too; temporarily quell the profound public resentment against the decades of autocracy. After the fall of Mubarak, the same deep state never allowed harbingering a new democratic beginning for Egypt.

Ironically, millions of Egyptians who voted for Morsi's presidential bid in June 2012 feel that their long-fought-for democratic rights have been trampled on by the same military machine that they rose up against in January 2011 as part of the Arab awakening. 

In less than three years time Egypt has seen two paradoxical scenarios, first when hundreds of people killed demanding the ouster of decades old dictator Hosni Mubarak and in second scenario where equal number of people killed, demanding the reinstatement of democratically elected President Mohammad Morsi. In both the scenarios the slayers are the same, Egyptian security forces.

It remains to be seen that whether Junta regime will be successful in its intrigue, like its predecessors who consecutively outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood or Brotherhood will bounce back against all odds.

http://www.radianceweekly.com/370/11042/egypt039s-al-sisi-dragged-the-country-into-civil-war/2013-08-04/covery-story/story-detail/egypts-al-sisi-dragged-the-country-into-civil-war.html

Isolated Erdoğan Vying for Broader Kurdish Ties

It reminds me of the words of prominent Kurdish politician Leyla Zana’s statement last year, wherein she emphasised: “I believe that he [Prime Minister Erdogan] will be able to solve this [Kurdish] issue. I have never lost my faith in him solving this issue. And I don’t want to lose my faith in him.”  ‘Be that as it may’, Zana’s trust is not justified entirely by the September 30 democratisation package announced by Erdogan but termed by many observers as a good beginning of a long process.

To grasp Turkey’s contemporary Kurdish policy, it is essential to put it in perspective with the past. Yet, the Kurdish question is a complex and multi-layered topic and its history is manifold; one could say that there are several histories of the Kurdish question. This starts with Turkey’s “policy of denial”, since the formation of Republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kamal, that the Kurds indeed constitute a minority.

It is worth mentioning here that in 1992 the then Turkish President Turgut Ozal even argued for the recognition of PKK as a participant in Turkey’s political system and for the amnesty of the PKK fighters. Ozal could not resist the military, Kemalist and Nationalist, over the protests of his reconciliation policy. He was forced to surrender the responsibility to deal with the Kurdish question to the military. That has taken the death toll of 40,000 people since the armed struggle started in the early eighties.

Writing for Al-Monitor on 3 October, eminent Turkish journalist and political expert Mustafa Akyol said: “The bulk of the reforms in question relate to Turkey’s most serious and lethal problem: the “Kurdish question,” or the tension between Turkey’s strict official nationalism and the aspirations of its large Kurdish minority. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Turkish Republic tried to “solve” this problem in very crude ways: simply by banning the Kurdish language and culture and suppressing Kurdish revolts with heavy-handed security measures. Yet, since it came to power in 2002, Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) has replaced both of these long-time policies with legal reforms for Kurdish rights and political dialogue with Kurdish separatists.”

To remind the reform process under AKP government led by Prime Minister Erdogan, we have to revisit the 18 December 2002 regulation concerning the language of Radio and broadcast. This regulation authorised the state owned Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) in the non-official language.  

The lifting of a common oath taken by school children is also a reform that may win some Kurdish hearts and minds, since it used to begin with the proclamation, “I am a Turk,” and end with a bizarre line that reflected the totalitarian aspects of Turkey’s founding ideology: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!” In Erdoğan’s own words he uttered during a mass opening ceremony in Adana on 5 October “Lining up kids every morning and making them chant slogans from the 1930s, the Cold War and the era of the Iron Curtain, is not nationalism. Nationalism is building classrooms where those kids can receive education in humane conditions.”

While Erdogan’s reforms might indeed be “just a half-full glass,” as prominent Turkish journalist and editor of Hurriyat daily, Murat Yetkin, in his 1 October 2013 editorial, puts it, but there is no major political party in the country that offers anything better.

Among numerous negative developments ‘from Iraq to Syria and from Iran to Egypt’ in the region, Ankara’s only consolation is its deepening ties with the Kurds of the region ranging from Iraq to Syria to Iran and of course among its own Kurdish population with the help of ongoing peace process.

The ties between Turkey and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq have deepened in last few years and both the sides refer to it as “strategic relations”. Without a doubt, their annual volume of trade, which has reached $9 billion in 2012, lends the impression of strategic depth, but the springtime weather along the Ankara-Erbil axis remains a bit unstable.

If Turkey manages to complete its terrorism settlement process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), it will have great influence on other Kurdish populations in the region, said Abdulbaset Sieda, former head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), Syria’s political opposition in exile. Sieda, who is Kurdish, was the leader of the SNC between June and November of last year. He is also an academic who has written a number of books on the Kurdish population in Syria.

Regionally isolated Erdogan is now solely banking on deepening Turkish-Kurdish ties that are not only limited to his own Kurdish population inside Turkey and with the Kurds in Iraq who are ruling the northern part of the country almost independently from Baghdad.

A visit of Syrian Kurd leader Saleh Muslim to Turkey has cleared the mistrust with Syrian Kurds. Turkey has okayed the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD) administration in the Northern part of Syria that borders with Turkey. Turkey’s backing of the regional Kurdish conference in Northern Iraq is a growing signal of broader Turkish-Kurdish understanding that is not only limited to solving its local Kurdish issue. Though, Turkey very well knows that solving its own Kurdish issue is a must before erecting a grand alliance with the Kurds of the region.

Turkish Government’s peace process with the rebels of Kurdistan workers Party (PKK) is going through withdrawal process of PKK fighters from Turkish territory to the mountains of Kandil governed by autonomous Kurdistan Regional government in Iraq. The Turkish Government, through accord with the Kurdish fighters, wants the bloodshed to be stopped which has taken a toll of 40,000 people since arms struggle started in the year 1985.

There have been previous instances when Turkish authorities reached the peace deal with PKK guerrillas but that truce could not last long and PKK fighters took the arms again. But this time it looks like that the process is comprehensive and having huge impact on regional power equation since the Kurds are divided in four countries of the region namely Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Though, the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has cleared the first stage yet it has many internal and external challenges and obstacles on the path ahead, so far both the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and the PKK seem to be fully committed to the signing of a peace agreement that will have far-reaching consequences for Turkey and beyond. If peace prevails, everybody stands to gain something – except Iran, Syria and of course, Nouri Al Maliki’s Iraq.

http://radianceweekly.in/portal/issue/capital-punishment-why-doesnt-it-deter-a-murderer/article/erdogan-vying-for-broader-kurdish-ties/

Erdoğan’s Morally Correct Stand on Egypt & Syria

Prolonged Arab awakening and its reverse in Egypt had put Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan into immense complexity. The country presented by its leader as a role model of Muslim democracy, is now facing a paraxial situation from Syria to Iraq and from Egypt to Iran. Turkey, once a trouble shooter of the region, is now embedded in regional chaos, where almost every country in the region is unstable. Prolonged Syrian civil war, Egyptian coup, Iraq’s sectarian strife, tensions with Iran on regional issues and, last but not the least, growing uneasiness with Arab monarchies that are now in opposite camp supporting the military coup in Egypt whereas Erdoğan vehemently opposed the coup against Islamist leaning President Mohamed Morsi.

Ever since the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (pronounced Rajab Tayyab Erdogan) led AK Party (AKP) came to power in 2001, Turkey has started looking increasingly to its Muslim and Arab Eastern neighbours. Prime Minister Erdoğan has personally shaped excellent rapports with various regional leaders, including Basher Al-Assad, Ahamdinejad of Iran, and the late Ghaddafi of Libya. His personal efforts have put Turkey in the core of Middle Eastern geopolitics and simultaneously improved Turkey’s commercial and political standing in those countries.

From the time when the Arab uprising against dictators started in the spring of 2011 and reached the Syrian hinterland, Erdoğan personally tried to direct Al-Assad to solve the crisis but he forgot that Al-Assad is an ingrained dictator and would not take his advice sufficiently seriously. Erdoğan personally felt disregarded when Basher Al-Assad did not heed to his advice and refused to implement the reforms advised by Erdoğan and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

The ‘zero problems with neighbourhood’ policy architected by foreign minister Davutoğlu suddenly turned into ‘zero friends in the neighbourhood’ as Al-Maliki of Iraq also started bickering against Turkey on Iran’s behest. Now Turkey is in a war-like situation with Syria, diplomatic strife with Iraq and Iran and has seriously troubled relations with Israel, even after the accomplishment of long awaited apology. Another huge setback was the Egyptian military coup that has severely crippled Erdoğan’s regional manoeuvres.  The entire Middle Eastern schematic that Erdoğan has shaped in the last 10 years has been fatally disturbed by the regional upheaval.

Undoubtedly, it is imperative for Turkey to emerge victorious from the Syrian quagmire for its own standing in the Middle East. It is extraordinarily difficult for a country like Turkey to live in the atmosphere of animosity in the bewildered region because Turkey is expected to lead the region politically and diplomatically. I am of the belief that Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-European (EU) partners have put Turkey in a situation where she can neither withdraw herself nor can she act militarily to cleanse the Syrian swamp.

Fist the coup d’état and now the bloody massacre of anti-coup, pro-Morsi supporters in Egypt has exacerbated Erdoğan where he likened the new military leader Al-Sisi to Pharaoh. The regional pro status-quo consisting of US-EU-Israel and Arab monarchies openly backing the coup has isolated Erdoğan. It remains to be seen how Erdoğan would manage his country’s relationship with the GCC monarchies who are the foremost backers of military coup in Egypt. Turkey that has been at odds with Iran on Syrian issue is now also at odds with Saudi Arabia on the Egyptian coup. It will turn out to be a humongous task for Erdoğan to manage the souring ties with two regional heavyweights on two different issues.

The Syrian crisis has opened the Pandora’s box of Shia-Sunni conflict in the entire west Asian region that was long subdued due to the US invasion of Iraq, Israeli-Palestine conflict and Turkish-Iranian bonhomie in the pre-Syrian crisis period. Now the region has divided along sectarian lines, where Sunnites are Supporting Sunnites and Shiites are backing Shiites. The problem has taken a sectarian tone from Yemen to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia to Syria and Iraq to Lebanon. The Syrian crisis has turned the greater Middle East in a Shia-Sunni turf war in which one side has Iran, al-Maliki, Hezbollah and al-Assad and the other has the Saudi-Qatar-led GCC and Turkey.

This bloody sectarian conflict will not be resolved in next few months or years. As the geopolitical events unfold, we will witness a quasi-permanent fratricidal intra-Islamic sectarian war for decades in the west Asian region, culminating into major cartographical changes. The US strategic retreat from the Middle East and pivot to East Asia will finally allow history to reemerge in the Middle East uncontaminated by the hegemonic order imposed by the Western-US’ hyper-power.

Many Turkish experts are of the opinion that Erdoğan has hastened his disenfranchisement with the brutal regime of Bashar-Al-Assad. He should have moulded his policies in a way that provided him the prominence of regional statesman so that he could mediate in the ominous sectarian conflict as a neutral power broker. By getting involved in the crisis he has become a part of problem himself and misplaced the advantage of neutrality for solving the impending sectarian catastrophe in the region.

Suffice it to say that though isolated in the region, Turkey of today under Erdogan’s leadership has set the benchmark of democratic and ethical governance in the most unstable region ruled by west backed despots. Turkey is the only country in the region that took equally tough stand against the dictator of Syria and Egypt’s coup and now the junta regime. Morally correct stand of Erdoğan administration, in the wake of regional crisis will pave the way for a stronger Turkey in the post status-quo Middle East and North Africa.

http://radianceweekly.in/portal/issue/erdogans-morally-correct-stand-on-egypt-syria/article/erdogans-morally-correct-stand-on-egypt-syria-2/

Only a statesman can solve Turkey’s Kurdish issue

A wishful article by Barçın Yinanç, entitled ‘Turkey’s Y generation will solve the Kurdish problem’  appeared in Hurriyet Daily, where she shared and analyzed her experience of the Gezi Park protests and hoped for a solution to the Kurdish issue by the ‘Y’ generation of Turkey protesting at Gezi park and elsewhere in the country.

This article has compelled me to write an opinion piece for my readers here. I myself have witnessed many street protests in different Indian cities against the incumbent government, primarily by the anti-corruption brigade. The euphoria of these anti- corruption demonstrations fizzled out with the coming of monsoon rains in Delhi and elsewhere in the country.

It is noteworthy that these kind of youth protests in countries that have established democratic rules, where people are allowed to freely elect and reject their leaders through ballet boxes, do not sustain for long. The environmental protests may go on for years against projects that threaten the remaining green areas in the cities and the uprooting of trees and forested areas. Be that as it may, when elections are not far-off, these youth should have worked on mobilizing voters to make their demands felt instead of vandalizing the state infrastructure.

Interestingly, the two prominent and ideologically divergent media houses of the country – the Zaman, run by Gulenists, and Hurriyet, mouth piece of Kemalists  - are competitively spewing venom against one Man, the Prime Minister Erdogan. The nexus of two distinct ideologies to bring down Erdogan is a hallmark of the recent nationwide protests.

The same groups of ideologues who discreetly oppose the Turkish-Kurdish peace deal are, subsequently, playing into the hands of regional and global foreign powers.

It is pertinent to say that the chronic Kurdish issue – which has taken a huge death toll and alienated nearly a quarter of the Turkish population from the mainstream of the country – was put into action by the autocratic leaders/juntas of the Kemalist republic, not by the AK party. Even the identity of Kurds was denied and they were termed ‘Mountain Turks’. Nomenclature of their cities and villages were changed, the use of the Kurdish language were banned in public and people were sent to jail for exercising their basic rights. Not so long ago, Kurdish lawmaker Leyla Zena was put behind bars for speaking Kurdish in the country’s parliament.

The decades’ long assimilation policies were imposed by the same Kemalist and nationalist ideologues whose progeny is described as the ‘Y’ generation of today’s Turkey. Ideologically and methodologically they are neither compatible nor eligible to solve the longstanding Kurdish issue.

Only a statesman like Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan is capable of implanting the peace deal. He possesses enough authority and public support to take a huge political risk in solving the Kurdish problem. The other big point is that Erdogan sees the Kurdish problem through Islamic spectacles, where most Kurds who are Sunni Moslems can be modelled in his schematics of religious brotherhood within Turkey and in neighbouring countries with a substantial Kurdish population mix.

It is of great significance that, in the Middle East in general and Turkey in particular, Ethnic Nationalism is dying down on the behest of religious/sectarian nationalism. The rise of religious/ sectarian nationalism is also galvanized by the Syrian stalemate where civil war has turned into Shia-Sunni strife that has already spilt over into Iraq and Lebanon. The repercussions of the Syrian uprising have aggravated this menace and seized the whole region in its grip.

The youth at Gezi Park may be well aware of their country’s problems, and agitating for freedom they feel is being encroached on by the incumbent government by condemning various laws passed by the majority AKP-led parliament. Their protests against crony capitalism, which is allegedly widespread in the AKP government, may be legitimate. The environmental issues, that are important for the overall health of the nation, are well taken by the country.

There is no doubt that Erdogan takes things personally and the entire AKP is revolving around his charisma: an example of weak political institutions where the individual is more powerful than the institution (party) itself. Yet this is the history of the Muslim world, where strong individuals are loved, appreciated and supported by the masses over and above the politico-religious framework of governance.

Under Erdogan’s leadership, Turkey has been reborn as a nation of progress and prosperity, with aspirations toward the best ideals of democracy and freedom. Within the last decade, this ‘statesman’ has given Turkey a functioning, independent judiciary, 206 new dams, heavy investment in education with thousands of  new teachers, and a fiscal position that is the envy of Europe and the EU. At the same time, his administration has transformed Turkey into a regional energy and air transport hub and added 900,000 hectares of forested land in the country’s landmass. Since 2003, the Turkish economy has seen a three-fold increase and become the 17th largest economy of the world.

The so-called ‘Y’ generation has created havoc in the country, where 89 police vehicles, 42 private vehicles, 22 buses, 94 shops and one apartment were vandalized by these ‘peaceful- democratic’ protestors. They also sabotaged the offices of the ruling AK Party.

Suffice to say that it is futile to think that these same vandals could solve chronic and long impending issues such as Turkey’s Kurdish problem.

If things go according to plan the two insistent individuals, Prime Minister Erdogan and jailed PKK head Abdullah Ocalan, can not only decide the fate of the Turkish Republic but also that of the Levant, Iraq and Iran. History bears testimony that all the major peace accords in the world have been put into action by statesmen, not by the young ‘marauders’.

http://kurdistantribune.com/2013/only-statesman-can-solve-turkeys-kurdish-issue/

Arab Spring – Reintegration or further disintegration of the region?

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Levant, Iraq and Iran are the regions that were mostly conquered by Muslim armies at the time of the Rashidun Caliphs. They converted the whole swath of land to the religion of Islam. After conversion to Islam, the people of the region lived under different Muslim dynasties from the seventh century AD untl the early twentieth century as autonomous geographic units under a central command that has shifted according to advent and exodus of different dynasties. Then came the western Christian imperial powers of the British, French and Italian empires. They removed the fragmented Muslim rulers and ruled the region with an iron fist for almost a century. The masses of the occupied lands rose against their occupiers and a freedom struggle started taking shape in the region.

When the military occupation became difficult for the colonial powers, they devised a plan to divide and rule the colonized territories indirectly. Prior to relinquishing their decree they divided the land of Arabs & Muslims into small sovereign states to rule them circuitously. To control the power structure of those countries they curbed the people’s voice by supporting despots for their own benefits and provided them the required legitimacy to rule their people with the same iron fist that they used to rule with.

The people of the region who speak the same language and are adherent of the same religion of Islam are being divided by the colonial powers to suit future geopolitics. Muaamar Ghaddafi the deceased Libyan leader might have developed Libya and made the country best on social indicators in the African continent but he was the foremost opponent of Arab Maghreb unity; the same with Ben Ali and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and King Mohammad of Morocco. Mubarak contained Egypt in its geographic boundaries and relinquishes its leadership status amongst Arabs in general and North Africans in particular. The Assad family has ruled Syria for the last four decades and their main motive was to rule the country against the wishes of the people and they never try to annul the illegitimate division of Levant by the colonial powers.

The discontent of the people against the dictatorial rulers of this region exploded in the form of Arab spring where people poured onto the streets defying the threats and fear of the cruel dictators. In many countries they have forced the dictators out and deposed them from the power. Still the people of Syria are fighting against the dictatorial regime of Basher al Assad and in any case he will have to relinquish power in days to come.

The question that here arises is: will this lead to the integration of the region or will it be divided further in small political units to suit the western powers who will again to rule them indirectly for decades to come? In my view the people of the region want to live with dignity and unity under the umbrella of central headship and they know that only the unity amongst the people of the region can provide them what they want.

Many observers are of the belief that the Arab spring is a western-hatched plan to further disintegrate the countries of the Middle East and North Africa into smaller sovereign entities. That will serve the purpose of the neo-colonial powers of USA & its European partners. That will further increase the unchallenged life-span of the Jewish state of Israel. The disintegration of Libya into Benghazi and Tripolitania and Coptic land for Egyptian Christians. The further creation of Alawi sovereign lands and likewise for the Druze and Christians in Syria is on the cards.

Foreseeable Kurdish integration is also a very important development in the region, scattered in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria if Kurds are able to unite under one umbrella or with a strategic alliance, the Kurds can change the whole dynamics of the region. Yet it is for the Kurds to get united first under a common and stated vision.

Recent regional turmoil seems to make this the right time for Kurds to assert to their goal of living under one umbrella with fellow Arabs and Turks in a unified sovereign/ autonomous region. (The problems of Kurds in Iran are somehow different from the other Kurdish regions. In Iran they have two simultaneous problems of religion and ethnicity/language. The majority of Kurds in Iran remain Sunni after more than five centuries rule of different Shi’ite regimes).

If people of the region will be able to attain real democracy then certainly we will see the boundaries of the current nation states of the entire region dismantle and a reintegration process of the geography of the region, from peninsula Arabia to the Levant and further to the Eastern-most Arab lands (Arab Maghreb) will form the shape of the union. To attain the goal of reintegration, peoples’ movements are important to make it an issue on the political and electoral agenda and force the leaders to fight the elections on the agenda of regional integration.

There is no reason why the adherents of the same religion and people who speak the same language and most importantly live in same geography cannot unite and live under one umbrella of central leadership as they used to live for centuries before the advent of western colonial powers.

The leaders of Tunisia and Libya have already raised the issue of assimilation of their respective countries into a single political entity. If the nascent democracy will be able to prevail in the countries of the region then we may witness the integration in the newly liberated countries of  North Africa. This will culminate in a people’s movement in the other countries like Algeria, Morocco and Egypt, of the redundant Arab Maghreb Union, then the Levant after the fall of the Al-Assad regime in Syria. Peninsula Arab sheikhdoms that have already formed a loose form of union called the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are already looking forward to strengthen it to a full-fledged union (combined economy, armed forces and foreign relations ) of the current member states and later may include Yemen too.

The people of the region do not harbor mistrust amongst themselves; it is and was the dictators who sow (ed) the seed of mistrust amongst the people to tighten their grip on power through the fervor of pseudo nationalism. That Arab nationalism has already vanished. The major Western powers including the state of Israel will try their best to resist the change but the natural flow and free will of people shall ultimately prevail.

The Arab spring is a natural flow of people’s will and it clearly indicates what the people want. There is the hell of the difference between exactly what the people want and what the despots of the region do. The people want the integration of the region into union or federation. Receding nationalism is slowly being replaced by religious patriotism, spearheaded by the transnational ideology of Muslim Brotherhood, and this is a natural flow and will of the people to reshape the regional geography. Only time will tell whether the present upheaval will ultimately help to integrate the region or whether the chaos will be exploited by western imperialist to further disintegrate the region and fulfil the goals of their grand chess board.

http://kurdistantribune.com/2013/arab-spring-reintegration-or-further-disintegration-of-region/