tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-285314422024-03-08T04:21:18.918+02:00Dalia Ziada blog - مدونة داليا زيادة Middle East and the Mediterranean affairs from the perspective of an Egyptian award-winning writer and human rights activist. Writes in Arabic and English. Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comBlogger921125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-15298158083928591322023-10-22T18:50:00.009+03:002023-10-22T18:53:18.033+03:00Tensions and Cooperation Patterns in the East Med | Dalia Ziada | The Atlantic Council & ISPI<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="356" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BinuHJ-kfi0" width="480" youtube-src-id="BinuHJ-kfi0"></iframe></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I recently took part in a Washington, D.C. conference organized by The Atlantic Council and Italy's ISPI. The conference aimed to discuss the tensions and patterns of cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean. During my intervention, I focused on Egypt's policy in the region and its impact on the geopolitics and geo-economics of the area. The complexities of Egypt's domestic political repression and economic challenges were also discussed in relation to the Presidential Elections in Egypt and the Israel-Arab peace initiatives. </span></p><div data-draftjs-conductor-fragment="{"blocks":[{"key":"35dg1","text":"Our Chairperson, Dalia Ziada, recently took part in a Washington, D.C. conference organized by The Atlantic Council and Italy's ISPI. The conference aimed to discuss the tensions and patterns of cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean. During her intervention, Dalia focused on Egypt's policy in the region and its impact on the geopolitics and geo-economics of the area. The complexities of Egypt's domestic political repression and economic challenges were also discussed in relation to the Presidential Elections in Egypt and the Israel-Arab peace initiatives.","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{"textAlignment":"justify"}},{"key":"fkf1q","text":"","type":"unstyled","depth":0,"inlineStyleRanges":[],"entityRanges":[],"data":{"textAlignment":"justify"}}],"entityMap":{},"VERSION":"9.14.6"}" style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="JvlZN rqyPc p7Opnu leTfN public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr fixed-tab-size rich_content_P" data-block="true" data-editor="editor" data-offset-key="fvbhs-0-0"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="fvbhs-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fvbhs-0-0"></span></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-42127338111207262052023-06-09T22:36:00.001+03:002023-06-13T22:40:17.460+03:00Egypt: A National Dialogue or A Political Maneuver?<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFE54yGwgno6jQ-ttVePjt1ZinD98orYgCzuDZrWCbHDlglYnAWWhFbdB1hxraJ0PrLYSW3ZdodlBXuBLJepb5DKtbnJ75QM_w4O7bgsGVZoVHs34O1V1WsLmwSLykIC1HjqjdxmOKRx30nKutqN9y7D_cBzImXz1tyU3AX2PDM5NasIJuaw/s720/EgyptSisiPortraitStreetRTR3IUYU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFE54yGwgno6jQ-ttVePjt1ZinD98orYgCzuDZrWCbHDlglYnAWWhFbdB1hxraJ0PrLYSW3ZdodlBXuBLJepb5DKtbnJ75QM_w4O7bgsGVZoVHs34O1V1WsLmwSLykIC1HjqjdxmOKRx30nKutqN9y7D_cBzImXz1tyU3AX2PDM5NasIJuaw/w400-h400/EgyptSisiPortraitStreetRTR3IUYU.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Only one month after the official launch of the National Dialogue in Egypt, the coordinators called for a temporary freeze on future sessions. They justified the pause by claiming that the conference room dedicated to convening the sessions had been damaged in a mild sandstorm that swept Cairo on June 1. Given the illogicality of the claim, observers doubt that the dialogue coordinators halted the sessions as a result of the storm, but rather to avoid a clash between participating political parties over the recent violent attacks on the Egyptian Engineers’ Syndicate elections last week. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Two days before the storm, a group launched a deliberate violent assault on the Egyptian Engineers’ Syndicate while voting on the continuity of the current syndicate leader, Tariq al-Nabarawy, who is independent of all political affiliations. The public prosecutor is currently investigating the shocking incident. Yet the footage captured by eyewitnesses and investigations conducted by the local press indicate that several Members of Parliament affiliated with the Mustakbal Watan (Future of the Nation) Party were leading the attackers and personally participated in the offensive.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mustakbal Watan is the majority party in the current parliament. The party was founded in November 2014, a few months after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took office. Many of the old guards of the Mubarak regime joined this party and won most of the electoral districts loyal to Mubarak’s dissolved National Democratic Party (NDP). One of the Mustakbal Watan party-affiliated parliamentarians who appeared in the footage of the syndicate attacks was a prominent member of Mubarak’s NDP and was previously accused of hiring horses and camels to attack nonviolent protesters in Tahrir Square, during Egypt’s Arab Spring revolution in 2011.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In other words, it’s not the sandstorm that damaged the national dialogue’s prospects. It was the fact that this recent violent incident broadly exposed the dialogue’s fragility and lack of credibility. Even before the attack, the so-called “national dialogue” in Egypt had little to do with its glamourous title. It is neither a dialogue nor a national matter. Instead, it is a state-sponsored speaker series with an ever-extending time frame, carefully designed to co-opt weak but vocal opposition to President al-Sisi and to improve Cairo’s tarnished image in the West. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Mubarakists and Nasserists have been the most critical of Sisi’s policies over the past nine years. Central to their criticism are comparisons between the current era and their nostalgic memories of their respective eras of power. These groups feel a sense of estrangement under the current state, especially in regard to the state’s increasingly open bilateral and regional cooperation with Israel. The leftists, in particular, center animosity towards Israel in their political ideology.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Keeping these two particular groups busy under the guise of a national dialogue is one of the state’s strategies to calm political tensions and diffuse popular anger directed at the government as Egypt weathers the unprecedented economic crisis of the past year. In the meantime, such talks and gatherings can allow state representatives to make direct contact with prominent opposition figures, persuading them to ally with the state’s agenda before the anticipated 2024 presidential elections. Beyond this, however, the national dialogue is unlikely to deliver consequential results. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The national dialogue organizers spent an entire year doing logistical preparations, forming committees and subcommittees, and hiring rapporteurs and other staff for these committees. Despite the long planning period, the organizers failed to invite key factions of Egyptian civil society to what was marketed as a “national, comprehensive, and all-inclusive” dialogue. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Two groups have been deliberately excluded from joining the national dialogue. One of them is the Muslim Brotherhood—an illegal organization in Egypt—while the other is pro-west, pro-regional peace activists and civil society organizations. The Liberal Democracy Institute—a think tank which I lead—is one example. When I asked why I was banned from participating in the dialogue, I was told that my political views on Israel were disliked by the Nasserist dialogue organizers. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Other public figures with political orientations that are displeasing to the leftist/Nasserist organizers have been likewise excluded, including Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian-American sociologist and one of the oldest advocates of political reform and democratization in Egypt. His think tank, the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies, is the oldest think tank in the Arab world focusing on civil society and democratization, yet it, too, was excluded. Notably, Dr. Ibrahim had previously spoken at Israeli universities. The absence of liberal pro-West activists at the dialogue was all the more noticeable given the invitation for Salafist figures to attend. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Despite the inefficiencies, there is a bright side to these gatherings. In the best-case scenario, the involved parties may use the momentum to directly express grievances. Already, former foreign minister Amr Moussa asserted that “internal mistakes” are partly to blame for Egypt’s current crises. Participants may be able to pressure for the release of their affiliated political prisoners or for some minor reforms to certain legislations and policies that are in line with the agenda of the state. Examples include the calls for making laws to control population growth, extending judicial supervision over elections, amending the notorious pre-trial detention law, and perhaps launching a commission for anti-discrimination wherein some of the leftist opposition figures could be appointed.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, the most controversial topics that would likely challenge state leadership will be completely avoided. At the inauguration of the national dialogue in early May, the dialogue’s coordinator Diaa Rashwan declared the following three topics off-limits: “the existing constitution, foreign policy issues, and national security issues.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When Sisi called for a comprehensive dialogue last year, hopes were high that Egyptian political life would finally be revitalized out of the rut of autocracy that has been dragging it down for decades. Indeed, the idea of incremental reforms rather than revolution appeals to most citizens, politicians, and activists in Egypt today. However, the shape and format of the final product of the so-called “national dialogue” turned out to be disappointing. The mere fact that certain topics and individuals have been deliberately excluded makes it hard to believe that the dialogue could contribute any tangible solutions to Egypt’s chronic political dysfunctions. The fact that dialogue discussions have now been suspended only reiterates this point.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This article was first published on <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/egypt-national-dialogue-or-political-maneuver" target="_blank">Fikra Forum</a> of the Washington Institute</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-59829464793801203692023-06-09T22:32:00.002+03:002023-06-13T22:36:32.500+03:00مصر: حوار وطني أم مناورة سياسية؟ <p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvX2lNQKM5zEKzyznrOyClgUrBLd8n4tMCpMm8astmFj-KnJ6INAuQwZTzafZOuzGaq7N-j8DvN6P3sA4H8l-dAxWbVa60fxsjrl2QfgLiH2F8BiPBysKjMJH656wzat-E1jAVlKr5_T8SmoqFsRb5QmfjVs7CWUbUmmmBy3-niOcFZKE7g/s720/EgyptSisiPortraitStreetRTR3IUYU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvX2lNQKM5zEKzyznrOyClgUrBLd8n4tMCpMm8astmFj-KnJ6INAuQwZTzafZOuzGaq7N-j8DvN6P3sA4H8l-dAxWbVa60fxsjrl2QfgLiH2F8BiPBysKjMJH656wzat-E1jAVlKr5_T8SmoqFsRb5QmfjVs7CWUbUmmmBy3-niOcFZKE7g/w400-h400/EgyptSisiPortraitStreetRTR3IUYU.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">بعد شهر واحد فقط من انطلاق "الحوار الوطني" رسميًا في مصر، دعا المنسقون إلى تعليق الدورات المستقبلية مؤقتًا، متذرّعين بأن قاعة المؤتمرات المخصصة لعقد الجلسات قد تضررت نتيجة عاصفة رملية خفيفة ضربت القاهرة في الأول من حزيران/يونيو. ونظرًا لعدم منطقية هذا التبرير، يشكك المراقبون في أن يكون منسقو الحوار قد أوقفوا الجلسات فعلًا بسبب العاصفة، مرجحين أن يكون السبب هو تجنب الصدام بين الأحزاب السياسية المشاركة بسبب الهجمات العنيفة الأخيرة التي استهدفت انتخابات نقابة المهندسين المصرية الأسبوع الماضي. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">فقبل يومين من العاصفة، شنت مجموعة هجومًا عنيفًا متعمدًا على نقابة المهندسين المصرية أثناء التصويت على بقاء نقيب المهندسين الحالي، طارق النبراوي، في منصبه، وهو شخصية مستقلة لا تنتمي إلى أي جهة السياسية. وفي حين فتح المدعي العام تحقيقًا في الحادث المروع، تشير مقاطع الفيديو التي التقطها شهود العيان، والتحقيقات التي أجرتها الصحافة المحلية، إلى أن عددًا من نواب حزب "مستقبل وطن" كانوا يقودون المهاجمين ويشاركون شخصيًا في الاعتداء.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ويُشار إلى أن حزب "مستقبل وطن" يملك الأكثرية في مجلس النواب الحالي. وقد أُسّس الحزب في تشرين الثاني/نوفمبر 2014 بعد بضعة أشهر على وصول عبد الفتاح السيسي إلى سدة الرئاسة. وانضم الكثيرون من الشخصيات الموالية لنظام مبارك إلى هذا الحزب وفازوا في معظم الدوائر الانتخابية الموالية لـ "الحزب الوطني الديمقراطي" المنحل الذي كان يتزعمه مبارك. وجدير بالذكر أن أحد نواب حزب "مستقبل وطن" الذي ظهر في لقطات الاعتداء على النقابة هو عضو بارز في "الحزب الوطني الديمقراطي" وسبق أن اتُّهم باستئجار الخيول والجمال لمهاجمة المتظاهرين السلميين في ميدان التحرير خلال الربيع العربي في مصر عام 2011.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">بعبارات أخرى، ليست العاصفة الرملية هي التي أحبطت آفاق الحوار الوطني، بل حقيقة أن هذا الحادث العنيف الذي وقع مؤخرًا كشف بدرجة كبيرة عن هشاشة الحوار وافتقاره إلى المصداقية. فحتى قبل الهجوم، لم يكن لما يسمى بـ "الحوار الوطني" في مصر علاقة تُذكر بعنوانه الرنّان. فلا هو حوار ولا هو مسألة وطنية، بل سلسلة خطابات منظمة برعاية الدولة ضمن إطار زمني لا متناهٍ، ومصممة بعناية لاستمالة المعارضة الضعيفة، ولكن الصريحة للرئيس المصري عبد الفتاح السيسي ولتحسين صورة القاهرة المشوهة بنظر الغرب. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">لقد كان أتباع مبارك والناصريون الأكثر انتقادًا لسياسات السيسي على مدى السنوات التسع الماضية. وتتمحور أبرز انتقاداتهم حول المقارنات بين الحقبة الراهنة وذكرياتهم عن حقبتَي حكمهما السابقتَين اللتين يحنّون إليهما. وتشعر هاتان المجموعتان بالغربة في ظل الوضع الحالي، خصوصًا إزاء تعاون الدولة الثنائي والإقليمي المفتوح والمتزايد مع إسرائيل. ويضع اليساريون، على وجه الخصوص، العداء تجاه إسرائيل في صميم أيديولوجيتهم السياسية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">واندرج إبقاء هاتين المجموعتين منشغلتين تحت ستار الحوار الوطني ضمن استراتيجيات الدولة لتهدئة التوترات السياسية ونزع فتيل الغضب الشعبي الموجه ضد الحكومة في وقت تتغلب فيه مصر على الأزمة الاقتصادية غير المسبوقة التي وقعت العام الماضي. في غضون ذلك، يمكن أن تسمح مثل هذه المحادثات والتجمعات لممثلي الدولة بإجراء اتصالات مباشرة مع شخصيات معارضة بارزة وإقناعها بالتحالف مع الدولة قبل الانتخابات الرئاسية المرتقبة في عام 2024. ولكن من المستبعد أن يحقق الحوار الوطني نتائج لاحقة أبعد من ذلك. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">فقد أمضى منظمو الحوار الوطني عامًا كاملًا في التحضيرات اللوجستية وتشكيل اللجان واللجان الفرعية وتوظيف المقررين وغيرهم من الموظفين لهذه اللجان. وعلى الرغم من فترة التخطيط الطويلة، لم يدعُ المنظمون الفصائل الرئيسية في المجتمع المدني المصري إلى ما تم تسويقه على أنه حوار "وطني وشامل وجامع".</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">استُبعدت مجموعتان عمدًا من الحوار الوطني، إحداهما هي جماعة الإخوان المسلمين، وهي منظمة غير قانونية في مصر، والأخرى هي جماعات الناشطين الموالية للغرب والمؤيدة للسلام في المنطقة ومنظمات المجتمع المدني، على غرار "معهد الديمقراطية الليبرالية"، وهو مركز أبحاث أترأسه شخصيًا. وعندما سألت عن سبب منعي من المشاركة في الحوار، قيل لي إن آرائي السياسية حول إسرائيل لا تروق لمنظمي الحوار الناصريين.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">فضلًا عن ذلك، استُبعدت شخصيات عامة أخرى ذات توجهات سياسية لا ترضي المنظمين اليساريين/الناصريين، من بينها الدكتور سعد الدين إبراهيم، وهو عالم اجتماع مصري أمريكي بارز وأحد أقدم المدافعين عن الإصلاح السياسي والتحول الديمقراطي في مصر. ويُعد مركز الأبحاث التابع له، "ابن خلدون للدراسات الديمقراطية"، أقدم مركز أبحاث في العالم العربي يركز على المجتمع المدني والتحول الديمقراطي، ومع ذلك تم استبعاده هو أيضًا. والجدير بالذكر أن الدكتور إبراهيم كان قد تحدث سابقًا في الجامعات الإسرائيلية. وكان غياب الناشطين الليبراليين الموالين للغرب عن الحوار ملحوظًا بشكل خاص نظرًا إلى دعوة شخصيات سلفية إلى حضور جلسات الحوار. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">على الرغم من أوجه القصور، ثمة جانب مشرق لهذه التجمعات. في أفضل الأحوال، قد تستخدم الأطراف المعنية هذا الزخم للتعبير مباشرةً عن تظلماتها. وبالفعل، أكد وزير الخارجية السابق عمرو موسى أن "الأخطاء الداخلية" مسؤولةٌ جزئيًا عن الأزمات الحالية في مصر. وقد يتمكن المشاركون من الضغط لإطلاق سراح السجناء السياسيين التابعين لهم أو لإجراء إصلاحات طفيفة على بعض التشريعات والسياسات التي تتماشى مع أجندة الدولة. ومن الأمثلة على ذلك الدعوات إلى سن قوانين للسيطرة على النمو السكاني، وتوسيع نطاق الإشراف القضائي على الانتخابات، وتعديل القانون الشهير بشأن الاحتجاز السابق للمحاكمة، وربما أيضًا إطلاق لجنة لمكافحة التمييز يمكن فيها تعيين بعض شخصيات المعارضة اليسارية. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">مع ذلك، سيتم تجنب المواضيع الأكثر إثارة للجدل التي تتعارض على الأرجح مع قيادة الدولة. ففي افتتاح الحوار الوطني في أوائل أيار/مايو، أعلن منسق الحوار، ضياء رشوان، أن المواضيع الثلاثة التالية محظورة: "الدستور الحالي، وقضايا السياسة الخارجية، وقضايا الأمن القومي". </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">عندما دعا السيسي العام الماضي إلى حوار شامل، عُقدت آمال كبيرة على تفعيل الحياة السياسية في مصر أخيرًا للخروج من نفق الاستبداد الذي يسبب تراجعها منذ عقود. في الواقع، تروق فكرة الإصلاحات التدريجية بدلًا من الثورة لمعظم المواطنين والسياسيين والناشطين في مصر اليوم. ولكن تبيَّن أن صيغة وشكل المنتج النهائي لما يسمى بـ "الحوار الوطني" مخيب للآمال. فمع استبعاد بعض المواضيع والأفراد عمدًا، يصعب التصديق أن الحوار قد يسهم في أي حلول ملموسة للاختلالات السياسية المزمنة في مصر. وما تعليق مناقشات الحوار سوى تأكيد جديد على هذه النقطة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">تم نشر هذا المقال أولاً في <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/ar/policy-analysis/msr-hwar-wtny-am-mnawrt-syasyt" target="_blank">منتدى فكرة</a> التابع لمعهد واشنطن لدراسات الشرق الأدنى</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-52885040768530551072023-06-08T21:50:00.001+03:002023-06-13T22:00:35.030+03:00MEMRI: Egyptian Liberal Writer Dalia Ziada Condemns Egyptians Celebrating Recent Killing Of Three Israeli Soldiers:<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIlMSbuThNoD-GDGSc9gzsN85k3qvxpksrl_uxzyzYkL8f-SLLOHJ1CTw3fkGwpcBuZikLZO_XtPz_L6XTQq8C9806SQWhksMZaNqykJoIKk-_hw0qU2UJ4SJ3CZ9iBK2jOcB_Wnshgv8d4FC1-AgMADW-kr0kaXBt3Q1EnThc3UXrrY8K3Q/s2240/Screenshot%202023-06-13%20at%209.59.13%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1720" data-original-width="2240" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIlMSbuThNoD-GDGSc9gzsN85k3qvxpksrl_uxzyzYkL8f-SLLOHJ1CTw3fkGwpcBuZikLZO_XtPz_L6XTQq8C9806SQWhksMZaNqykJoIKk-_hw0qU2UJ4SJ3CZ9iBK2jOcB_Wnshgv8d4FC1-AgMADW-kr0kaXBt3Q1EnThc3UXrrY8K3Q/w400-h308/Screenshot%202023-06-13%20at%209.59.13%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;">I am grateful for Middle East Media Research Institute for taking the time and effort to translate into English and document my denunciation of the recent killing of Israeli soldiers by an Egyptian policeman on the borders. Below is the text published by <a href="https://www.memri.org/reports/egyptian-liberal-writer-dalia-ziada-condemns-egyptians-who-are-celebrating-and-justifying" target="_blank">MEMRI</a>:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egyptian Liberal Writer Dalia Ziada Condemns Egyptians Who Are Celebrating And Justifying Recent Killing Of Three Israeli Soldiers: They Are Unpatriotic, Terrorists, Or Potential Terrorists</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In response to the widespread celebration on social media[1] of the killing of three Israeli soldiers on June 3, 2023 by an Egyptian policeman – a terror attack hailed as heroic and justified because the victims were Jewish and/or Israeli – Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian writer who is executive director of MEEM Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, strongly voiced her opposition to this trend.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Stating emphatically that those who celebrated and justified the attack are either terrorists or potential terrorists who might target their Christian neighbors if given the opportunity, Ziada wrote on her Facebook page, which has 30,000 followers, on June 4, 2023 that Israel should not be viewed as an enemy of Egypt, as it has supported Egypt on multiple occasions. She further stressed that "anyone who truly loves Egypt" cannot rejoice over such an event or "consider it heroic in any way."</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The following are translations of Ziada's Facebook posts criticizing celebrations of the attack.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Anyone Who Truly Loves Egypt Cannot Possibly Be Joyful Or Celebrate Such An Event, Nor Consider It A Heroic Act In Any Way"</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ziada wrote on Facebook on June 4, 2023: "A little bit of reason... This is not a match between [top Egyptian football clubs] Al Ahly and Al-Zamalek. It's about Egypt's national security.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"To those who are glorifying and justifying the attack carried out by an Egyptian security officer against Israeli soldiers yesterday, who exactly are you? What is your precise interest in doing so? Anyone who truly loves Egypt cannot possibly be joyful or celebrate such an event, nor consider it a heroic act in any way.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"First: What heroic act is there in trespassing the borders of a neighboring country with which we have a peace treaty and years of security cooperation, as well as countless economic interests? What has been achieved by killing soldiers who were stationed at their own borders, in a treacherous act that lacks any logical justification, except the desire of those behind it (using the security officer as a pawn) to ignite conflict between Egypt and Israel or, at the very least, to create a rift in their excellent relationship? Or perhaps the perpetrator is driven by extremist religious motives, such as those calling for the killing of Jews based on their religious identity, which is completely detrimental to Egypt and contradicts the principles of the Egyptian state.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Second: This incident could cause significant harm to Egypt's interests if it is not promptly addressed and contained by the Egyptian and Israeli authorities. The best way, in my opinion, to contain it is through transparent investigations supervised by both parties, along with taking all necessary measures to prevent its recurrence. This is exactly what the Egyptian defense minister promised his Israeli counterpart in a phone call shortly after the incident."</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egypt-Israel Cooperation "Has Been One Of The Most Important Factors In Egypt's Success In Overcoming A Very Critical Phase In Its History"</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"If you don't understand how Egypt's interests could be affected by an incident like this, take a look at the map:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Not to mention the constant threat posed by conflicts in these three locations to Egypt's national security.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"In light of all this, Egypt cannot afford to engage in a security or political battle (which is unnecessary and illogical) with Israel. The unprecedented cooperation between Egypt and Israel in recent years has been one of the most important factors in Egypt's success in overcoming a very critical phase in its history, amidst combating terrorism and facing immense economic challenges.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"During the period between 2013 and 2015, when Hamas elements infiltrated Sinai and later pledged allegiance to ISIS, Israeli forces were fighting alongside Egyptian forces against terrorism in Sinai.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"At a time when the entire world stood against Egypt after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, and as there were calls for imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions on Egypt, Israeli officials defended the modern Egyptian state in international forums. I personally heard them clearly say, 'The security and stability of Egypt under Sisi are necessary for the security and stability of Israel.'</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"[This is] not to mention the economic cooperation between Egypt and Israel in discovering and extracting gas in the Eastern Mediterranean and selling it to Europe and Asia. Israel chose to cooperate with Egypt in this matter over any other country in the Mediterranean basin, giving Egypt the ability to fulfill its dream of becoming an energy hub in the region, despite all the geopolitical complications and maritime border disputes."</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Israel Is Not An Enemy Of Egypt... It Has Stood By Egypt's Side In Its Most Critical Times"</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Israel is not an enemy of Egypt... I say it again: Israel is not an enemy of Egypt. Israel is Egypt's direct neighbor and one of the countries that stood by Egypt in its most critical times. There is absolutely no reason to ignite conflict with it. Anyone who does so or encourages it harms Egypt's interests greatly.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"This is a word of truth that I wanted to convey to people with rational minds, especially considering all the positive and loving attitudes of Israel towards Egypt that I have witnessed firsthand, and I am confident that the relevant authorities in Egypt fully understand the importance of all the points I mentioned and act accordingly, regardless of the usual media frenzy surrounding the issue.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"May God have mercy on the victims of the incident and protect the security, stability, and cooperation between Egypt and Israel."[2]</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Do Not Encourage Or Cheer For Extremism"; "The True Muslim Does Not Betray Those With Whom He Has A Covenant And Agreement"</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a subsequent post on June 7, 2023, Ziada wrote: "Every demagogue today who tries to justify celebrating the killing of Israeli soldiers on our borders by labeling them as Jews, or who believes according to his sick perspective that it as permissible to kill them even if they were peaceful and had not committed any aggression against them, is in reality either a terrorist or a potential terrorist.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Just as they targeted their Jewish neighbor on the border, they will, as soon as they have the opportunity, target their Christian neighbor on their street. It is they who harass and assault women and slaughter them in broad daylight if they refuse to marry them.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Do not encourage or cheer for extremism. The true Muslim is he who 'would not harm people by his tongue and his hand' (and here we are talking about all creatures to whom the description of people on Earth applies, not only Muslims).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"The true Muslim does not those with whom he has a covenant and agreement, no matter what happens. On the contrary, it is his duty to protect them if necessary. [Betrayal] is not the morality of the Prophet, the morality of the Companions, or even the morality of the Egyptians. Wake up, people."[3]</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">----- </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10656, Qatar-Affiliated Journalists, Clerics: The Egyptian Border Guard Who Perpetrated The Deadly Shooting Of Israeli Soldiers Is 'A Real Hero,' 'A Martyr' And 'The Pride Of The Arabs,' June 8, 2023, and MEMRI JTTM report Jihadis Eulogize Egyptian Policeman Who Killed Three Israeli Soldiers, Pray That Others Are Inspired To Attack Jews, June 6, 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">[2] Facebook.com/daliaziada/posts/pfbid034ETXCx5Ktn6QMCt4HJo3gPZSMyyA21U2h8qDNQWUWsUs9dBQkHhG5rQTVMUV4kGjl, June 4, 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">[3] Facebook.com/daliaziada/posts/pfbid0Mg5BdULvQTBjf6oXhgvEod2cB5tNQTMo7yvMErtVFJ9UqYhkRAV12Xm5D3LvsxjZl, June 7, 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-45308643096530718942023-06-07T12:57:00.001+03:002023-06-14T12:59:02.815+03:00Dalia Ziada interview on Kann News TV about Egyptians' reaction to Egypt-Israel border shooting<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="303" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6HvMroUwABg" width="494" youtube-src-id="6HvMroUwABg"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><p></p><div data-hook="rcv-block4" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" type="paragraph"></div><div class="xVISr Y9Dpf WkT0MK OZy-3 lnyWN T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" id="viewer-43hum" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; direction: ltr; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ricos-custom-p-font-size,unset); font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-p-min-height,unset); orphans: 2; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left !important; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><p></p><p class="xVISr Y9Dpf WkT0MK OZy-3 lnyWN T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" id="viewer-63nil" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; direction: ltr; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: var(--ricos-custom-p-font-size,unset); font-stretch: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-p-min-height,unset); orphans: 2; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left !important; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Israeli Kann News TV <a class="TWoY9 itht3" data-hook="linkViewer" href="https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1666520657927229440" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: var(--ricos-custom-link-color,var(--ricos-action-color,#0261ff)); cursor: pointer; font-family: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-family,unset); font-size: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-size,unset); font-style: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-style,unset); font-weight: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-weight,unset); line-height: var(--ricos-custom-link-line-height,unset); margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-link-min-height,unset); outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: var(--ricos-custom-link-text-decoration,none); vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u class="D-jZk" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">interviewed</u></a> Dalia Ziada to discuss the recent border shooting on Egypt-Israel border that led to the killing of three Israeli soldiers by an Egyptian security guard in early June 2023. </span></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left !important; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-16703510945520753452023-06-06T12:56:00.001+03:002023-06-14T12:57:39.040+03:00Dalia Ziada interview on i24 News TV to comment on Egypt-Israel border shooting<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="352" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wE_fvmL9bLQ" width="479" youtube-src-id="wE_fvmL9bLQ"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><p class="xVISr Y9Dpf WkT0MK OZy-3 lnyWN T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" id="viewer-f12kr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; direction: ltr; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: var(--ricos-custom-p-font-size,unset); font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-p-min-height,unset); outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I gave an <a class="TWoY9 itht3" data-hook="linkViewer" href="https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1666166006253862913" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-family,unset); font-size: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-size,unset); font-style: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-style,unset); font-weight: var(--ricos-custom-link-font-weight,unset); line-height: var(--ricos-custom-link-line-height,unset); margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-link-min-height,unset); outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: var(--ricos-custom-link-text-decoration,none); vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u class="D-jZk" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">interview</u></a> to i24 News TV to comment on Egypt-Israel border shooting.</span></span></p><div data-hook="rcv-block4" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;" type="paragraph"></div><div class="xVISr Y9Dpf WkT0MK OZy-3 lnyWN T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" id="viewer-48e6p" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; direction: ltr; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: var(--ricos-custom-p-font-size,unset); line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-p-min-height,unset); outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br role="presentation" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;" /></span></span></div><div data-hook="rcv-block5" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;" type="empty-line"></div><p class="xVISr Y9Dpf WkT0MK OZy-3 lnyWN T3Ond1 WkT0MK public-DraftStyleDefault-block-depth0 fixed-tab-size public-DraftStyleDefault-text-ltr" id="viewer-duk9o" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; direction: ltr; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: var(--ricos-custom-p-font-size,unset); font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; min-height: var(--ricos-custom-p-min-height,unset); outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Egypt 'commits to an exhaustive, joint investigation of the incident' "Egypt is keen to fix the image distortions of the friendly relations between the countries... What happened does not represent what Egyptians think about Israel but the exposure to brainwashing on social media," says Dalia Ziada to Middle East Now. </span></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span><span class="B2EFF public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; direction: ltr; display: block; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-custom-p-background-color,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-51591251461863069712023-06-05T21:31:00.001+03:002023-06-13T21:38:27.117+03:00تعليقي على حادث إطلاق النار على الحدود بين مصر و إسرائيل <p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_PU9Xx-IhhiYfNqRRalI4XkVsbiC0ZEaV1lSPY8StLiWXvCck0ZoD0r5jjuv9bdCQMSS92uz_VbFYlpcIz6lWeHFOvyx5yBy3fD0tP-sPUMa-DEXNee4CNWO1o8VEiM0FCHWkB_Jxk3f2kAabiBuMcJhBgBNp_WQQFWqEzmiuB_iu-5sY3Q/s640/351999530_790871862714680_8897139185149336785_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_PU9Xx-IhhiYfNqRRalI4XkVsbiC0ZEaV1lSPY8StLiWXvCck0ZoD0r5jjuv9bdCQMSS92uz_VbFYlpcIz6lWeHFOvyx5yBy3fD0tP-sPUMa-DEXNee4CNWO1o8VEiM0FCHWkB_Jxk3f2kAabiBuMcJhBgBNp_WQQFWqEzmiuB_iu-5sY3Q/w400-h268/351999530_790871862714680_8897139185149336785_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> شوية عقل.. ده مش ماتش الأهلي ضد الزمالك، ده الأمن القومي بتاع مصر</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">❓الناس اللي قاعدة تفخم وتعظم في الاعتداء الذي قام به فرد التأمين المصري على جنود اسرائليين بالأمس، من أنتم؟ وما مصلحتكم بالضبط؟ أي حد بيحب مصر بجد مستحيل يكون فرحان باللي حصل أو يحتفل بيه أو يعتبره عمل بطولي أصلاً. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">1️⃣أولاً: إيه العمل البطولي في التسلل لحدود دولة مجاورة بينا وبينها معاهدة سلام وتعاون أمني من سنين، ومصالح اقتصادية لا حصر لها؟ حققت إيه من قتل الجنود اللي واقفين على حدودها بحركة غدر ليس لها أي مبرر منطقي إلا رغبة من قام بتدبيره (واستخدم فرد التأمين في تنفيذه) في إشعال الصراع بين مصر وإسرائيل أو على أقل تقدير إحداث شرخ في العلاقة الجيدة جداً بينهم؟ أو ربما بشكل أخر يكون المعتدي مدفوع بدوافع دينية متطرفة مثل تلك التي تدعو لقتل اليهود على أساس هويتهم الدينية، وهو أيضاً أمر يضر بمصر وضد مبادئ الدولة المصرية تماماً. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">2️⃣ثانياً: هذا الحدث قد يضر بمصالح مصر ضرر بالغ لو لم يتم التعامل معه واحتواءه بين المسؤولين المصريين والإسرائليين في أسرع وقت. وأفضل طريقة لاحتواءه من وجهة نظري هو إجراء تحقيقات شفافة في الأمر تحت إشراف الطرفين، وكذلك اتخاذ كل الإجراءات اللازمة لمنع تكراره، وهذا ما وعد به وزير الدفاع المصري نظيره الإسرائيلي في مكالمة هاتفية بعد الحادث بساعات قليلة. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈لو مش فاهم مصالح مصر ممكن تتضرر قد إيه من حادث زي ده، شوف الخريطة علشان تفهم: </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">⬅️من الغرب الوضوع مشتعل في ليبيا وعلاقتنا مع ليبيا بتزداد سوء يوم بعد الأخر مع الأسف كنتيجة للانشقاق السياسي فيها وانحياز مصر لطرف ضد أخر هناك. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">⬇️من الجنوب الحرب الدائرة في السودان ألقت أثقالها على الوضع الاقتصادي في مصر وحملت مصر متاعب ستضاعف من معاناتها الفترة القادمة بشكل كبير. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">➡️من الشرق غزة ومشاكل غزة التي لا تنتهي </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">‼️ ناهيك عن التهديد المستمر اللي بتشكله الصراعات في المواقع الثلاث على الأمن القومي المصري.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👆بين هذا وذاك مصر لا تتحمل الدخول في معركة أمنية أو سياسية حتى (لا داعي ولا منطق لها أبداً) مع إسرائيل. التعاون غير المسبوق بين مصر وإسرائيل في السنوات القليلة الماضية هو أحد أهم عوامل نجاح مصر في اجتياز مرحلة حرجة جداً في تاريخها بين محاربة الإرهاب وتحديات اقتصادية ضخمة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈في الفترة بين ٢٠١٣-٢٠١٥ في الوقت الذي تسلل فيه عناصر حماس إلى داخل سيناء وشكلوا تنظيمات إرهابية قامت بمبايعة داعش لاحقاً، كانت القوات الإسرائيلية بجانب القوات المصرية تحارب الإرهاب في سيناء.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈في الوقت اللي كان العالم كله واقف ضد مصر بعد سقوط الإخوان وانتشرت الدعوات في الغرب بفرض عقوبات علي مصر ومقاطعتها دبلوماسياً واقتصادياً، كان المسؤولين الإسرائليين بيلفوا في المحافل الدولية للدفاع عن الدولة المصرية الحديثة وقتها، بل كانوا بيقولوا بشكل واضح وسمعته بنفسي "إن أمن واستقرار مصر على يد السيسي هو ضروري لأمن واستقرار إسرائيل". </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈ده غير طبعاً التعاون الاقتصادي بين مصر وإسرائيل في الكشف عن الغاز في شرق البحر المتوسط وتسييله وبيعه لـ أوروبا وأسيا، واللي إسرائيل فضلت إنها تتعاون فيه مع مصر على أي دولة أخرى في حوض المتوسط، وده أعطى مصر القدرة على أنها تحقق حلمها في أن تكون محور للطاقة في هذه المنطقة، رغم كل التعقيدات الجيوسياسية والصراعات على الحدود البحرية فيها.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">❌ إسرائيل ليست عدو مصر.. أقول تاني: إسرائيل ليست عدو مصر. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">إسرائيل جارة مصر المباشرة، ومن أكثر الدول التي وقفت إلى جانب مصر في أكثر الفترات الحرجة التي مرت بها، ولا يوجد أي سبب على الإطلاق لإشعال الصراع معها. ومن يفعل ذلك أو يشجع عليه يضر مصالح مصر أشد ضرر. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈هذه كلمة حق أردت أن أبلغها لأصحاب العقول، خصوصاً إن كل مواقف إسرائيل الإيجابية والمحبة تجاه مصر التي ذكرتها هنا وأكثر أنا شهدتها بعيني، وأنا واثقة إن الجهات المعنية في مصر تعي تماماً أهمية كل النقاط التي ذكرتها وتتصرف وفقاً لذلك بغض النظر عن حالة الغوغائية الإعلامية المعتادة حول الموضوع.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">👈 ربنا يرحم ضحايا الحادث ويحفظ على مصر وإسرائيل أمنهم واستقرارهم وتعاونهم. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">كل شخص غوغائي يحاول اليوم أن يبرر الاحتفال بقتل الجنود الإسرائيليين على حدودنا بإنهم يهود، ومن وجهة نظره المريضة شايف إن قتلهم حلال حتى لو كانوا مسالمين ولم يمارسوا أي اعتداء ضده، فهو في الحقيقة إما إرهابي أو مشروع إرهابي.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ومثلما استهدف جاره اليهودي على الحدود، بمجرد أن تتاح له الفرصة سوف يستهدف جاره المسيحي اللي ساكن معاه في نفس الشارع. وهو اللي بيتحرش بالنساء ويعتدي عليهم ويذبحهم في وضح النهار لو رفضوا الزواج منه.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">لا تشجعوا التطرف أو تهللوا له.. </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">المسلم الحقيقي هو "من سلم الناس من لسانه ويده" (وهنا الكلام عن كل المخلوقات اللي ينطبق عليها وصف الناس على وجه الأرض مش المسلمين فقط). </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">المسلم الحقيقي لا يغدر بناس بينه وبينهم ذمة وعهد مهما حصل، بالعكس ده المفروض يحميهم لو اقتضت الضرورة. لا دي أخلاق الرسول ولا أخلاق الصحابة ولا أخلاق المصريين أصلاً. فوقوا.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;">نشر أولاً على صفحتي في فيسبوك <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid034Bx2tAqKFtDFL5HBVAqroxHXzhu4JfRMykktff9uHXVbtZhB6bdTSrjhvszFEnCZl&id=611756302&mibextid=qC1gEa" target="_blank">هنا</a> وتعرضت بسببه لحملة منظمة من جماعة الإخوان المسلمين وحركة حماس وبعض المصريين المتعاطفين مع القاتل، ووصلت الحملة المنظمة ضدي إلى <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/06/12/i-condemned-the-shooting-now-they-want-to-kill-me-deadly-attack-on-israeli-border-divides-egypt/" target="_blank">تهديدي بالقتل</a>. </p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-35108845336665757332023-06-04T21:22:00.001+03:002023-06-13T21:30:06.939+03:00The Middle East and the New Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsLE7ojqwCS5k_vLiO8967-t9tm6qSV2tW-flyF6Xk72GhuravaLiHSdW5GpzHYhgqCldzVVJFaQmaoaOyhvWKKC2g3VwnMxDRk7y-J2SjFqFhzKA-u-qJovTiymlmSLAbr8JwOvv3t-V_wy_jWhdiNDGpGtITH08T8hmxwlssz3yvK7NE8Q/s750/Fxy0RvgXwAECOaH.png" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: verdana; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsLE7ojqwCS5k_vLiO8967-t9tm6qSV2tW-flyF6Xk72GhuravaLiHSdW5GpzHYhgqCldzVVJFaQmaoaOyhvWKKC2g3VwnMxDRk7y-J2SjFqFhzKA-u-qJovTiymlmSLAbr8JwOvv3t-V_wy_jWhdiNDGpGtITH08T8hmxwlssz3yvK7NE8Q/w400-h400/Fxy0RvgXwAECOaH.png" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;">I gave a comment to </span><a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2315711/middle-east" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">Arab News</a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;"> about the future of Turkey's foreign policy in the Middle East after the appointment of the former intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, as the new foreign minister of Turkey, in early June. Below is an excerpt from the </span><a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/2315711/middle-east" style="font-family: verdana;" target="_blank">article</a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;">: </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Meanwhile, although Turkiye has already started the process of normalizing ties with Syria and the Assad regime through several high-level meetings under Russian mediation, the Turkish military presence in northern Syria is not expected to end soon.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But new moves for facilitating the safe return of Syrian refugees to their homeland might be taken to fulfil the pledges made by Erdogan during his reelection campaign.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The counterterrorism campaigns in northern Iraq and Syria are also set to continue in the light of the composition of the new cabinet.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dalia Ziada, director of the Cairo-based MEEM Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, believes that Fidan is the right man for the job at this particular time with Turkiye rising as a key regional player.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“He holds all the important cards and knows by practice the behind-the-scenes issues in Turkiye’s foreign policy,” she told Arab News.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Fidan enjoys a deep understanding of the situation in the hotspots of the Middle East, ranging from Libya to Sudan and Syria, and he is the only Turkish official to continue to be part of the four-way meetings in Moscow that brought together senior officials from Turkiye, Syria, Russia and Iran in the past few months,” Ziada said.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">According to Ziada, tangible progress on Turkiye’s foreign policy in Syria and the mediating role of Turkiye in the Russia-Ukraine conflict can be expected in the short run with Fidan’s active role in the foreign policy apparatus.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Fidan has been the “behind-the-curtains” architect of the rapprochement in the past two years to fix broken ties with Egypt and Arab Gulf countries, Ziada thinks that his appointment may accelerate the reconciliation process between Turkiye and the North African country.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“This will consequently lead to mitigating the civil conflicts in Libya, facilitating the political solution process, and may eventually bring Libya to elections sooner than we think,” she said.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">El-Sisi and Erdogan have agreed on “the immediate start of upgrading diplomatic relations, exchanging ambassadors,” Egypt’s presidency said in a statement last Monday.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ziada added that Fidan’s background could enhance Turkiye’s relationship with the Arab Gulf countries.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I won’t be surprised to see Fidan being involved in talks between Arab Gulf countries and Iran in the near future. In reverse, this will be reflected positively on Turkiye by increasing Gulf countries’ investments and thus enhancing the struggling Turkish economy,” she said.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Fidan is expected to be Turkiye’s winning horse on the chessboards of the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Black Sea.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-31227100865105003792023-05-31T21:05:00.004+03:002023-06-13T21:20:11.672+03:00The formula of Türkiye-Egypt relation: “The past should remain in the past” <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8kmwzjG8Pxv1ModfXiDI3Z2PWd3UmhLH8oqoqO_Rli2su8lC1bZPuMl-O3LxKCXfgNshFLvMSc2Gf_tI2g80i0z1J9-4f2XZ_rNs3nd23jRbLVF1JjMzt-P2ps_Xm_gnE4pUzFJTugY5yEpMGTam1BclG-CKKKNO8yfcFP1lcHjRpkUwa2Q/s2048/Erdogan%20Sisi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1462" data-original-width="2048" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8kmwzjG8Pxv1ModfXiDI3Z2PWd3UmhLH8oqoqO_Rli2su8lC1bZPuMl-O3LxKCXfgNshFLvMSc2Gf_tI2g80i0z1J9-4f2XZ_rNs3nd23jRbLVF1JjMzt-P2ps_Xm_gnE4pUzFJTugY5yEpMGTam1BclG-CKKKNO8yfcFP1lcHjRpkUwa2Q/w400-h285/Erdogan%20Sisi.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;">I had an interview with Harici News in Turkey to discuss the future of Egypt-Turkey relationship after the victory of the Turkish President Erdogan with the presidential election in late May. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: verdana;">The interview is available in <a href="https://harici.com.tr/en/the-formula-of-turkiye-egypt-relation-the-past-should-remain-in-the-past/" target="_blank">English</a> and <a href="https://harici.com.tr/turkiye-misir-iliskilerinde-formul-gecmis-gecmiste-kalmali/" target="_blank">Turkish</a>, the English version is republished below: </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The foreign policy priorities of Turkey, after the presidential elections, can be divided into two categories: to find a position in new Asian initiatives while lowering tensions with the West. The primary factors promoting Turkey’s normalization with its neighbors and Middle Eastern nations are the economic challenges that require this foreign policy direction.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the normalization train of the Arab states, who assessed the damage after the Arab Spring, Turkey believes there is a wagon set out for it. Following the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, a final settlement in Syria will take up a sizable portion of Ankara’s post-election foreign policy agenda.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the other side, relations with Egypt have a greater impact, the contacts between Ankara and Cairo are extensive, encompassing Turkey’s contacts with the West in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In this context, we interviewed <u>Dalia Ziada,</u> Director of the Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies regarding how Egyptians considered about the Turkish election process.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Egyptian President congratulated President Erdogan. What can that say about a new era which has begun between the two countries?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Egyptian and Turkish presidents’ phone call in the wake of the elections is an important indication of the sincere intentions of the top policymakers in both countries to start a new page in their relationship. Honestly speaking, there are some giant differences between the perception of each of the two presidents on crucial regional and domestic policies. That includes for example the situation in Libya, the complex maritime conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Islamists’ right for political participation. However, we are seeing an unprecedented determination by both sides to get over these differences and focus on the common ground of economic and geopolitical cooperation.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ironically, many observers had expressed their pessimism about the potential of the rapprochement process between Turkey and Egypt to succeed as long as the two heads of state, El-Sisi and Erdogan, remained in power. Yet, in December 2022, the two heads of state met in Doha, warmly saluted each other, and then spent 45 minutes talking about the next steps they should take to overcome the obstacles that kept their countries separated for too long. The friendly encounter between the Turkish and the Egyptian presidents cannot be seen as a standard act of courtesy that happened out of sheer coincidence. It was the climax of a year of backstage arrangements by dedicated diplomatic missions and concerned civil society organizations in both countries.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Since then, the Turkish and Egyptian foreign ministers have been exchanging visits and making public promises about implementing the reconciliation process as soon as the general elections in Turkey are completed. As the election in Turkey has been completed successfully, this week, the two countries need to continue working on completing the reconciliation process for their mutual benefit and the entire region’s benefit.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mending broken ties between Turkey and Egypt is not only beneficial for the political well-being of the two states. It is equally important for the personal image enhancement of each of the two presidents before their peoples and also before observers from the international community. Egypt is having a presidential election in less than a year. Improving his relationship with President Erdogan will dramatically increase President El-Sisi’s support among the huge Islamist-biased voter base.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>How the Turkish elections resonated in Egypt. What are the prominent evaluations in the Egyptian press?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In general, the Egyptian people are so impressed and inspired by the democratic process in Turkey and the political maturity of the Turkish people who massively participated in the voting at the parliamentary elections and the two rounds of the presidential elections. We wish – we dream – to see a similar democratic process in the coming presidential election which is expected to happen in mid-2024. In other words, the successful democratic practice in Turkey has set the bar high for election processes in Middle East countries, in general, in countries where people are yearning for democratization, such as Egypt and most North Africa countries, in particular.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On another level, the street reaction to President Erdogan’s victory varies greatly from one citizen group to the other. The majority of the Egyptian grassroots citizens, who are mainly characterized by their religious piety, are so excited. They are celebrating President Erdogan’s victory, as they perceive it as a victory of a Muslim idol over the opposition party leaders who exhibited hatred towards Muslims and Arabs.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Meanwhile, the Egyptian intellectual elite, who are mostly secular, are expectedly not so happy with President Erdogan’s victory. Some of them warned that he will encourage the political Islamist groups – such as the Muslim Brotherhood – to seek political competition in Egypt once again and renew the state of political instability in the country. But, in my opinion, that is a little too exaggerated, especially in light of improved ties between the Egyptian and Turkish presidents in the past few months.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the political stage, most members of the government, political parties, and media agree that it is time for Egypt to reconcile with Turkey and with its elected president. “The past should remain in the past;” they say. That is a healthy attitude, I think, because it will pave the way for a lot of mutual benefits for Egypt and Turkey in the future, and will also be beneficial to the regions of the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>How do you consider the normalization process between the two countries to proceed after the election? Which steps could be taken initially?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In their first phone call after the successful completion of the Turkish presidential elections, presidents Erdogan and El-Sisi agreed to immediately proceed with their reconciliation process by elevating their diplomatic ties to the ambassadorial level. That is a very significant first step for two reasons:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">First, it fixes the rift that had been broken between the two states in 2013 and had kept the two countries estranged for ten years. The ambassadors were the first scapegoats to be slaughtered during the dramatic breakup between Egypt and Turkey, then. Each of the two countries immediately declared their mutual ambassadors as persona non grata. Therefore, the return of the ambassadors today is like an official declaration of the end of the decade-long conflict and the beginning of the negotiations phase.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Second, upgrading the diplomatic missions to ambassadorial levels is so crucial to accelerate and facilitate the discussions on critical bilateral and regional issues that represent a conflict of interest between the two states. Right now, the mutual diplomatic missions in both countries are limited in size and scope to the level of chargés d’affaires. Therefore, most negotiations between the two countries had to happen through security channels and intelligence bureaus more often than they happened between diplomatic missions. This caused the reconciliation process to go very slowly in 2021.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The rapprochement process only started to leap when the Turkish ambassador, Salih Mutlu Şen, got hired as charges d’affaires in Cairo, in the second half of 2022. He exerted a tremendous effort to wake the embassy from the dead by directly engaging with ordinary citizens in the Egyptian streets and reaching out to media personnel, civil society organizations, and political groups. That paved the way for a successful meeting between the two presidents, El-Sisi and Erdogan, in November 2022 in Doha. After the presidential meeting, the reconciliation process took a whole new turn.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Therefore, I believe that raising the diplomatic representation to the ambassadorial level will allow diplomatic channels to take the lead in the negotiation process, thus accelerating the rapprochement process and improving the quality of the outcomes of future negotiations.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, that is not enough. There must be direct and personal talks between presidents Erdogan and El-Sisi, at the nearest time possible. It is not a secret that the two leaders adopt divergent – if not contradicting – political ideologies. For example, El-Sisi’s political image is mostly built upon his role in removing the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013. In contrast, Erdogan’s legacy is entirely based on his image as a successful Muslim leader, coming from a political Islamist party, in a secular democratic system of governance. How the two presidents are going to compromise their ideological differences is so important for the success of the reconciliation process between Egypt and Turkey and for ensuring its sustainability in the long term. Such a compromise can only happen through direct face-to-face and heart-to-heart conversations between the two presidents over the coming weeks or months.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In parallel to that, the senior policymakers and government officials from Egypt and Turkey should engage in lengthy discussions about enhancing their areas of cooperation and limiting their areas of conflict. For example, Egypt and Turkey already have a successful record of economic cooperation that can be further improved. In the meantime, there are a lot of areas of potential cooperation between our two militaries, building upon the history of cooperation in the defense industry sector between the two countries. They will also need to discuss their conflicting foreign policies in the Levant region, and the Eastern Mediterranean region, keeping into consideration the concerns and the interests of other key players in these regions, such as Libya, Syria, Greece, and Israel.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-48012303969634298202023-02-25T19:45:00.000+02:002023-02-25T19:45:03.135+02:00Egypt India Relationship Under the New Global Order | Dalia Ziada | Usanas Foundation Conference<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="371" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E0ZVICglDzQ" width="447" youtube-src-id="E0ZVICglDzQ"></iframe></div><br /> Egypt India Relationship Under the New Global Order | Dalia Ziada | Usanas Foundation Conference<div><br /></div><div>"The economic cooperation between India and Egypt cannot be happening without the concurrent enhancement between the two countries in the field of military and defence," states @DaliaZiadah </div><div><br /></div><div>On February 10th, I participated in this panel of distinguished speakers to talk about #India's growing relationship with Arab countries, including my home country #Egypt. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Panel is part of “MPAGD 2023" conference by @usanasfoundation3935 </div><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-26451734344282161612023-02-21T14:22:00.003+02:002023-02-21T14:22:25.693+02:00الاتجاهات الجديدة في سياسة الدفاع في الدول العربية <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0Sw1KRnFqYN59UOLoZAmHb-QRf3e4VFawSaxPhq0xBH9O0JSu0fDyllG49nb8LkEz54WZ6QNosNndgoTsG-8rhuYKYC7DHdIgcgUNI9g1wB77lxOV23tTFcyx9pDY-kEmD27ekMpzD1dnkujCTzJ4iAxQl_El2yxV--y27e1LOxAZSuYpA/s678/Screen-Shot-2023-02-20-at-9.02.24-PM-1-678x381.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="678" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie0Sw1KRnFqYN59UOLoZAmHb-QRf3e4VFawSaxPhq0xBH9O0JSu0fDyllG49nb8LkEz54WZ6QNosNndgoTsG-8rhuYKYC7DHdIgcgUNI9g1wB77lxOV23tTFcyx9pDY-kEmD27ekMpzD1dnkujCTzJ4iAxQl_El2yxV--y27e1LOxAZSuYpA/w400-h225/Screen-Shot-2023-02-20-at-9.02.24-PM-1-678x381.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">كانت الاضطرابات الأمنية والحروب الأهلية والإرهاب والصراعات العابرة للحدود من السمات الثابتة في منطقة الشرق الأوسط لما يقرب القرن من الزمن. غير أنّ ردة الفعل الاستراتيجية الفردية والجماعية للقادة الإقليميين للدول الرئيسة، قد تغيرت بشكل جذري خلال العقد الماضي، ممّا أثّر في نتائج النزاعات التي تحدث داخل منطقتهم أو في البلدان المجاورة لشرق البحر الأبيض المتوسط وأفريقيا جنوب الصحراء.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">فعلى سبيل المثال، ساهمت التدخلات العربية في النزاعات السياسية والمسلحة في ليبيا واليمن ودول الشرق الأوسط وإثيوبيا، في السنوات الثلاث الماضية، بشكل ملحوظ في تشكيل نتائجها.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">تتمثل إحدى السمات الرئيسة لاستراتيجية ردة الفعل الجديدة التي اعتمدها صناع السياسة الدفاعية في الشرق الأوسط في الاستثمار الكبير في تطوير أجهزتهم العسكرية بأحدث التقنيات القتالية المتقدمة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">بالإضافة إلى ذلك، فقد بدأت بعض دول الشرق الأوسط في الاستثمار في تحسين صناعاتها الدفاعية المحلية، إما من خلال إنشاء خطوط إنتاج خاصة بها أو من خلال عقد شَراكات صناعية مع مصنعي الأسلحة من أماكن مختلفة في العالم.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">إن التغيير في سياسات الدفاع الإقليمية والفردية لدول الشرق الأوسط تعمل ضمنياً على تبديل أولويات عمالقة الصناعة الدفاعية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>محفزات التطوير</b></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">التوجه الجديد للسياسة الدفاعية لدول الشرق الأوسط هي النتيجة الطبيعية للفوضى الأمنية والسياسية التي عصفت بالمنطقة في أعقاب الربيع العربي حيث خلقت الموجات الغاضبة للثورات الشعبية التي اجتاحت منطقة الشرق الأوسط من تونس إلى سوريا، ما بين ٢٠١٠ و٢٠١١، فراغًا أمنيًا.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في ظلّ هذه الفوضى، تحولت التهديدات الأمنية التي تواجه الدول العربية من تهديدات الجيوش التقليدية للدول المعادية إلى تهديدات المجموعات المسلحة غير النظامية التي لا يمكن السيطرة عليها.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">تبلور أحد مظاهر هذه الرؤية الجديدة في تشكيل قوات التحالف العربي بقيادة المملكة العربية السعودية، عام ٢٠١٥، للتعامل مع التهديدات، حيث انضمت عشر دول عربية من شمال إفريقيا والخليج إلى قوات التحالف العربي بمجرد موافقة جامعة الدول العربية عليه، واحتفلت المنطقة بالخبر كبداية لعصر جديد من التضامن العربي.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ليست قوات التحالف العربي الشكل الأول للتعاون العسكري العربي. ففي عام ١٩٦٢، دعا الرئيس المصري آنذاك، جمال عبد الناصر، إلى تشكيل القيادة العسكرية العربية الموحدة لمحاربة إسرائيل. كانت الأردن وسوريا الدولتين الوحيدتين اللتين انضمتا إلى القيادة العسكرية تحت قيادة مصر قبل الهزيمة المؤلمة من قبل إسرائيل وحلفائها الغربيين في حرب الأيام الستة عام ١٩٦٧.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وفي الآونة الأخيرة، اقترح العاهل الأردني الملك عبد الله الثاني إنشاء تحالف عسكري عربي، على غرار حلف الناتو، بمعنى أنه غير مرتبط بهدف محدد أو بجدول أعمال محدد زمنياً. وأشاد عدد من القادة العرب بالفكرة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">من إيجابيات توحيد العرب في قوات التحالف العسكري العربي أنها أعطت القادة الإقليميين الجدد نظرة ثاقبة على نقاط الضعف في أداء جيوشهم.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>شراء الأسلحة</b></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">عملياً، من إيجابيات توحيد العرب في قوات التحالف العسكري العربي أنها أعطت القادة الإقليميين الجدد نظرة ثاقبة على نقاط الضعف في أداء جيوشهم.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">لقد أدرك القادة ضرورة ترقية أنظمتهم العسكرية وجيوشهم لجعلهم قادرين على ردع الأعداء التقليديين وغير التقليديين. لم تركز عملية الترقية على تجديد المعدات فحسب، بل كان عليها أيضًا التعامل مع تدريب الأفراد.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">نتيجة لذلك، شهدت الفترة ما بين ٢٠١٤ و٢٠٢٠ ارتفاعًا حادًا في الإنفاق العسكري من قبل معظم الدول العربية، وخاصة مصر ودول الخليج، على بناء قدرات الأفراد وشراء الأسلحة. وبحسب قاعدة بيانات البنك الدولي، فقد بلغ الإنفاق العسكري للدول العربية ما بين ٢٠٠٩ و٢٠٢٠ ما قيمته ١,٤٢ تريليون دولار. هذا وقد شهد عام ٢٠١٤ أعلى إنفاق عسكري على الإطلاق في تاريخ الشرق الأوسط بإجمالي ١٨٢,٧٩ مليار دولار، مقارنة، على سبيل المثال، بـ ٦١,١٦ مليارًا في عام ٢٠٠٤ و١٤١,٤٢ مليارًا في عام ٢٠٢٠.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وفقًا لتقرير التوازن العسكري، الذي نشره المعهد الدولي للدراسات الاستراتيجية (IISS) في عام ٢٠١٦، سجلت الدول الأعضاء في قوات التحالف العربي أعلى إنفاق عسكري في الأعوام الممتدة بين ٢٠١١ و٢٠١٥. خلال تلك الفترة، زادت واردات السعودية من الأسلحة بنسبة ٢٧٪، وواردات الإمارات بنسبة ١٨٪، وواردات مصر بنسبة ٣٧٪.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">منذ الستينيات على الأقل، كانت منطقة الشرق الأوسط أكبر الأسواق وأكثرها ربحًا لمصدّري الأسلحة على طرفي نظام العالم ثنائي القطب. ومع ذلك، فإن الاتجاه الناشئ لتجارة الأسلحة العربية المكثفة يُستخدم أيضًا، كشكل من أشكال الدبلوماسية العسكرية، لتعزيز العلاقات بالحلفاء القدامى وخلق روابط جديدة مع أصدقاء جدد.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>تنويع مصادر التسلح</b></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">هناك اتجاه لافت آخر في السياسة الدفاعية المتجددة للدول العربية وهو استمرار الجيوش الإقليمية في تنويع مصادر تسليحها. يتعلق جزء من ذلك بظهور مصدّرين جدد، مثل الصين واليابان وتركيا، الذين يقدمون صفقات أكثر ملاءمة للمستوردين العرب، من حيث السعر والتسليم، مقارنة بالمتاعب السياسية والدبلوماسية التي عادة ما تصاحب عملية الشراء من روسيا أو الولايات المتحدة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">والحالة الأكثر إثارة للاهتمام في هذا الصدد هي حالة مصر. فعلى مدى العقود الأربعة الماضية، اعتمدت مصر، بشكل شبه حصري، على الولايات المتحدة في التسلح.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">تتلقى مصر حزمة مساعدات عسكرية سنوية بقيمة ١,٣ مليار دولار من الولايات المتحدة، منذ عام ١٩٧٩، وفقًا لبنود اتفاق السلام بينها وبين إسرائيل. بعد بضعة أشهر من الإطاحة بنظام الإخوان المسلمين من السلطة، في عام ٢٠١٣، قررت إدارة أوباما تجميد المساعدات العسكرية لمصر، وبالتالي تعليق جهود المشتريات العسكرية. تم رفع تجميد المساعدات جزئيًا في عام ٢٠١٥، ثم تم فرضه مرة أخرى في عام ٢٠١٦، وبعدها تمت الموافقة عليه في عام ٢٠١٨ من قبل الرئيس الأمريكي السابق دونالد ترامب. ولكن، قرر ترامب قبل أن يترك منصبه في عام ٢٠٢٠ قطع جزء من المساعدة المقدمة لمصر، مدعياً أن مصر استخدمت أموال المساعدات الأمريكية لشراء طائرات مقاتلة من روسيا.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">منذ عهد مبارك وهذا النمط يتكرر. ومع ذلك، قررت القيادة السياسية الحالية في مصر للرئيس السيسي تنويع مصادر التسلح للجيش المصري. واليوم، يشمل مصدرو الأسلحة لمصر: روسيا والصين واليابان وألمانيا وفرنسا وإيطاليا وكوريا الجنوبية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وفقًا لمعهد ستوكهولم الدولي لأبحاث السلام (SIPRI)، احتلت مصر المركز الثالث بين أكبر 25 مستوردًا للأسلحة في العالم في عام ٢٠١٩.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">بفضل هذا التنوع، أصبحت مصر صاحبة ثاني أكبر قوة جوية في الشرق الأوسط، مزودة بمقاتلات أمريكية من طراز “إف-١٦″، وطائرات “ميراج-٢٠٠٠″ و"رافال" الفرنسية، ومقاتلات "ميغ-٢٩" الروسية ومقاتلات "جيه-٧" الصينية، وطائرات بدون طيار من طراز "وينغ لونغ".</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ومع ذلك، لم تكن مصر الضحية العربية الوحيدة لاستخدام الولايات المتحدة تجارة الأسلحة لممارسة ضغوط سياسية عليها. فقد حاولت الولايات المتحدة القيام بالأمر نفسه مع دولتي الإمارات والسعودية لكن ردود أفعالهما كانت أكثر إثارة للدهشة من رد فعل مصر. في الأسبوع الأول له في منصبه، قرر الرئيس الأمريكي بايدن تجميد مبيعات الأسلحة المستحقة للسعودية والإمارات، بموجب اتفاقيات قيمتها عشرات المليارات من الدولارات موقعة مع إدارة ترامب. بعد شهور طويلة من الصبر قررت الإمارات وقف المفاوضات مع الولايات المتحدة للتركيز على إبرام صفقة بديلة مع فرنسا.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وعليه، وقعت الإمارات وفرنسا عقدًا تاريخيًا، في ديسمبر ٢٠٢١، لشراء ٨٠ طائرة مقاتلة من طراز "رافال" بتكلفة ١٩ مليار دولار. وكانت هذه هي المرة الأولى التي تقوم فيها الإمارات، أو أي دولة خليجية عربية، بإبرام مثل هذه الصفقة مع دولة مصدرة للأسلحة غير الولايات المتحدة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وفي منتصف عام ٢٠٢٢، قررت وزارة الخارجية الأمريكية أخيرًا إلغاء تجميد مبيعات الأسلحة المستحقة للسعودية والإمارات، ولكن كان ذلك بعد فوات الأوان.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>الصناعات الدفاعية المحلية</b></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">كان توطين الصناعات الدفاعية لتحقيق الاكتفاء الذاتي من التسلح هدفًا تسعى إليه الدول النشطة عسكريًا في الشرق الأوسط. ومع ذلك، فإن معظم الدول الفردية والمحاولات العربية الجماعية في هذا الصدد بالكاد استمرت لفترة كافية، تمامًا مثل كل المحاولات المماثلة لبناء قوة عسكرية عربية موحدة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ظهر أول عمل عربي مشترك لتوطين الصناعات العسكرية في عام ١٩٩٤ عندما قامت مصر والمملكة العربية السعودية والإمارات العربية المتحدة وقطر بتأسيس الهيئة العربية للتصنيع في القاهرة. في ذلك الوقت، ارتفعت الطموحات حول أن تصبح هذه المنظمة مركزًا لإنتاج الأسلحة العربية. ولكن، في غضون خمس سنوات، انسحب جميع المساهمين العرب وتركوا المنظمة لتديرها وزارة الدفاع المصرية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في عام ١٩٤٩، تحت قيادة الملك عبد العزيز بن عبد الرحمن آل سعود، كانت المملكة العربية السعودية أول دولة عربية تستضيف قاعدة صناعية عسكرية. في الثمانينيات، أنشأت المملكة مصنع الآليات المدرعة والمعدات الثقيلة لإنتاج الشاحنات والمركبات العسكرية للمستهلكين المحليين. ومع ذلك، بدأت صناعة الدفاع السعودية في الصعود عام ٢٠١٧، عندما قدم ولي العهد الأمير محمد بن سلمان رؤيته الجديدة لتحديث القدرات العسكرية لبلاده. في ذلك العام، تم تأسيس الشركة السعودية للصناعات العسكرية SAMI بتمويل من الصندوق السيادي السعودي – صندوق الاستثمارات العامة – لتوطين ٥٠٪ من الإنفاق العسكري السعودي بحلول عام ٢٠٣٠.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في موازاة ذلك، طبقت القيادة السعودية سياسة المشاركة الصناعية على الصناعات العسكرية. كان الغرض من هذا الجهد تسريع نقل المعرفة والمهارات من الحلفاء الغربيين إلى المصانع العسكرية المحلية. في عام ٢٠٢٠، وقعت الهيئة العامة للصناعات العسكرية في المملكة العربية السعودية GAMI أول اتفاقية مشاركة صناعية مع شركة Raytheon Saudi Arabia، التابعة لشركة Raytheon الأمريكية، لتوطين إجراء الصيانة والتجديد للباتريوت الأمريكي.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في وقت سابق من هذا الشهر، أعلنت الشركة السعودية للصناعات العسكرية SAMI عن نجاح إطلاق خط إنتاجها الجديد في شركة SAMI Composites وهي مشروع سعودي بالشراكة مع شركة “لوكهيد مارتن” الأمريكية. قد تؤهل هذه الشراكة المملكة العربية السعودية لبناء مصنعها للطيران في المستقبل.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">مصر هي الدولة الثانية في سلسلة الدول العربية التي تطمح إلى رفع مستوى صناعاتها العسكرية المحلية. قطعت مصر خطوات أطول نحو تحقيق هذا الهدف مقارنة بالدول العربية الأخرى. ومع ذلك، فإن التقدم الذي تم إحرازه بعد وصول الرئيس السيسي إلى السلطة في عام ٢٠١٤ مثير للإعجاب.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في منتصف الخمسينيات من القرن الماضي، بدأت مصر في تصنيع الأسلحة الخفيفة، مثل بنادق الحكيم والرشيد نصف الأوتوماتيكية، المصممة والمرخصة على التوالي من قبل السويد وروسيا. ولكن بسبب انخراط مصر في عدة حروب، خلال الستينيات والسبعينيات، ضد إسرائيل والقوى العظمى الداعمة لها، تراجع مشروع صناعة الدفاع المحلية. وفي غضون ذلك، كان على الجيش المصري التواصل مع روسيا لشراء الأسلحة وتدريب الجنود.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">مع بداية تدفق المساعدات العسكرية الأمريكية إلى مصر في الثمانينيات، بعد توقيع اتفاقية السلام مع إسرائيل، بدأت المؤسسة العسكرية تتمتع بالاستقلال الاقتصادي، وبالتالي زادت من إنفاقها على بناء مصانع لإنتاج الأسلحة. على مر السنين، أنتجت مصر العربات المدرعة والبنادق، وجددت المعدات المستوردة، بدءًا من الطائرات المقاتلة إلى السفن الحربية والغواصات، من خلال ثلاث كيانات رئيسة هي:</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">– الهيئة العربية للتصنيع</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">– جهاز الصناعات والخدمات البحرية</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">– وزارة الإنتاج الحربي</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في عام ٢٠١٥، عقدت القيادة المصرية الجديدة اتفاقيات مع المصنعين الأوروبيين في إيطاليا وألمانيا وفرنسا لتوطين بناء سفن خاصة بهم في المنشآت المحلية. وقد ساهم ذلك في إعادة تقديم مصر إلى العالم بصفتها دولة مصنعة للمعدات الدفاعية بارعة وجديرة بالثقة لتعزيز القدرات العسكرية للبحرية المصرية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">في غضون خمس سنوات، وتحديدًا بين ٢٠١٥ و٢٠٢٠، تمكن الأسطول البحري المصري من التحوّل إلى واحد من أفضل عشرة أساطيل بحرية في العالم، وفقًا لتصنيف Global Firepower 2021 </span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">لا شكّ في أن الزيادة الأخيرة في القدرات العسكرية لمعظم الدول العربية، هو تجسيد للرؤى الشخصية لقادة المنطقة الحاليين</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وبالتوازي مع ذلك، قررت الدولة المصرية بذل جهد أكبر في تسويق معداتها المصنعة محليًا للجيوش العربية والأفريقية. في السنوات الخمس الماضية، بدأت مصر في تصدير مركباتها المدرعة "تمساح" فئة ST-100 وST-500 إلى العديد من الدول العربية والأفريقية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">وفي عام ٢٠١٧، خصصت الدولة المصرية ميزانية سنوية قدرها ٧,٣ مليار جنيه مصري لتجديد المصانع العسكرية التي تشرف عليها الجهات الثلاثة المذكورة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>المستقبل</b></span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">لا شكّ في أن الزيادة الأخيرة في القدرات العسكرية لمعظم الدول العربية، في السنوات القليلة الماضية، هو تجسيد للرؤى الشخصية لقادة المنطقة الحاليين.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">ومع ذلك، نادرًا ما يتم مشاركتها أو فهمها بشكل مناسب من قبل المواطنين العاديين. لضمان استدامة هذه السياسات الدفاعية، التي أثبتت نجاحها حتى الآن، تحتاج الدول الرئيسة في المنطقة إلى العمل مع الخبراء المحليين والحلفاء الأجانب على صياغة رؤى فردية وجماعية تكميلية لمستقبل شراء الأسلحة والتصنيع الدفاعي وبناء قدرات الأفراد، في سياق مواجهة التهديدات الأمنية الحالية والمتوقعة.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">على المستوى الجماعي، لا ينبغي النظر إلى الفجوة في القوى البشرية والقدرات الاستثمارية بين الجيوش العربية على أنها حاجز يعيق تعاونها، خاصة في قطاع الصناعة الدفاعية.</span></p><p dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">بدلاً من ذلك، باستطاعة القادة العرب البحث عن طرق للاستفادة من هذا التنوع لاستكمال نقاط ضعف بعضهم البعض. ورغم أن مساعي التعاون العسكري العربي السابق في هذا الصدد لم تدم طويلاً، إلا أن هناك أملًا واقعيًا في أن تنجح هذه المرة. ويرجع ذلك أساسًا إلى أن لمعظم القادة الحاليين خبرة عسكرية عملية وأنّهم يشاركون رؤى متطابقة تقريبًا لتطوير أنظمتهم العسكرية الوطنية.</span></p><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-15907278628764598682023-01-30T12:22:00.001+02:002023-01-30T12:22:00.222+02:00Egypt's Economic Crisis: What the Government is Doing to Stop the Bleeding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkjBcngHsKQS13DD7gJfKPeMCEZwb3M7kh7EvfheJ-41wUSK89ZE2Ux1XYOziVAE7qB6VuZioUXLIWt-yJv6P7RFcc8qXXi26CPmexEhifKJ0gM4pLQjrvoSRRra7ZTw1CYn6ywuLKQBAXuJa0N_4aKJqMfoKbhNJj2U-6GBTkqRZUDG1XQ/s360/egypt-bar-chart-graph-decreasing-values-crisis-downgrade-news-banner-fail-decrease_655111-3126.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="241" data-original-width="360" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkjBcngHsKQS13DD7gJfKPeMCEZwb3M7kh7EvfheJ-41wUSK89ZE2Ux1XYOziVAE7qB6VuZioUXLIWt-yJv6P7RFcc8qXXi26CPmexEhifKJ0gM4pLQjrvoSRRra7ZTw1CYn6ywuLKQBAXuJa0N_4aKJqMfoKbhNJj2U-6GBTkqRZUDG1XQ/w400-h268/egypt-bar-chart-graph-decreasing-values-crisis-downgrade-news-banner-fail-decrease_655111-3126.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egyptian citizens from all social and professional backgrounds are deeply affected by the economic crisis. The wealthy, the poor, and the middle class are all struggling to adjust to the new reality, to varying degrees, and for different reasons.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egyptian officials insist that the current economic crisis is not their fault, but rather the predictable consequence of global crises that have hit the world in the last two years, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the global recession caused by the ongoing war in eastern Europe. Although part of this statement is undeniably true, many Egyptians refute it by holding the government accountable for its inability to implement a macroeconomic reform program capable of effectively healing Egypt's chronic economic crisis, which has plagued the country since the 1950s. In this debate, the bitter truth remains that Egyptians are deeply depressed as a result of a severe economic crisis, and the government must act.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Challenge</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Egyptian government is grappling with the limited options available to resolve the renewed economic crisis and reassure the concerned citizens about their financial security and economic prospects. The flotation of the Egyptian pound in pursuit of a small loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has created a shockwave that has severely impacted the already troubled macroeconomic system. Furthermore, premature policies to disrupt importation to preserve dollar reserves have contributed to price increases in food and basic commodities. Despite the Central Bank of Egypt's (CBE) extreme monetary policies, which have pushed interest rates to unprecedented levels, inflation rates have skyrocketed to above 20% in the last two months.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, the Egyptian economy has been weathering significant pressures, blowing away the hard-earned gains of the national economic reform program that the government launched seven years ago. Over the past year, the hot money investors withdrew from the Egyptian market causing a sharp decline in foreign investment rates. As a result, the dollar reserves in the CBE started to deplete, especially that the tourism sector, too, has become unable to generate appropriate revenues because of the sharp fall in Russian and Eastern European tourist turnout.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Between the end of November and early December, the dollar scarcity issue got more complicated as more citizens started to purchase dollars to hedge against inflation. In December, the CBE announced that official inflation rates reached slightly over 21%, adding huge pressure on the purchasing power of the Egyptian Pound. In the unofficial market, the dollar exchange rates spiked to 32-40 EGP compared to 28-31 EGP in official banks. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“The influence of the war in eastern Europe on the global supply chains of food and energy is burdening the Egyptian economy with 130 billion Egyptian pounds in direct cost, in addition to 335 billion Egyptian pounds to handle the indirect consequences;” the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mustafa Madbouly noted earlier.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, made three speeches in the past three weeks at three carefully selected strategic platforms: the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, the Military Academy, and the Police Day Ceremony. The president’s choice to deliver his message via these particular venues was not an accident, but a means to put a political frame around his economic message to the general public and international allies and stakeholders. The message of the president could be summarized as follows: “The economy is doing well, no need to panic or worry, we will survive the economic crisis the same way we survived previous political and security crises.” In response, the most skeptical Egyptians have decided to wait and see what the government can do to keep the Egyptian economy boat afloat.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Uncertainty </b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Egyptian public's opposing views on the current and previous IMF loans are particularly intriguing. When the Egyptian government announced its intention to seek an IMF loan in 2016, most Egyptians applauded the decision and pledged to support the political leadership in completing the comprehensive economic reform plan attached to the loan. In contrast, the Egyptian public is skeptical of the new IMF loan approved last month. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egypt is the second largest lender from the IMF, despite having a rocky history with IMF loans. Since the 1960s, these loans have both kept governments from collapsing amidst economic crises, but they always caused hardships to middle-class citizens. The only exception was the 2016 IMF loan overseen by Christine Lagarde, which transformed Egypt's socio-economic circumstances and brought hope to the hearts of the poor. However, these gains are now in jeopardy due to the Egyptian government's attempts to fulfill the requirements of a much smaller and more restrictive loan. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The current IMF leadership is way more rigid than the previous IMF leadership of Christine Lagarde in terms of applying the loan-attached conditions of state policy and structural reform. From a compassionate and understanding position, Lagarde gave priority to directing the Egyptian government to make tangible progress on the social development agenda. However, the current IMF leadership is giving the ultimate priority to fast-forwarding the market liberation process even if it happens at the expense of slowing down the national development projects and crushing the middle class.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 2016, the Egyptian government received an IMF loan of $12 billion over three years through the IMF's Extended Fund Facility. The loan and the linked technical support program provided a tremendous buffer for the Egyptian economy against the challenges of the reform program, especially those related to the first shocks of inflation and the floating of local currency. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, the IMF intervened with two additional financial support instruments to support the Egyptian economy against the consequences of the pandemic. In May 2020, Egypt received US$2.8 billion in emergency financial assistance through the IMF’s Rapid Financing Instrument. Then, in June 2020, the IMF’s Standby Arrangement availed US$5.4 billion for Egypt to withdraw over a period of twelve months.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Thanks to the success of the IMF’s technical support program, Egyptians started to report tangible improvements in their living conditions and greater flexibility in their microeconomic decision-making in the first months of 2022. Around the same dates, Egypt was reaffirmed by the three Credit Rating agencies (Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P Global) at B and B+ with a stable outlook. In December 2021, an IMF report expected that Egypt, by the end of 2022, will become the second largest economy in Africa, after Nigeria, and the second largest economy in all Arab countries, after Saudi Arabia, with a record Growth Domestic Product (GDP) that exceeds US$438 billion. And, then, Russia’s President Putin decided to invade Ukraine!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war started to reflect on the Egyptian economy, the first instinct of the Egyptian government was to knock on the doors of the IMF once more. After almost a year of negotiations between Egyptian government officials and IMF executives, a sudden cabinet reshuffle, and a change in the leadership of the Central Bank of Egypt, the IMF finally approved a small loan of three billion dollars to Egypt in mid-December. The small loan will be paid to the Egyptian government in installments over a long period of 46 months and may be frozen or completely withdrawn if the Egyptian government does not show steadfast progress on the list of harsh conditions.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The list of macroeconomic reform policies that the Egyptian government approved and committed itself to them, to receive the $3 billion IMF loan include but are not limited to: floating the Egyptian pound against the US dollar, removing subsidies on oil and gas to match international prices, slowing down the mega infrastructure and social development projects, accelerating and widening the process of collecting taxes, selling state-owned assets to private investors, and listing military-owned enterprises at the stocks market (The Egyptian Exchange).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The middle class is the citizen group most concerned about the consequences of the IMF loan conditions on their lifestyle and standard of living. Such conditions are expected to downgrade their purchasing power and thus curtail their ability to provide for themselves the basic services that the government is not offering them, such as quality education, health care, and unsubsidized food and energy products. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Survival Plan</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The government policy to survive the current economic crisis and avoid future crises is happening through three timebound phases: immediate, medium-term, and future. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the short term, the government’s top priority is to control inflation and stabilize the market. That is mainly through restoring depleted dollar reserves to a level that allows the resumption of imports and thus mitigates the soaring prices of basic commodities. Such a step is crucial for both economic and political reasons. It may participate in improving citizen satisfaction with the performance of the government and mitigate public stress. To achieve this, the government worked on two parallel tracks. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The first track is where the government, with the help of military-owned enterprises, is focused on keeping the basic commodities, such as food and energy products, abundantly available in local shops. Since the beginning of the crisis in March, the Egyptian government has been exerting a huge effort to keep food products, especially bread and oil, available to most consumers at affordable prices. In the process, the government had to postpone its plans to remove the subsidies on bread, fuel consumption, and electricity subscriptions until the current crisis is resolved.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The second track is where the CBE has been taking radical fiscal measures to close the gap between the dollar exchange rate in the official and non-official (or the black) market. Floating the Egyptian pound against the dollar in conjunction with raising interest rates encouraged most Egyptians to invest in high-rate EGP certificate deposits rather than hedging against inflation by purchasing and saving dollars or gold. In December, the CBE’s Policy Committee decided in its last routine meeting of 2022 to raise the interest rate by 3% to control inflation and strengthen the Egyptian pound before allowing it to float per IMF instructions. Since March, the CBE gradually raised the interest by 8%. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This seemingly extremely liberal policy succeeded in attracting massive investments from Egyptians, local and living abroad, in the high-profit Egyptian pound certificates of deposits offered at Egyptian national banks. In the medium term, this policy seems to be able to control the inflation rates and bring the exchange rates to a reasonable range. Official statements show that Egyptians poured more than three hundred billion EGP into these certificates of deposit, within only two weeks. This policy has also encouraged Egyptians abroad to pour money into the Egyptian banking system in a way that partially compensated for the fleeing hot money investors. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the past few years, Egyptians abroad made financial contributions to the Egyptian sovereign fund to support the state-led comprehensive development plan. The size of Egyptians living and working worldwide is roughly estimated at 14 million people. They have the financial muscle to make a real difference in the future of the Egyptian economy. In August, the CBE highlighted a record increase of 1.6% in the remittance inflow by Egyptians abroad, reaching 31.9 billion dollars for the first time. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the near future, the government’s main goal is to encourage foreign investors to return to the lucrative Egyptian market, which includes hot money investors and foreign direct investments that would bring much-needed money and employment opportunities to the Egyptian macroeconomic system. In the past two weeks, the Egyptian Prime Minister held several meetings with local business owners and foreign investors to discuss ways to facilitate their operations and increase their volumes of production. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This goes hand in hand with improving the tourism sector and opening the door for new tourists from eastern Asia to compensate for the shortage of traditional Russian and European tourists, who are curtailed by the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war. Egyptian tourism companies have already started to arrange trips for tourist groups coming from China, the first of which arrived in Cairo and visited the Red Sea resorts earlier this month. In his meeting with the Indian Prime Minister this week, President El-Sisi made sure to assert that Egypt would welcome an increase in Indian tourists interested in visiting Egypt. Tourism is one of two frontiers of foreign currency, besides the revenues of the Suez Canal. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the long term, the policy documents that the government is currently proposing to regulate taxation rules and the military role in the economy are also believed to contribute to lasting reforms. Over the coming four years, the government plans to list state-owned stocks with a value of 10 billion dollars every year, ultimately compounding to 40 billion dollars by the end of the period, for foreign and local investors to buy. At the same time, the government plans to increase the participation of Egyptian private sector businesses in state-run national projects to 65%, compared to the current rate of 30%. That is expected to offer a golden opportunity to the growing community of entrepreneurs and startups that resembles one of the strongest pillars of support to the future of the Egyptian economy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In that regard, the government is currently working on a taxation policy document that will regulate the process of collecting taxes from businesses and individuals. The proposed policies have already been met with objections from a wide range of business owners and individual professionals. Meanwhile, the government has recently issued the state ownership policy document which outlines the key principles governing the scope of state and military interventions in the market. However, the complete withdrawal of the military institution from the market does not seem realistic or even possible any time soon. Military enterprises have always been the backbone of the Egyptian economy and the safety net for Egyptian people in times of crisis. Therefore, the taxation and state ownership policy documents should be implemented at a slow pace and continued revisions to avoid any setbacks or backfiring.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Hope </b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There are always hidden opportunities in every crisis. In the case of Egypt’s current economic crisis, the hidden opportunity could be accelerating the process of establishing a modern macroeconomic system in place of the old and barren structure that kept the Egyptian economy struggling for seven decades.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Despite the painful pressures on the spending power of most Egyptian citizens, especially from the middle class, there are some promising indicators on the state / governmental level. For example, Egypt’s GDP has grown by 4.4% at the end of 2022 compared to the 3.3% growth rate in 2021. Egypt's non-oil exports rose during the period extending from January to October by about 12% to reach $30.4 billion compared to $27.1 billion during a similar period last year. Meanwhile, the government has not given up on its mega national projects targeting to improve the infrastructure and protect the poor.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That being said, we have to keep in mind that all the efforts exerted by the government to contain the current economic crisis are only going to provide a temporary fix to a chronic disease that has been dragging Egypt for seven decades.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-52942618421137199442023-01-29T14:58:00.002+02:002023-01-29T14:59:55.969+02:00After 12 years, is another protest Tahrir possible in Egypt? | Harici Special Interview with Dalia Ziada<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9G4Eux8HZoYSxgjqSv7wOvK-PAZU23nLj1XQru4w_zo-cNGput5V1MN2bC4C9nXBLtH-BEfV5WG0a3NB21L9jWma8Yz1_kLqwkuzZTpovQ5FTd6bxlvMMOkyow6QK1ywMkNIULrHRlkf9-_qlyfNik4DxA6n5nBtmrIIpPtM1bHbeEg1RA/s1056/dalia-english-dikey-1-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="959" data-original-width="1056" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9G4Eux8HZoYSxgjqSv7wOvK-PAZU23nLj1XQru4w_zo-cNGput5V1MN2bC4C9nXBLtH-BEfV5WG0a3NB21L9jWma8Yz1_kLqwkuzZTpovQ5FTd6bxlvMMOkyow6QK1ywMkNIULrHRlkf9-_qlyfNik4DxA6n5nBtmrIIpPtM1bHbeEg1RA/w400-h364/dalia-english-dikey-1-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><a href="https://harici.com.tr/en/after-12-years-is-another-protest-tahrir-possible-in-egypt/" target="_blank">Originally published on Harici</a></span><div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule in Egypt came to an end with the popular movement that finalized on January 25th 2011. After the initial wave of protests, which lasted for 18 days, Mubarak was compelled to resign on February 11th.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 2013, a new round of actions and military intervention brought an end to Mohammed Morsi’s administration, which had been elected to power after Hosni Mubarak. The leader of the military coup during the polls in May 2014, Defense Minister Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, won the presidency with 90 percent of the vote while just 45 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The “crazy projects” of the Sisi administration, such the construction of a new headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo, had a major impact on the nation’s economy in the past ten years, when the Egyptian army was swiftly modernized and significant resources were allocated to this sector.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Russian-Ukrainian war, the pandemic, and other health concerns caught the Egyptian economy off unprepared. The foreign capital that Russian and Ukrainian tourists had brought to Egypt was lost. Foreign investors withdrew about $25 billion in fresh capital from the Egyptian market in less than a year. Egypt’s currency, the lira, dropped by 50% from the previous year as it quickly lost value against the US dollar.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Due to the rapid currency increase, import prices increased. Accessing basic consumer goods has been more difficult for the underprivileged. Meat and eggs are now often regarded as high-end goods. The middle class’s standard of living has declined.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In Egypt, a nation of 104 million people where 70% of the populace receives bread subsidies, the grain crisis has also turned into a serious national security concern.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egypt called the IMF for the fourth time in the previous six years due to these challenging circumstances. The Sisi administration, which took $3 billion, was forced to agree to the IMF’s stringent requirements.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The IMF’s requirements include privatization, a cessation of currency manipulation, and limitations on the military’s influence over the economy. The swift fall of the lira was the first sign that letting exchange rates float</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What kind of future has in wait for Egypt, the center of the Arab world, where skyscrapers are rising on one side but poverty is spreading on the other?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Will the deteriorating economic situation lead to a new Tahrir uprising?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">How eager are Egyptians to demand their rights in the squares in light of the bitter experience of the last 10 years, when social upheavals quickly turned into civil wars?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It appears that the huge winds of revolution have temporarily turned to a disappointment. However, it is absolutely impossible to lose belief in the Nile River’s never-ending flow.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">12 years had passed since December 25th 2011, when tens of thousands of people started to swarm the Tahrir Square,. We questioned Dalia Ziada, the director of the Center for Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East Studies, on the state of Egypt’s economy and the broken ties between Egypt and Turkey.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Things are difficult, but we are in control of it and we will be able to overcome it,” said President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Military Academy. As I understand President Sisi is trying to give message to Egyptian to be relax and calm So, what kind of economic challenges Egypt is currently facing. During the past few months, the dollar has been in rise. What is the current pressing economic issue, and what steps will Cairo take to overcome it?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What is the army’s role in economy? It is being criticized by the West.</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If I remember it correctly Egypt took IMF loan four times … Well, didn’t IMF’s credit programs work in Egypt?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Economic issues may be caused by the Coronavirus era or the conflict in Eastern Europe, and the devastation it caused on a worldwide scale is evident. Particularly in Europe, one might observe several protests against the government in France or England. I’m not sure how these public protests will affect or will change politics in Europe, but I wonder if social movements could start in the Middle East again, especially in Egypt after the so called Arab Spring. Is there any possibility in Cairo or the other capitals in the Middle East?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I would like to ask to you the current feelings of the middle class? After 10 years what is their mood?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There is rapprochement process between the Arab nations between Türkiye and Arab World and also we can add Iran to this list. So, how do you evaluate this process? What king obstacles we have between Ankara and Cairo?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The process has frozen. What is the expectations of Cairo from Ankara?</span></strong></li></ul><p></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is a very good question to start the conversation with, because this is what is preoccupying the minds of everyone right now either in Egypt or worldwide but specifically in Egypt. Because this time, unlike before, the crisis is too complicated in many ways because it is in a sense a combined crisis. It is not new, it is not made by the Covid or by the Russia-Ukraine War but these recent global events have enhanced the crisis that has been in place since the 1960s or even 1950s in Egypt.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I call it the chronic crisis of the Egyptian economy. So, right now we are facing this challenge, which we are at a crossroads. Perhaps the economic plan or macroeconomic policy at that time did not start on the right foot. They first started as a communist republic and started to apply socialist policies. And then years later they said let’s have try on liberal market policies. And then all this has changed and we ended up with a very distorted macroeconomic system that we had to deal with throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, of course to a long heritage of administrative and financial corruption. All this led to the image of the distorted economy or macroeconomic systems that we are having in Egypt today. So, the two crises that came each other, the Covid- and then the Russian Ukraine War, have brought Egypt at a crossroads. So now you have either to deal with this chronic crisis and solve it for good and start a whole new macroeconomic system or you just turn a blind eye to what’s going on and keep going on like this. And sooner or later this will lead to the collapse of the macroeconomic system and the entire political stability that we have been trying to keep for a while.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the past week we have seen several statements by the senior state officials starting from the President, the Prime Minister, assuring the public that everything is fine while trying to keep it under control but unfortunately this is not translated on the ground. When you tell this to me as a citizen, I get happy and excited, but when I go out to the street to buy food or do any other activity that I used to do as a middle-class person, it has simply become too difficult. For example, in Türkiye and in many other countries when there is a such case of inflation, they are always accompanied by raises in salaries and the minimum wage, we do not have this here in Egypt because the country is already in deep debt and they cannot even afford an increase in salaries. On the contrary they are talking about removing subsidies on essential household commodities goods like the bread, cooking oil and energy which also will end up in more inflation. There is zero control over the market.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This military-owned enterprises issue is somehow complicated for someone who does not understand how things are working in Egypt. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The military is I would call, the backbone of the Egyptian State both politically and economically.</strong> In other words, the civilian government here in Egypt can’t do without the military being involved, as a safety net or as an insurance I would say in both politics and economy. Of course, like from a democratic point of view this is completely wrong and it should change one day if we really want Egypt to become a democratic country. But are we ready for this now? Unfortunately, no. The economic reform that the IMF is currently requesting, are very tough on the Egyptian market and for the merchants and the manufacturers, as much as they are on the Egyptian people itself. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And the only entity in the country that have an autonomous economic system of its own and that is not affected by what is happening in the market is the military. And they have enterprises that can fill the gap between what the civilian government can offer and what the people need.</strong> Because this gap is believe me, really big. Only entity in Egypt right now that can fill in this gap, is the military. So, in the long run, yes the military should get completely out of the market and allow private investors to do their work and for the market to be liberated because this is essential if we really want to develop the Egyptian economy and the Egyptian political life in general. But right now, it would be a very tough decision with all the mess that we are having in especially in the economic arena.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Since the 1960s we have been receiving loans from the IMF. It is not only the recent ones but in these ones are very different. I would speak specifically and make a very quick comparison between the current loan that is three billion dollars over 48 months. And the previous loans which comprised of about twenty billion dollars, came in three parts like first twelve billion dollars, and then two emergency loans of the IMF that are I think something around five and two billion dollars, totaling in twenty billion dollars in these past six years. And why is these six years in particular being important because they are the years when we have this new regime in Egypt of President Al-Sisi. Before that it was a different state and a completely different scenario in politics and macroeconomics. The first loan which was given to us in 2016, was based on some policies that I think worked very much in the favor of the Egyptian people. That is not only serving to rescue the state from collapse. But they included some policies, which I think is because of Christine Lagarde’s activist spirit, which was towards development and socio-economic wellbeing, all tied together. So, this loan helped Egypt to improve its infrastructure in a very positive way, and provided a good support to the poor and social development in general in Egypt. For example, these programs were made for the Haya Karima, which means “Dignified Life”, for the people who cannot afford a living and also for urban redevelopment for the people who are living in slums.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So, all these definitely had a good effect in improving the standard of living in Egypt, and also for attracting foreign investors until the start of the Russia-Ukraine War. Although it is happening in a very distant geography it affected us dramatically, because Egypt relays on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in two basic sectors, the food sector and the tourism sector. So, the shockwave of the Russia Ukraine war on Egypt was much bigger than it was on any other country I assume, so we ended up having falling again into this loop of crises. So now we are asking for a new loan, but this new loan is very strict in applying the policies that seek structural reform including of course the military withdrawal from the market and slowing down the national projects which was made by the former loans, which may actually risk the gains that we have got from the 2016 loan. This is what is making the most Egyptians pessimistic I would say, about the new loan.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Why people came out against Mubarak at that time, was partly due to similar policies like privatization, selling state-owned assets to foreign investors etc. So, of course this question came to the minds of many observers and analysts that the Egyptians will go out against Al-Sisi to protest his policies and actually I am talking to from Cairo right now. and from what I am seeing is that people throughout the past 10 years, is that we have gone through a lot including political transitions, the lack of security and stability at certain times, and now with the economic crisis, I think the people are very much in a case of fatigue that may not be able take such an action. They are also having a general mindset in the street is that “Yes we know we are suffering, and it is not good” and many people completely disagree with the policies of the government, especially in the economic part of the equation. But they are making this compromise “if we go to the street now and make a protest this will lead to chaos again and the chaos will lead to more economic trouble and more economic complications and will take another 10 years to get over these complications”. So, they are waiting to see what the government can really do with this crisis. I do not think they may come out anytime soon. If we also look in the past protesters that happened over the past 10 years since the Arab Spring up till now it is not the poor. It is always the middle class. It is the middle class, the educated the employees, the bureaucrats that are the ones who come out to the streets and make real protests that make real changes.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Now the middle class is very depressed in many ways. One of them of course is economic as we are speaking about the economic part here. But also, another part is political because we had these high hopes about a more democratic country, more freedoms, more human rights or better performance by the government on human rights. Unfortunately, today we are still struggling with the same issues we have been struggling with 10 years ago, regarding freedom of speech, human rights democratization. And even when changes happen and things open up a little bit, they get closed again by economic crises or security issues like fighting against terrorism etc. So, the depression is coming from the fact that we fear that these dreams will be forgotten, in the process of doing economic reform, or facing security challenges. But hopefully people will keep pressing in a positive way not in a destructive way to make this happen in the future. But this all sticks us again to the point that you can advocate for you know democracy human rights in a country that is stable with a good economy. But usually when these things are not well, the security is not good enough and economy is not good enough. As human rights activists or civil rights activists we do not get the <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">popular support needed to help our work. So, this is basically the main challenge here.</strong></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Great question actually. Let me start by saying that I am very happy with the new foreign policies of president Erdogan of Türkiye has been adopting in the past two years, which is mainly about approaching Arab countries of all over the Arab geography, and also communicating on a basis of fixing ties regardless of the ideological differences, either on the Mediterranean or in the Middle East and Türkiye, since I consider Türkiye a part of the Middle East of course. The good thing here is that most of the Arabs do not look at Türkiye in the same negative light that they look at Iran for example. For most Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, which is the biggest Gulf country and one of the main leaders in the region right, now Iran is still seen as an enemy. But while it is not that much in countries in North Africa, but Türkiye for everyone has always been a friend. Of course before past seven or eight years of diplomatic and media rivalries, but before that Türkiye has always been integral to this region and a very important partner and an important regional player in the region. For Egypt and Türkiye in particular, the relationship is even more critical than any other country. That is not only because of the geographic proximity between the two countries, which allows lots of opportunities for economic cooperation between the two countries given the fact that Egypt is literally at the gates of Africa, and Türkiye is literally at the gates of Europe, but we can do a lot of things together. Again unfortunately because of political differences in the past eight or nine years, all this potential was hindered for no good reason. We could have been able to communicate and cooperate for so long. But also there is this religious and historical factors. There is a lot of cultural similarities between Türkiye and Egypt. Of course, this applies to most of the countries in North Africa are heavily influenced by the Turkish culture. And this is making or creating a space for understanding that you would not see in other countries. So despite of course the political tensions that happened in the last decade or so between the two governments, still the people have a lot in very much in communication and in understanding with each other for example between Türkiye and its neighbors in in Syria or Iraq etc. Although they are closer like right on your border but if you look at the North Africa side, the understanding and communication was much better. After the historic handshake between the two Presidents Al-Sisi and Erdogan, actually hopes were very high here in Egypt as well that maybe finally we have come to the point of proper communication and things show are moving in the right direction. But sadly, none of this is happening. It has been two months now and there is no follow-up from the intelligence bureaus in both countries or even a follow-up by the Foreign Ministries in both countries. Things are still same.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I think the main reason why these talks are frozen, is because there are three main files that are still open and it is somehow very difficult for both countries to come to a compromise. Number one is Libya of course. Libya is the country that shares the longest border with Egypt. For Egypt, here the state considers Libya national strategic depth. So any actions that happens there directly affects us. Now I can see more tolerance to the fact that Türkiye have its troops in Libya, and is trying to make agreements with Libya. There is some kind of more tolerance here than it was in 2020 when there was these clashes and Egypt was very angry for the presence of the Turkish troops are there. But now there is this greater tolerance because the state of Egypt started to understand that Türkiye is not a threat to our national security, which I think is very important point that Türkiye was able to communicate clearly to the Egyptian officials here.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the other hand, Türkiye and Egypt still support two different sides in the Libyan conflict. And Egypt cannot afford not to support the Eastern factions, because they are controlling Egypt’s Western border and they are preventing the smuggling of weapons into Egyptian Western desert, or preventing terrorism from leaking into Egypt. So, they cannot afford actually losing them at the same time Türkiye is believing that Tripoli is the legitimate government and they continue to support it because it is recognized by the UN, and also Türkiye has geo-economic or geopolitical interests over the Tripoli based government, so it makes sense for them to support it. With all these complications I think like to get to a compromise on the Libya issue, needs lots of talks between two sides.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Egypt involved in Türkiye – Greece conflict”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another critical issue of course is the Eastern Mediterranean. As we have seen in the past three years Egypt in particular got heavily involved in the conflict between Greece and Türkiye. Since the time of Mubarak we were always avoiding in intervening in this conflict. Even in 2005 when Greece started to ask Egypt to sign agreements or delimitation, Egypt has always used to say “No go first solve your problem with Türkiye, and then come back to us and then we can talk”. This is out of respect to Türkiye’s borders or out of respect to Türkiye’s rights in the Mediterranean. But unfortunately amidst the political tensions that happened in the past seven or eight years, has made it easier for Greece to request to make such requests to Cairo, and made it even more possible for Cairo to respond positively to these requests and we ended up having this agreement with Greece and the Greek Cyprus in in 2020, followed by the formation of the Eastern Mediterranean gas Forum which is sadly has excluded Türkiye or I would say unfairly has excluded Türkiye although it is the country with the longest shoreline in the Mediterranean. Despite the agreements that Egypt has signed with the Greek Cyprus and Greece, Egypt has always been careful not to trespass the area that Türkiye refers to has its Maritime Zone which is also a positive indication. So I think although Egypt is having this agreement towards Greece now and Greek Cyprus and other players or other actors in the Mediterranean, this should not prevent Egypt from having a similar agreement with Türkiye. For sure either on delimitation or we call it Maritime agreement, or whatever we call it but we should have some kind of an agreement on what is happening in the Mediterranean with Türkiye. And again this needs a lot of communication and lots of negotiations. The third and final issue which is not as big as the first two in my opinion, is the Muslim Brotherhood issue. Egypt insists all the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, whether they are the people who are in the armed movement and or the peaceful members of the Muslim Brotherhood who did not practice any acts of violence be sent back to Egypt to be punished. At the same time Türkiye sees it in a humanitarian perspective and does not see a good reason to send back the people who were only practicing political opposition against Egypt and not really has not been involved in acts of violence. Two states needs to come to an agreement on this too but I think this this particular part is much more marginal than the two first two big issues of the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-87076459988098267502023-01-29T14:55:00.002+02:002023-01-29T15:00:15.964+02:00Mısır’da 12 yıl sonra ikinci bir Tahrir yolda mı? | Harici özel söylesi | Dalia Ziada<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgflYXUHA1jUpl0RdOcxSc2qfMr7N73dw40pY5QXbCp8UVAYzW6y7aU17CuhnZo_7GT7mBwZ1WhvNU_c2fI97r0Ebzb90icB-M784FUtPIrp-YMyqdrJssqh2hYjEr019kqm24aCCBY8wivb7Trs18Os5AjuWL6zP_kcQBdZktyy6V426xD0A/s1056/DaliaZiada.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1056" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgflYXUHA1jUpl0RdOcxSc2qfMr7N73dw40pY5QXbCp8UVAYzW6y7aU17CuhnZo_7GT7mBwZ1WhvNU_c2fI97r0Ebzb90icB-M784FUtPIrp-YMyqdrJssqh2hYjEr019kqm24aCCBY8wivb7Trs18Os5AjuWL6zP_kcQBdZktyy6V426xD0A/w400-h238/DaliaZiada.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://harici.com.tr/misirda-12-yil-sonra-ikinci-bir-tahrir-yolda-mi/" target="_blank">Originally published on Harici</a></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">25 Ocak 2011’de başlayan halk ayaklanmasıyla 30 yıllık Hüsnü Mübarek dönemi Mısır’da son buldu. 18 gün süren birinci eylem dalgasını takiben 11 Şubat’ta Mübarek istifaya zorlandı.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mübarek’in ardından seçimle iş başına gelen Muhammed Mursi yönetimi ise 2013 yılında yeni bir eylem dalgası ve askerin müdahalesiyle sona erdi. Askeri müdahalenin lideri olan Savunma Bakanı Abdülfettah es-Sisi, 2014 Mayıs ayında düzenlenen, katılımın yüzde 45’lerde kaldığı seçimlerde oyların yüzde 90’ını alarak Cumhurbaşkanı seçildi.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mübarek’in devrilmesinden bu yana geçen 12 yılda Mısır’da hem çok şey hem de çok az şey değişti. Daha özgür daha müreffeh bir toplum için sokaklara çıkanların talepleri ise yerini hayal kırıklığına bıraktı.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Zengin Körfez ülkelerinden, IMF ve Dünya Bankası’ndan aktarılan kaynaklara rağmen Mısır ekonomisinin kronik sorunlarına çözüm getirecek köklü iyileştirmeler gerçekleşmedi.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mısır ordusunun hızla modernleştirildiği ve bu alana büyük kaynakların aktarıldığı son 10 yıllık dönemde Sisi yönetiminin başkent Kahire’de yeni bir yönetim merkezi inşasına girişmek gibi mega yatırımları, Türkiye’deki tabirle “çılgın projeleri” de ülke ekonomisinde önemli bir paya sahip oldu.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Pandemi ve sağlık krizini takip eden Rusya – Ukrayna savaşı, köklü sorunları dönüştürmede başarısız olan Mısır ekonomisini hazırlıksız yakaladı. Mısır, Rus ve Ukraynalı turistlerin getirdiği dövizden mahrum kaldı. Yabancı yatırımcılar bir yıl içinde Mısır piyasasından 25 milyar dolara yakın sıcak parayı çekti. Ülke parası dolar karşısında hızla değer kaybetti ve Mısır lirası geçen yıla göre yüzde elli oranında eridi.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dövizin hızlı yükselişi ithalat maliyetlerini artırdı. Temel tüketim mallarına yoksulların erişimi zorlaştı. Milyonlar için et, yumurta gibi ürünler lüks tüketim malzemesi haline geldi. Orta sınıf ciddi bir refah kaybı yaşadı.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tahıl krizi de ekmek sübvansiyonlarının nüfusun yüzde 70’ini kapsadığı 104 milyonluk Mısır’da tam anlamıyla bir milli güvenlik meselesi haline geldi.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bu ağır koşullar sonucunda Mısır, son altı yılda dördüncü kez IMF’nin kapısını çaldı. Dört yıllığına 3 milyar dolar kaynak bulan Sisi yönetimi IMF’nin sıkı koşullarını kabul etmek zorunda kaldı.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">IMF’nin koşulları arasında döviz kuruna müdahalenin sonlanması, ordunun ekonomideki rolünün kısıtlanması ve özelleştirme yer alıyor. Döviz kurlarının dalgalı rejime bırakılması ilk etkisini, Mısır parasının hızla değer yitirmesiyle gösterdi. Liberalleştirme kapsamında diğer iki başlığın etkileri muhtemelen orta vadede kendisini gösterecek.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bir yanda yükselen gökdelenler diğer yanda derinleşen yoksullukla Arap dünyasının kalbi Mısır’ı nasıl bir gelecek bekliyor?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ağırlaşan ekonomik koşullar yeni bir Tahrir ayaklanmasını beraberinde getirir mi?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Orta Doğu’da toplumsal ayaklanmaların hızla iç savaşlara dönüştüğü geçmiş 10 yılın acı tecrübesi düşünüldüğünde Mısırlılar hakkını meydanlarda aramaya ne ölçüde istekli?</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Şimdilik, büyük devrim rüzgârlarından geriye hayal kırıklığı ve bekleme duygusu kalmış gibi görünüyor. Ancak Nil nehrinin sonsuz akışından umudu kesmek kesinlikle mümkün değil…</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tahrir’de milyonların meydanları doldurmaya başladığı 25 Aralık 2011’in üzerinden 12 geçti. O günden bu güne Mısır’ın içinde bulunduğu ekonomik koşulları ve Arap Baharı fırtınasıyla yıkılan Türkiye – Mısır ilişkilerini Doğu Akdeniz ve Orta Doğu Araştırmalar Merkezi Başkanı Dalia Ziada’ya sorduk.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mısır Cumhurbaşkanı Abdulfettah es-Sisi, Askeri Akademi’de yaptığı konuşmada “Zorluklar var ama işler kontrolümüz altında ve bu krizin üstesinden geleceğiz” dedi. Anladığım kadarıyla Cumhurbaşkanı Sisi, Mısır toplumuna “sakin olma” mesajı vermeye çalışıyor. Şu an Mısır ne tür ekonomik zorluklarla karşı karşıya ve yönetim bunların üstesinden gelmek için ne tür adımlar atıyor? </span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mısır ordusunun ekonomideki rolü Batılı uzmanlar tarafından eleştiriliyor. Bu konu hakkında ne düşünüyorsun?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rusya- Ukrayna savaşının yıkıcı etkilerini Mısır’da Türkiye’de, Avrupa’da ve dünya ölçeğinde görüyoruz. Özellikle Avrupa’da hükümetlere karşı büyük protestolara tanık oluyoruz. Eylemlerin Avrupa siyasetini nasıl şekillendireceğini bilmiyorum ancak bu tip eylemlerin Mısır’da ve Orta Doğu’da olması ihtimalini nasıl değerlendiriyorsunuz?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Orta sınıfın hissiyatını sormak istiyorum. Bundan 10 yıl önce bu kesimler birçok şeyi protesto etti. Belki büyük hayalleri ve Mısır’ın geleceğine dair umutları vardı. Ardan geçen 10 yılın ardından hissiyat nedir?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Arap Baharı’nın ardından Orta Doğu’da oldukça karmaşık bir “normalleşme” süreci yürüyor. Araplar arasında bir süreç var. İran ile Arap dünyası ve Türkiye ile Arap devletleri arasında normalleşme süreçleri yaşanıyor. Ankara ve Kahire arasındaki diyaloğu nasıl değerlendiriyorsun? Ne gibi engeller var?</span></strong></li></ul><ul style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: outside; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 50px; padding: 5px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Süreç dondu ve Kahire’nin Ankara’dan ne tür beklentileri var?</span></strong></li></ul><p></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mısır’da herkesin zihnini meşgul eden şey tam olarak bu. Bu sefer kriz, öncekilere göre birçok yönden daha karmaşık. Çünkü bir anlamda bütünleşik bir krizden bahsediyoruz. Bu kriz yeni değil, Kovid’le ya da Rusya-Ukrayna Savaşı ile başlamadı. Ancak bu son küresel ölçekteki olaylar Mısır’da 1960’lardan ve hatta 1950’lerden beri var olan krizi daha da körükledi. Ben buna Mısır ekonomisinin kronik krizi diyorum. Yani, şu anda bir yol ayrımında olduğumuz bir zorlukla karşı karşıyayız.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Geçmişte ekonomik plan veya makroekonomik politikalar, daha başından doğru bir şekilde uygulanmadı. Önce komünist bir cumhuriyet olarak başladık ve sosyalist politikalar uygulamaya koyulduk. Sonra liberal piyasa politikalarını deneyelim dedik. Ve sonra her şey birbirine girmişken 1990 ve 2000’ler boyunca çok çarpık bir makroekonomik sistemle karşı karşıya kaldık. Buna ek olarak, elbette uzun bir idari ve mali yolsuzluk mirasını da bugüne kadar getirdik. Bu süreç bugün Mısır’ın bu çarpık ekonomi veya makroekonomik sistemine yol açtı. Dolayısıyla birbiri ardına gelen bu iki kriz, bugün Mısır’ı bir yol ayrımına getirdi. Şimdi ya bu kronik krizi kesin olarak çözecek ve yepyeni bir makroekonomik sistem kuracağız ya da tüm bunlara göz yumup bu şekilde devam edeceğiz. Ancak işlerin bu şekilde gitmesi er ya da geç makroekonomik sistemin ve bir süredir tutmaya çalıştığımız toplam siyasi istikrarın da çöküşüne yol açacaktır.”</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Mısır borç içinde”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Geçen hafta Cumhurbaşkanı, Başbakan ve Bakanlar başta olmak üzere tüm ekonomi yönetimi ve üst düzey devlet yetkililerinin her şeyin yolunda olduğuna dair çeşitli açıklamalar duyduk, ancak maalesef bu sahaya istendiği gibi yansımıyor. Şöyle ki bu açıklamaları duyduğumda bir vatandaş olarak ben mutlu oluyorum, ancak yiyecek almak için sokağa çıktığımda veya orta sınıf bir insan olarak yaptığım herhangi bir aktivitede artık çok zorlanıyorum. Örneğin, Türkiye ve diğer birçok ülkede böyle bir enflasyona, her zaman maaşlarda ve asgari ücrette yapılan zamlar eşlik eder, ancak Mısır’da buna sahip değiliz. Çünkü ülke zaten derin bir borç içinde ve maaşlarda herhangi bir artışı göze alamıyorlar. Aksine, bazı olumlu mesajlar verirlerken diğer yandan yemeklik yağ ve enerji gibi temel tüketim üzerindeki sübvansiyonların kaldırılmasından bahsediyorlar ve bu da maalesef daha fazla enflasyona sebep oluyor. Şu an piyasa üzerinde hiçbir kontrol sağlanamıyor.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Silahlı kuvvetler Mısır devletinin bel kemiği”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bu da çok iyi bir soru, çünkü bu orduya ait işletmeler meselesi, Mısır’da işlerin nasıl yürüdüğünü anlamayan biri için çok karmaşık bir mesele. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Silahlı Kuvvetler, Mısır Devleti’nin hem siyasi hem de ekonomik olarak bel kemiği diyebilirim. Başka bir deyişle, Mısır’daki sivil hükümet; ordunun hem siyasette hem de ekonomide güvenlik ağı veya sigorta işlevi olmaksızın, hiçbir şey yapamaz.</strong> Tabii ki, demokratik bakış açısıyla bu tamamen yanlış ve Mısır’ın demokratik bir ülke olmasını gerçekten istiyorsak bu bir gün değişmeli. Ama soru şu, biz buna şimdi hazır mıyız? Maalesef hayır.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“IMF reformları Mısır için çok zor”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">IMF’nin şu anda talep ettiği ekonomik reformlar, Mısır halkı için olduğu kadar Mısır piyasaları, tüccarlar ve üreticiler için de oldukça zor. Ülkede kendine ait özerk bir ekonomik sisteme sahip olan ve piyasada olup bitenlerden etkilenmeyen tek yapı ise ordu. Ordunun sivil hükümetin sunabileceği ile halkın ihtiyaç duyduğu emtialar arasındaki boşluğu doldurabilecek işletmeleri var. Çünkü bu boşluk inanın bana, gerçekten düşündüğünüzden daha büyük. Neticede Mısır’da bu boşluğu doldurabilecek tek yapı ordudur. Bu nedenle uzun vadede, evet, Mısır ekonomisini ve genel olarak Mısır siyasi yaşamını gerçekten geliştirmek istiyorsak ordu piyasadan tamamen çekilmeli ve özel yatırımcıların işlerini yapmalarına izin vermeli. Ancak şu anda, özellikle ekonomik arenada yaşadığımız tüm bu karmaşada, bu çok zor bir karar olur.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rusya-Ukrayna savaşının etkileri ve IMF’nin şartları</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rusya-Ukrayna savaşı çok uzak bir coğrafyada olmasına rağmen bizi çok etkiledi. Çünkü Mısır; Rusya, Ukrayna ve Belarus’a iki temel sektörde, gıda ve turizmde çok büyük ölçüde bağlı. Bu yüzden, Rusya-Ukrayna savaşının Mısır’a etkisinin, diğer ülkelerden çok daha büyük olduğu kanısındayım. Bu yüzden tekrar bahsettiğim kriz döngüsüne düştük. Evet, şimdi yeniden kredi talep ediyoruz, ancak bu kredi elbette askerin piyasadan çekilmesi ve eski kredilerle yapılan ulusal mega projeleri yavaşlatma gibi IMF’nin talep ettiği yapısal reformları çok katı bir tutumla uygulamada kullanılacak. Bu da aslında 2016 kredisinden elde ettiğimiz tüm kazanımları riske atabilir. Bu durum, Mısırlıları yeni IMF kredisine olumsuz yaklaşmasına sebep oluyor.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mübarek’i deviren nedenler ve i</strong><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">kinci Tahrir tartışmaları </strong></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">O dönemde insanların Mübarek’e karşı çıkmasının nedenleri arasında özelleştirmeler, devlete ait varlıkların yabancı yatırımcılara satılması gibi politikalar mevcuttu. Bu nedenle, elbette birçok analistin aklına Mısırlıların Sisi’yi protesto etmek için sokaklara çıkıp çıkmayacakları sorusunu geliyor. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Kahire’den konuşuyorum ve gördüğüm kadarıyla son 10 yılda insanlar; siyasi geçişler, belirli zamanlarda güvenlik ve istikrar sorunu da dahil çok şey yaşadı ve şimdi ekonomik krizle birlikte, insanların böyle bir eylemde bulunamayacak bir yorgunlukta olduklarını düşünüyorum</strong>.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Protesto kaosa neden olur düşüncesi var”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sokakta “Evet, sıkıntı çektiğimizi biliyoruz ve durum iyi değil” gibi genel bir yaklaşım var ve birçok insan hükümetin politikalarına, özellikle ekonomik kısmına katılmıyor. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ama aynı insanlar “Şimdi sokağa çıkıp bir protesto düzenlersek, bu yine kaosa yol açacak ve kaos daha fazla ekonomik sıkıntıya neden olacak. Nihayetinde bu sıkıntıları aşmak için 10 yıl daha süre gerekecek” gibi bir fikre kapılıyor. Bu yüzden, hükümetin bu krizde gerçekten ne yapabileceğini görmek için henüz bekliyorlar. Dolayısıyla yakın zamanda halkın sokağa çıkabileceğini sanmıyorum. </strong>Arap Baharı’ndan bu yana geçen 10 yılda meydana gelen protestoculara da bakarsak, bunların yoksul kesimden olmadığını görürüz. Her zaman orta sınıf sokağa çıktı. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sokağa çıkarak gerçekten değişime yol açan hep orta sınıf, eğitimli kesim ve bürokratlardı.</strong></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Mısır orta sınıfı ekonomik ve politik olarak büyük bir buhran yaşıyor”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Orta sınıf birçok yönden çok büyük bir buhranın içinde. Bunlardan birisi elbette ekonomik, çünkü burada ekonomik bir sınıftan bahsediyoruz. Ama aynı zamanda başka bir kısmı da siyasi. Çünkü hükümetin demokratik değerler, özgürlükler ve insan hakları konusunda daha iyi performans göstereceği konusunda çok büyük umutlarımız vardı. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Maalesef bugün hâlâ 10 yıl önce mücadele ettiğimiz ifade özgürlüğü, insan hakları ve demokratikleşme gibi sorunlarla boğuşuyoruz.</strong> En ufak bir değişiklik olduğunda ve olumlu bir açılım yapıldığında bile “ekonomik krizler” veya “terörle mücadele” gibi güvenlik sorunları gerekçe gösterilerek hemen rafa kaldırıldı. Dolayısıyla bu siyasi buhranın kaynağı, ekonomik reform sürecinde veya güvenlik sıkıntılarıyla karşı karşıya kalındığında, bu hayallerin unutulmasından korktuğumuz gerçeği. Umarım insanlar gelecekte bunun gerçekleşmesi için yıkıcı bir şekilde değil de, yapıcı bir şekilde baskı yapmaya devam ederler. Ancak tüm bunlar bizi, ancak ekonomik olarak istikrarlı bir ülkede demokrasiyi ve insan haklarını savunabileceğimiz noktasına getiriyor.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rötarlı normalleşme: Ankara-Kahire diyaloğu yavaşladı</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Türkiye’yi elbette Orta Doğu’nun bir parçası olarak görüyorum. Burada lehimize olan şey, Arapların çoğunun Türkiye’ye, örneğin İran’a baktıkları gibi olumsuz bir şekilde bakmamalarıdır. En büyük Körfez ülkesi ve bölgedeki ana aktörlerden biri olan Suudi Arabistan da dahil olmak üzere çoğu Körfez ülkesi için bugün İran hâlâ bir düşman olarak görülüyor. Ama Kuzey Afrika’daki ülkelerde o kadar olmasa da, Türkiye hemen hemen herkes için her zaman dost olmuştur. Elbette son yedi, sekiz yıldaki diplomatik ve medya rekabetinden önce Türkiye her zaman bu bölgenin ayrılmaz bir parçası, çok önemli bir ortak ve bir oyuncu olmuştur. Özellikle Mısır ve Türkiye için bu ilişki diğer tüm ülkelerden de daha kritik. Bu sadece iki ülke arasındaki coğrafi yakınlıktan kaynaklanmıyor ki o da önemli: Afrika’nın kapısında olan Mısır ve Avrupa’nın kapısında olan Türkiye arasında ekonomik işbirliği her iki ülkeye de birçok fırsat sunuyor ve birlikte birçok şey yapabilecek durumdayız. İki Devlet Başkanı Sisi ve Erdoğan arasındaki tarihi el sıkışmadan sonra, aslında Mısır’da da umutlar çok yükseldi ve belki de sonunda doğru noktayı bulduğumuzu ve işlerin doğru yönde ilerlediğini düşündük. Ama ne yazık ki, bunların hiçbirisi gerçekleşmedi. Aradan iki ay geçti ve ne istihbarat teşkilatlarından ne de Dışişleri Bakanlıklarından yeni bir adım geldi. Hâlâ aynı noktadayız.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Üç anlaşmazlık noktası: Libya, Doğu Akdeniz, İhvan</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bence bu görüşmelerin dondurulmasının temel nedeni, her iki ülkenin de uzlaşmaya varmasını zorlaştıran üç ana konunun varlığı. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Birincisi </strong>elbette Libya. Libya, Mısır ile en uzun sınırı paylaşan ülke. Dolayısıyla Mısır için burada devlet, Libya’yı ulusal stratejik derinliğin bir parçası olarak görüyor. Yani orada gerçekleşen herhangi bir eylem bizi doğrudan etkileyecektir. Şimdi burada, Türkiye’nin Libya’daki varlığı ve Libya ile anlaşmalar yapmaya çalışması konusunda daha fazla hoşgörü görebiliyorum. Çatışmaların yaşandığı ve Mısır’ın Türk askerlerinin varlığına çok kızdığı 2020 yılına göre çok daha fazla hoşgörü var. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Çünkü Mısır devleti, artık Türkiye’nin ulusal güvenliğimiz için bir tehdit olmadığını anlamaya başladı ki bence Türkiye’nin buradaki Mısırlı yetkililerle net bir şekilde iletişim kurabilmesi çok önemli bir atılımdı.</strong></span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Mısır’ın “Suriyesi” Libya sınırı</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ancak öte yandan, Türkiye ve Mısır, Libya çatışmasında hâlâ iki farklı tarafı destekliyor ve Mısır, Doğu gruplarını desteklememeyi göze alamaz, çünkü Mısır’ın Batı sınırını kontrol ediyorlar ve Mısır’ın Batı çölüne silah kaçakçılığını engellemede veya terörizmin Mısır’a sızmasını engellemede çok önemli rolleri var. Dolayısıyla, Türkiye’nin Trablus’un meşru hükümet olduğuna inandığı ve BM tarafından tanındığı için onu desteklemeye devam ettiği ve ayrıca Türkiye’nin Trablus merkezli hükümet üzerinde jeo-ekonomik veya jeopolitik çıkarları olduğu sırada onları kaybetmeyi göze alamazlar. Bu yüzden onu desteklemeleri de kendilerince mantıklı.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Türk-Yunan gerilimine Mısır dahil oldu”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bir diğer kritik konu da elbette Doğu Akdeniz. Son üç yılda gördüğümüz gibi, özellikle Mısır, Yunanistan ile Türkiye arasındaki çekişmelere yoğun bir şekilde dahil oldu. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mübarek döneminden beri bu çatışmaya dahil olmaktan her zaman kaçınıyorduk. Yunanistan’ın Mısır’dan deniz yetki anlaşması imzalamasını istemeye başladığı 2005 yılında bile Mısır hep “Hayır, önce gidip Türkiye ile sorununuzu çözün, ancak ondan sonra konuşabiliriz” dedi. Bu, Türkiye’nin deniz yetki alanlarına ya da Türkiye’nin Akdeniz’deki haklarına saygısından yapılan bir hareketti. Ancak ne yazık ki son yedi-sekiz yılda yaşanan siyasi gerginlikler, Yunanistan’ın Kahire’ye bu tür taleplerde bulunmasını kolaylaştırdı ve Kahire’nin de bu taleplere olumlu yanıt vermesini mümkün kıldı. Ancak </strong><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Güney Kıbrıs Rum Kesimi ve Yunanistan ile imzaladığı anlaşmalara rağmen Mısır, Türkiye’nin ilan ettiği deniz yetki alanına girmemek için her zaman dikkatli olmaya devam etti ve bu da aslında olumlu bir duruma işaret etmektedir.</strong> Dolayısıyla Mısır’ın Güney Kıbrıs ve Yunanistan’la yaptığı anlaşmaların, Kahire’nin Ankara ile benzer bir anlaşmaya varmasını engellememesi gerektiğini düşünüyorum.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Müslüman Kardeşler sorunu Libya ve Akdeniz kadar önemli değil”</span></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bana göre ilk ikisi kadar büyük olmayan üçüncü ve son mesele ise Müslüman Kardeşler meselesidir. Mısır, Müslüman Kardeşler’in silahlı kanadına dahil olan veya herhangi bir şiddet eylemine karışmayan üyeleri fark etmeksizin hepsinin Mısır’a iadesini ve cezalandırılmasını istiyor. Türkiye ise daha insani bir perspektiften yola çıkarak, sadece Mısır’a karşı siyasi muhalefet uygulayan ve aslında şiddet olaylarına karışmamış kişileri geri göndermek için iyi bir neden görmüyor. Bu iki devletin bu konu üzerinde de anlaşmaya varması gerekiyor ama bence bu kısım Doğu Akdeniz ve Libya gibi iki büyük meseleden daha ufak bir teferruat.</span></span></p><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-77286634485570206992023-01-24T12:14:00.002+02:002023-01-29T12:22:28.412+02:00Blurring Lines of Politics, Freedom, Racism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaq1iwgTCig8_g0HSdU27ypHxLfnT2WRCadVs66iW3ZF26Jwe5_qd4WyLkDectb9ZoPu3d-9NqDeGZN0Erue8LE8NRzHdRy9byUL29l2RpnJdjyXns9QGZ1OKYNNrlCrn_3soSCrUh0efbg9NCFwdJ5VascbmqT6kH0yhCqwwJDExMHRUCZA/s1024/Hedlund_main_bMuXAtp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaq1iwgTCig8_g0HSdU27ypHxLfnT2WRCadVs66iW3ZF26Jwe5_qd4WyLkDectb9ZoPu3d-9NqDeGZN0Erue8LE8NRzHdRy9byUL29l2RpnJdjyXns9QGZ1OKYNNrlCrn_3soSCrUh0efbg9NCFwdJ5VascbmqT6kH0yhCqwwJDExMHRUCZA/w400-h266/Hedlund_main_bMuXAtp.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Now and then, the European governments and collegiate bodies issue statements criticizing Middle East countries for their frail performance on human rights. My home country, Egypt, is probably the country that receives the most criticism. But, when it comes to the systematic acts of racism against Muslim minorities in Europe, most European politicians turn their heads away and decline to intervene to stop such a gross violation of Muslims’ basic human right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For more than a decade, Rasmus Paludan, a Danish-Swedish lawyer has been repetitively insulting and burning the Muslim holy book – the Quran – in daylight and under the protection of Swedish policemen. While he is doing it to gain political influence, the Swedish government is tolerating his racism under the flag of freedom. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I do not remember reading in any international instrument that people are free to practice racism and discrimination against an entire religion or ethnicity. Paulden’s practice of hate against more than one billion Muslims worldwide is a severe violation that needs to be punished, instead of being protected, by the Swedish government.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is not an exaggeration to say that Paludan’s entire political career and fame are shamefully based on hating Muslims. Paludan is a far right-politician, who leads a party called “Stram Kurs” or Hard Line. Since 2010, he has been devoting acts of hate against the Muslim minority in Sweden to attract voters to his party. Unfortunately, his malicious tactics worked every time as there is, apparently, a large number of people who support his extremist stand against Muslims. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last year, Paludan led a domestic tour in Sweden to collect voter signatures prerequisite to securing candidature in the general elections that took place in September. Paludan’s campaign was simply about burning Quran in public during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He did not talk to the targeted voters about what he can do in politics or the economy. Instead, he only showed how much he hates Muslims to get their support. Sadly, his tour inspired far-right extremists in neighboring Norway to do similar racist rallies, wherein they tore pages of the Quran and spit on the holy book. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This week, Paludan decided to level up his racist/political game to spark a cross-border crisis. He took his rally to the capital city of Stockholm to burn Quran outside the walls of the Turkish embassy. Paludan’s action targeted Turkey as a state and the Turkish leadership that represents itself as a political representative of Muslims worldwide. During his rally, members of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) gathered to shout against the Turkish state for asking Sweden to stop protecting them. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sweden, alongside Finland, has been begging Turkey for months to approve their admission to NATO. They fear Russian aggression similar to what happened in Ukraine in February. Turkey has been vetoing the NATO decision to annex Sweden and Finland unless they stop supporting and protecting members of the terrorist organizations that threaten Turkey’s national security (e.g., PKK, YPG, and FETO). Meetings between Turkish and Swedish officials have been held, over the past months, to discuss the issue. However, no tangible progress has been achieved. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In response to Paludan’s hateful rally, Turkey’s Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, canceled a meeting with his Swedish counterpart who was supposed to visit Ankara, next week, to discuss his country’s admission to NATO. This is the first time the Swedish state receives an official retaliation for allowing racists to burn the Muslim holy book. Over the years, Middle East politicians only voiced routine condemnations of the acts of the anti-Muslim racist groups in Sweden, mainly to calm down the Muslim public in the countries that they lead. Sadly, this never prompted Sweden to take decisive action against the anti-Muslim racists.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Worried about the Turkish reaction, the Swedish Prime Minister wrote a mild tweet expressing his sympathy with the affected Muslims and describing Paludan’s misconduct as a form of free expression. Kristersson’s statement is very reminiscent of the comment of French President Macron on the insult of the Muslim Prophet in the local press. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Freedom of expression is a fundamental part of democracy. But what is legal is not necessarily appropriate. Burning books that are holy to many is a deeply disrespectful act. I want to express my sympathy for all Muslims who are offended by what has happened in Stockholm today.” Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, wrote in a tweet.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">European politicians' use of the terminology of freedom and democracy to justify discrimination against Muslim minorities in their countries is a disgrace. By tolerating discrimination against minorities, they are hurting democracy. Targeting hate at Muslims, repetitively, is not only inappropriate or disrespectful. It is racism. Racism is not free expression. It is a crime that political leaders need to punish and block, especially to protect the diversity in society, which is the core of democracy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The European far-right extremists, like Paludan and his supporters, are no less dangerous than the Islamist terrorists from Daesh (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda. In fact, they are constantly fueling the terrorist groups with the “state of victimhood” they need to recruit followers and justify their terrorist operations, especially against non-Muslims. The most heartbreaking fact in all this dark scene of hate and discrimination is that neither the politicians nor the extremists pay the price of religion-based hate. Only innocent civilians do.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-46558815589955691452023-01-23T12:10:00.001+02:002023-01-29T12:14:18.703+02:00What is Behind U.S. Renewed Interest in Libya?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1FZe66CJte4Z2FEUJbaA0oNlHyKa4NUFsSWKnjpbVMKjCf_yu6nHbBfiRREpSBaQI_KLNai2zyiXFymIKeUK_8CDQ3sthuaBRFacXwpKz9c7rf9eLrc8xaaio-A6pEu6QfwVeETgQlPqFMTx3C-oTlyYlN-UzkXIUrWU10o1NzgJeFwCmg/s960/147917_GNUJan122023BurnsDbeibah_1673589412710.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1FZe66CJte4Z2FEUJbaA0oNlHyKa4NUFsSWKnjpbVMKjCf_yu6nHbBfiRREpSBaQI_KLNai2zyiXFymIKeUK_8CDQ3sthuaBRFacXwpKz9c7rf9eLrc8xaaio-A6pEu6QfwVeETgQlPqFMTx3C-oTlyYlN-UzkXIUrWU10o1NzgJeFwCmg/w400-h225/147917_GNUJan122023BurnsDbeibah_1673589412710.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">William Burns, the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paid an ambiguous visit to Libya, last week, where he reportedly met with the rival political elite in Tripoli and Benghazi. The scarcity of official statements on the details of Burns’ recent visit to Libya, and the sensitivity of his current position as a chief spy, in addition to his decades-long experience in Libya, are creating a wave of speculations about the motives behind the United States renewed interest in the war-torn North African country. In the meantime, the Libyans are wondering if the United States' intervention on that senior level could participate in breaking the political stalemate and accelerating the process of holding elections after being blocked twice by the power conflicts of the political elite.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Burns has a seasoned career as an American diplomat leading tough missions in the Middle East and North Africa. Speaking of Libya, Burns was the engineer of the U.S. rapprochement to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004. In his capacity as Under Secretary of State, in 2014, he was the first U.S. official to visit Libya since the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in late 2012. One month after his visit the civil war that dragged Libya into hell for six years had erupted. For another ironic coincidence, Burns was appointed as CIA Director at the same time the civil war in Libya came to an end by the Un-brokered elections of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in early 2021. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Handshakes and Cold Shoulders </b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Looking into the names of the Libyan politicians that the CIA Director had chosen to give a handshake or a cold shoulder can provide a clue for the motives behind the U.S. re-involvement in Libya. Since the beginning of the Libyan civil war in 2014, the United States administrations of presidents Obama and Trump remained quite neutral about the conflict but attempted to diplomatically mediate for a working solution through special envoys and ambassadors. William Burns is the first senior American official to visit the country since then.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Libyan local media reported that Burns held separate meetings with political leaders in Tripoli and Benghazi. In Tripoli, he had talks with GNU’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, Foreign Minister Najla Al-Mangoush, and the Director of Libyan Intelligence, Hussein Al-Ayeb. The GNU media office published photos from the meeting and mentioned in a statement that “Burns stressed the need to develop economic and security cooperation between Libya and the United States.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The same statement quoted Dbeibeh vowing his government’s commitment to hold elections to ensure long-term stability in Libya. Al-Mangoush wrote that her meeting with the CIA Director highlighted fruitful discussions on security cooperation, paving the way for political stability through elections in Libya.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Some local media resources also mentioned that Burns met with Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the unofficial forces known as the Libyan National Army (LNA), in Benghazi. However, there is no credible evidence that this meeting happened. The traditional and social media platforms affiliated with Haftar have not published any photos from the alleged meeting, and the LNA spokesperson unusually declined to confirm or deny the news. Some other reports claim that Burns traveled to Benghazi for the sole purpose of meeting with a few dozen of American military and CIA personnel who are working from a campsite on the outskirts of the city. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, the senior American official has not met with the designated leader of the parallel Government of National Stability (GNS), Fathi Bashagha, and his backers at the Tobruk-based parliament, especially Aguila Saleh, the speaker of the parliament. Saleh is also a close ally of Haftar. He has been continuously using his legislative powers to pressure the Tripoli-based governments to make political and economic concessions to Haftar.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The CIA Director’s choice to meet with Dbeibeh, and not with Bashagha, clearly indicates that the United States has started to stop playing the mediator role between the conflicting factions in Libya and will instead ally itself with the side that could serve its best interests in the region and beyond. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>U.S. Interests</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Some analysts are linking the visit of CIA Director, Burns, to Libya with the recent extradition of Lockerbie bombing suspects by the GNU. However, the visit seems to be more strategic than merely paying thanks to Dbeibeh for his cooperation on a case that happened in 1988. This visit cannot be seen in isolation from the global standoff between the western and eastern superpowers over the war in Ukraine. The United States renewed interest in Libya is motivated by the many cards that Libya can throw to influence the U.S. security and economic competition with Russia and China. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Libya, due to its geostrategic location, could be the gateway for the United States to gain influence in Africa and thus curb the economic influence of China and the security influence of Russia on the fertile, but underdeveloped, continent. In mid-December, Washington hosted a three-day summit under the title “US-Africa Leaders’ Summit,” calling in forty-nine political leaders from Sub-Saharan and North Africa as well as the Commissioner of the African Union to discuss ways to revive and enhance America’s socio-economic partnerships with the continent. A senior U.S. official told the press that “the summit is rooted in the recognition that Africa is a key geopolitical player and one that is shaping our present and will shape our future.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From another angle, Libya is swimming in a wealth of fossil fuels that could be used to influence the global energy market in favor of U.S. foreign policies, especially after OPEC+ declined to involve their oil wealth in the current economic clash between the western and eastern superpowers. Libya is a member of OPEC with oil production that exceeds 1.2 million barrels per day. That is close to the crude oil production volumes of some wealthy Arab Gulf countries, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Dbeibeh told the CIA Director, last week, that he has the plan to stabilize and increase the oil production to three million barrels per day.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Moreover, Libya possesses the highest volume of proven oil reserves in Africa, and the second-highest volume of Natural Gas in the Mediterranean after Algeria. For decades, Libya has been successfully feeding Europe with Natural Gas via the Green Stream offshore pipeline (length: 540 km) extending from Mellitah Port in Libya to the shores of Sicily in Italy. Plus, Libya enjoys a unique strategic position in the south of the Mediterranean, through which it can easily ship cargos of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to energy-deprived Europe. Right now, Libya is already the fourth top exporter of Natural Gas to Europe and the 21st world producer of Natural Gas.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On a broader scale, Libya is the equivalent playground to Syria when it comes to competition between Russia, Turkey, and the United States. Turkey, with the help of Russia, has been knocking on the doors of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria for the past few months. In December, the Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, and Intelligence Director, Hakan Fidan, flew to Moscow to meet with Syrian counterparts for security discussions. The meeting is believed to pave the way for the reconciliation between Ankara and Damascus, in a way that will serve and enhance Russia’s interests in the Middle East and also in Ukraine. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In Libya, Russia and Turkey are at odds as they back conflicting factions. However, they have been able to create some kind of an undeclared compromise to avoid clashing of interests or troops. By stepping into the Libyan playground, the United States can disturb this equilibrium in a way that may strategically shake Russia’s plans in Ukraine.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Tough Playground</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Libya is a complicated playground that the United States needs to tread with caution if it plans to step into as an international competitor rather than a mediator. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For over a year, Libya has been stuck in a grave political stalemate that threatens the renewal of the civil war at any moment. Hundreds of Libyans have been killed or injured in the militiamen street fights, in Tripoli, last summer. The clashes were mainly incited by the political conflict between the two parallel governments of Dbeibeh and Bashagha. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh leads the Government of National Unity (GNU) from Tripoli, since March 2021. The GNU is an interim government elected in an UN-supervised process by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF). GNU’s main mission was to reconcile eastern and western rivals, unite the armed forces held by both sides, and hold presidential and parliamentary elections before a deadline, that has already expired in June 2022.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the GNU failed to hold the presidential elections in December 2021 due to what the electoral commission described, at the time, as “force majeure;” the Tobruk-based parliament hired Fathi Bashagha on top of a new parallel government, that they called the Government of National Stability (GNS). </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Some Arab countries, including Libya’s direct neighbor – Egypt, showed immediate support to Bashagha’s GNS, while Turkey continued to back Dbeibeh’s GNU. However, Dbeibeh refused to cede power and insisted that his government will not leave Tripoli until presidential and parliamentary elections are held. That quickly escalated to serious clashes between militiamen affiliated with Dbeibeh and Bashagha in May-August 2021.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On one level, the U.S. will need to compromise power with influential rivals, Russia and Turkey. Turkey is a NATO ally but its relations with Russia are still solid. On another level, the U.S. will need to apply a proper amount of political pressure to force the conflicting politicians in the eastern and western of Libya to come to an agreement and hold the due elections. Most importantly, the U.S. will need to handle the irregular groups of mercenaries and local militias that are indirectly setting the course of competition between the political elite. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-85839863674972743892023-01-17T12:07:00.001+02:002023-01-29T12:10:40.864+02:00Why Egyptians Are Pessimistic About the New IMF Loan?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN8hjEkfJ6Q5iWkvqhfSlRPXIe7UFSNN0ICug32fsVWw2cJb9MnQqLU0XE0aTLybJNvqqriW2AgURB3K15n3g7FkytLDEiowvoS4aD8VDsoSn9H70O8wa4CFYFIowtpLCmfVz88p0eefu7To5NwS3Sf_kjmZbN8uUyn98I5D5V6NGy4o4EQQ/s1200/GettyImages-1243962834.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN8hjEkfJ6Q5iWkvqhfSlRPXIe7UFSNN0ICug32fsVWw2cJb9MnQqLU0XE0aTLybJNvqqriW2AgURB3K15n3g7FkytLDEiowvoS4aD8VDsoSn9H70O8wa4CFYFIowtpLCmfVz88p0eefu7To5NwS3Sf_kjmZbN8uUyn98I5D5V6NGy4o4EQQ/w400-h209/GettyImages-1243962834.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The contradicting positions of the Egyptian public towards the current and the previous loans received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are particularly interesting. When the Egyptian government announced the pursuit of a loan from the IMF in 2016, most Egyptians applauded the decision and vowed to stand behind the political leadership to complete the comprehensive economic reform program attached to the loan. In contrast, the Egyptian public is skeptical and pessimistic about the new IMF loan approved last month. What has changed? </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The political leadership of President El-Sisi is the same recipient and moderator of the former IMF loan. The people who supported the loan conditions in 2016 are the same ones who are irritated by the current loan conditions, despite their seeking to achieve the same economic reform goals. However, the only factor that has changed from 2016 to 2023 is the perspective and priorities of the IMF leadership toward the importance of national development projects. That, in particular, is what is making Egyptians feel insecure this time. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The current IMF leadership is way more rigid than the previous IMF leadership of Christine Lagarde in terms of applying the loan-attached conditions of state policy and structural reform. From a compassionate and understanding position, Lagarde gave the priority to directing the Egyptian government to make tangible progress on the social development agenda. However, the current IMF leadership is giving the ultimate priority to fast-forwarding the market liberation process even if it happens at the expense of slowing down the national development projects and crushing the middle class.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 2016, the Egyptian government received an IMF loan of $12 billion over three years through the IMF's Extended Fund Facility. The loan and the linked technical support program provided a tremendous buffer for the Egyptian economy against the challenges of the reform program, especially those related to the first shocks of inflation and the floating of local currency. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, the IMF intervened with two additional financial support instruments to support the Egyptian economy against the consequences of the pandemic. In May 2020, Egypt received US$2.8 billion in emergency financial assistance through the IMF’s Rapid Financing Instrument. Then, in June 2020, the IMF’s Standby Arrangement availed US$5.4 billion for Egypt to withdraw over a period of twelve months. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Thanks to the success of the IMF’s technical support program, Egyptians started to report tangible improvements in their living conditions and greater flexibility in their microeconomic decision-making in the first months of 2022. Around the same dates, Egypt was reaffirmed by the three Credit Rating agencies (Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P Global) at B and B+ with a stable outlook. In December 2021, an IMF report expected that Egypt, by the end of 2022, will become the second largest economy in Africa, after Nigeria, and the second largest economy in all Arab countries, after Saudi Arabia, with a record Growth Domestic Product (GDP) that exceeds US$438 billion. And, then, Russia’s President Putin decided to invade Ukraine!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war started to reflect on the Egyptian economy, the first instinct of the Egyptian government was to knock on the doors of the IMF once more. After almost a year of negotiations between Egyptian government officials and IMF executives, a sudden cabinet reshuffle, and a change in the leadership of the Central Bank of Egypt, the IMF finally approved a small loan of three billion dollars to Egypt in mid-December. The small loan will be paid to the Egyptian government in installments over a long period of 46 months and may be frozen or completely withdrawn if the Egyptian government does not show steadfast progress on the list of harsh conditions. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The list of macroeconomic reform policies that the Egyptian government approved and committed itself to them, in order to receive the $3 billion IMF loan include but are not limited to: floating the Egyptian pound against the US dollar, removing subsidies on oil and gas to match international prices, slowing down the mega infrastructure and social development projects, accelerating and widening the process of collecting taxes, selling state-owned assets to private investors, and listing military-owned enterprises at the stocks market (The Egyptian Exchange).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The middle class is the core of the Egyptian economy. Despite that, the middle class is the citizen group most concerned about the consequences of the IMF loan conditions on their lifestyle and standard of living. Such conditions are expected to downgrade their purchasing power and thus curtail their ability to provide for themselves the basic services that the government is not offering them, such as quality health care and subsidized food and energy products. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Egypt is the second largest lender of the International Monetary Fund, although the Egyptian public has an unpleasant history with IMF loans. The loans saved consecutive governments, since the 1960s, from collapsing under chronic economic crises. Yet, on the flip side, the policy conditions attached to these loans have always been a nightmare for middle-class citizens. The only exception was the IMF loan supervised by Christine Lagarde in 2016. It magically helped the Egyptian government to transform the miserable socio-economic circumstances and brought hope to the hearts of the Egyptian people, especially the poor. However, these important gains are at great risk now, as the Egyptian government is trying to adapt to the strict conditions of the new IMF loan, despite being much smaller in size and more rigid in making conditions. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-30204450127594304702023-01-16T12:00:00.001+02:002023-01-29T12:07:05.499+02:00The Eastern Mediterranean in 2023: Escalation or Resolve? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-kGhG31L4djFPxpuGyz8iMvgrfOu17WCFveRpWKJ4sS6KbfV7YML-lfTbSYtL6fXIDL5pi1x2IZY1-sYPq9fKZ1Q2lu8EgAsrYFLeEQgf5P9g3KVVuEzap9fcA8imO1_VZFOUfuiCulRUV8A8FWDR_dC3u4jDJJ6IHpoZMtWucoe8KA020g/s2048/Dynamic-Manta-ASW-exercise-kicks-off-in-Central-Mediterranean-Sea_001-scaled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="2048" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-kGhG31L4djFPxpuGyz8iMvgrfOu17WCFveRpWKJ4sS6KbfV7YML-lfTbSYtL6fXIDL5pi1x2IZY1-sYPq9fKZ1Q2lu8EgAsrYFLeEQgf5P9g3KVVuEzap9fcA8imO1_VZFOUfuiCulRUV8A8FWDR_dC3u4jDJJ6IHpoZMtWucoe8KA020g/w400-h163/Dynamic-Manta-ASW-exercise-kicks-off-in-Central-Mediterranean-Sea_001-scaled.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">While the world is obsessively focusing on the war in Eastern Europe, geo-economic pulls are building up in the Eastern Mediterranean over maritime borders. Pitching political and diplomatic fights may not necessarily kindle another traditional war that requires the intervention of the already strained international community, at least in the short term. Yet, they could easily replicate the military tensions that traumatized the Eastern Mediterranean and its neighboring regions in the summer of 2020. If nothing else, this could hinder the potential of the hydrocarbon-rich basin, which also enjoys a unique geo-strategic location between three continents, to participate in mitigating the consequences of the energy crisis in Europe and the food crisis in Africa. Consequently, the ongoing economic standoff between the western and eastern superpowers may escalate and magnify the costs of the global crises on vulnerable communities worldwide.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Loop </b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Eastern Mediterranean has been stuck in an infinite loop of unilateral sovereign decisions on maritime demarcations by the countries on its three shores since the early discoveries of the massive hydrocarbon wealth in its seabed about two decades ago. The domestic political troubles in most Eastern Mediterranean countries, the uneven geo-political intricacies of the region, and the long-term conflicts between the neighboring countries have added extra layers of complications to the growing tensions over maritime rights. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the bright side, the geo-economic threats posed by these conflicts have incited unexpected collaborations between the southern countries of the Eastern Mediterranean. Prominent examples include the recent Israel-Lebanon maritime border deal and the five years of cooperation between Egypt and Israel on extracting, liquifying, and exporting natural gas to Europe. Yet, on the not-so-bright side, the unresolved long-term conflicts between Turkey and Greece are still putting the region on fire. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">During a visit to the Navy Command of the Marmara Region in northwestern Turkey this week, the Turkish Minister of Defense, Hulusi Akar, reiterated a warning to Greece against unilateral demarcation decisions that may further cut from Turkey’s claimed maritime zone. “We will not allow any fait accompli to be provoked by Greece in a way that could violate our rights,” said Hulusi Akar after promising that “any misconduct by Greece will be immediately retaliated by Ankara.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In June, Turkey’s President Erdogan celebrated Turkey’s success in producing short-range ballistic missiles by hinting that they could be used to deter Athens from militarizing its Islands in the Aegean. “Turkey will not step back from using its rights if necessary and will not give up its rights in the Aegean per the international conventions,” Erdogan asserted. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Greece sees the issue as a sovereign right, but Turkey sees it as a threat to national security. Meanwhile, the related international conventions stipulate that these uninhabited islands should remain neutral, especially since they are closer to Turkey’s coastline than they are to Greece’s mainland. The Greek Island Kastellorizo, where most of the Greek military buildup has been happening since early 2022, is 600 kilometers away from Greece’s mainland, while it is only 1950 meters away from Turkey. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The repeated threats by Turkish officials have not prevented Greece from announcing, in late December, its intention to unilaterally extend its maritime zone to twelve nautical miles toward the southwest of Crete Island. The Hellenic Presidential Bureau told the local press that the demarcation is scheduled to be officially announced in March before the parliamentary elections are held. Greece’s decision has obviously angered Turkey and Libya, which will be directly affected. Yet, Greece’s unilateral move has also been frowned upon by Egypt, which has been a strong ally to Greece against Turkey, at least since the escalation between Turkish and Hellenic naval forces in 2020.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Overlap</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Greece’s unilateral move to expand its maritime zone is believed to be motivated by Egypt’s unilateral decision to demarcate its maritime border with neighboring Libya. On December 11, Egypt’s Official Gazette published a presidential decree specifying nine geographic coordinates as benchmarks to Egypt’s western maritime border with Libya in the Mediterranean. The presidential decree demarcates Egypt’s territorial waters at an area of twelve nautical miles extending upwards from node no. 8 on the northern land border between Egypt and Libya. The respective Egyptian authorities explained that the demarcation is based on the legal stipulations of the UN Convention of the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) and related documents.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Despite the overlap, it is not expected that Egypt and Greece may clash over these uncoordinated demarcations. However, such moves may overturn or completely invalidate their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) agreement, which they signed in August 2020 to rescind the maritime agreement signed between Turkey and the former Libyan interim Government of National Accord (GNA) in December 2019. In other words, this is not serving Greece’s goal to curb Turkey’s advances to use the Libyan maritime zone to conduct seismic research for hydrocarbon resources. That is particularly true in light of the improvement of Turkey-Egypt relations following a historic handshake between the Egyptian and Turkish presidents in Doha in early December. It does not seem that Egypt is planning to end its EEZ agreement with Greece, but it preserves the right to sign similar agreements with Turkey in the future. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Libya fiercely objected to Egypt’s unilateral demarcation decision as a violation of its sovereignty, although Egypt’s decision is believed to be motivated by the defense and energy memoranda that Turkey and Libya signed two months earlier. In early October, a delegation of senior Turkish officials flew to Tripoli to celebrate the signing of two new bilateral agreements. One agreement allows Libya’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU) to receive advanced weapons, including drones, from Turkey. The other memorandum admits Turkey to the Libyan waters in the Mediterranean for hydrocarbon exploration purposes. In a provoking response to Greece’s and Egypt’s objection to these memoranda, the Libyan and the Turkish officials plainly said they “do not care for what third parties think about our bilateral agreements.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unlike Greece, Turkey did not seem to be threatened by the Egyptian unilateral demarcation of the western maritime border, although it clearly limits the scope of its newly signed agreements with Libya’s GNU. Instead, Turkey called for open negotiations with all involved parties in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the past year, Ankara led a successful campaign to mend broken ties with all its neighbors in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt, Israel, and Syria. Turkey’s renovated relations with neighboring countries, in addition to Turkey’s mediator role in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, have dramatically improved Turkey’s situation in the Eastern Mediterranean in pursuit of its lost rights. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>The Trauma</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Given the fact that Libya is the common factor in all of the recent chess moves in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, one may tend to conclude that Libya is the problem. Although, in reality, Libya is just another victim of an unfair agreement signed over a century ago in the fog of world wars. Rather than bringing peace, the Lausanne Agreement (1922) has left the Eastern Mediterranean with a chronic conflict over a messy geographic ordeal that the successive regional leaders have failed to resolve. The agreement preserved Turkish sovereignty over Turkey’s mainland but inelegantly stripped Turkey of its rights in the seabed resources of the Mediterranean, despite being the country with the longest border (1870 km) in the hydrocarbon-rich sea.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (370 km) may be claimed by coastal countries. If the distance between the shores of two neighboring countries is less than this space, the maritime demarcation between them should be drawn exactly at the half-line distance. However, this is not the case for Turkey, which is literally cuffed to its own shores, either in the southern area towards Cyprus or the southwest zone towards Greece, because Lausanne Agreement gave all the small islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean to Greece. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">At least since the early 2000s, Turkey has been trying to change the reality imposed by the Lausanne Agreement, sometimes through diplomatic negotiations with Greece and other times through employing military provocations. Up to this day, 63 rounds of negotiations have been held between the two countries, and an infinite number of meetings between senior military commanders and diplomats, but all ended in vain.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turkey’s agreements with the Libyan GNA in 2019, and recent agreements with the GNU in 2022, are only desperate attempts to reclaim these lost rights. However, each time Turkey takes action in that direction, it backfires by causing security threats to the entire region. In 2020, this chronic conflict escalated to a harsh clash following the sail of a Turkish hydrocarbon exploration vessel in the zone claimed by a bilateral maritime agreement with Libya’s GNA. In the summer of 2020, the quiet basin of the Eastern Mediterranean witnessed an unprecedented number of military encounters disguised as joint aero-naval military exercises, wherein advanced fighter jets and navy arsenals from outside the region intervened. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 2023, these conflicts have a high potential to be re-ignited if they are not preceded by pragmatic negotiations wherein all the concerned parties on the three shores of the Eastern Mediterranean are involved. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-7776655068078591532023-01-10T11:47:00.001+02:002023-01-29T12:00:38.405+02:00Egypt Between Religious Freedom and Economic Woes <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhP9QarmEJ1cQlBI8-m3LQpWiwZVnnnF4UtVOsPZpN7FRyiNvcqEjIQLIaR0d3iusJo6gnzYFle98jZPjpqU-aRXCE9-YkrgmD5wDrufXu226uGuj11vwy33L3EYqOFKb8axDdCL3vh0POPhckf-VGtl5sCj0nqVlBNLUCnBKPaSXhvsh1w/s740/2018_1_7_0_21_1_888.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="740" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhP9QarmEJ1cQlBI8-m3LQpWiwZVnnnF4UtVOsPZpN7FRyiNvcqEjIQLIaR0d3iusJo6gnzYFle98jZPjpqU-aRXCE9-YkrgmD5wDrufXu226uGuj11vwy33L3EYqOFKb8axDdCL3vh0POPhckf-VGtl5sCj0nqVlBNLUCnBKPaSXhvsh1w/w400-h300/2018_1_7_0_21_1_888.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is not a coincidence that the Egyptian President has chosen the Cathedral to deliver an assuring message to the Egyptian people about state efforts to overcome the economic crisis. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">When President El-Sisi walked into the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ on Friday evening, the Coptic Christian citizens who attended the Christmas ceremony jumped off their seats with joy to greet him. Little children gave him flowers and shouted words of love at him. The elders praised him as a hero. The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Tawadros II, and fellow clergy prayed for God’s support and guidance to their favorite president. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“All respect to Pope Tawadros’ wisdom! You may not realize the love and appreciation I have for him,” President El-Sisi said as soon as he got to the stage. “Our affection for each other [Muslims and Christians] must continue without discrimination for the next generations to prosper. We are one!” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It was a scene of genuine love for the man who saved more than 20 million Coptic Christian citizens from being persecuted by the extremist political Islamist groups that ruled Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolution a decade ago – namely, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Although the political leadership of President El-Sisi has successfully quarantined the Muslim Brotherhood's influence on Egyptian society during the past few years, it still needs to exert more effort to control the Salafists, who are even more extremist. Last week, while the entire country was celebrating the new year and Christmas, the Salafist groups' leaders warned their followers against congratulating their Coptic Christian neighbors and friends for Christmas. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Freedom of belief is guaranteed by the constitution, the current constitution, and all the former ones, but neither the politicians nor the society had ever honored it. Former presidents used to abuse religion to upscale their political game or oppress the opposition. For decades, the Coptic Christian citizens, who comprise more than 15% of the Egyptian population, had suffered marginalization and discrimination due to corrupt state practices, unfair laws, and the quick rise of extremist Islamists in rural cities. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In absolute contrast, President El-Sisi is the first leader to show unparalleled dedication to improving the status of religious freedom and women’s rights as a tool to combat violent extremism and restore peace, security, and stability in the country. Western media and leaders have constantly criticized the existing Egyptian state for its performance on human rights. Most of the criticism is based on individual stories of political dissidents and inaccurate claims of the political Islamists living abroad. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">While rightfully advocating for greater space of political freedom, the criticizers of the Egyptian state’s policies tend to unfairly ignore the massive progress that the current leadership of President El-Sisi has achieved in terms of religious freedom and social rights for fragile citizen groups such as women and minorities. In that sense, it may not be surprising that the largest number of El-Sisi’s electoral constituency are Coptic Christians and women. Both groups found refuge in El-Sisi’s anti-Islamists policies. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">El-Sisi’s visit to the Cathedral, on January 6th, is an indirect message that he can rescue the country from the current economic crisis as he did before. It is a signal that Egypt is still on the right track toward security and stability, despite all the economic pains it is going through. Perhaps, that is why the president has cleverly selected the church to voice his assuring message to Egyptians regarding the current economic crisis: </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I can see that people are anxious and scared for justified reasons. But I am saying to you rest assured that we are doing well despite the suffering. We are trying, and God will not let us down,” said the Egyptian President. “Do not listen to rumors! We are not hiding anything from you. I will be the first to tell you about any major procedures that the state may take,” confirmed the president in response to the rumors about vending the Suez Canal to foreign state investors.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-67532398081526202452023-01-02T19:12:00.001+02:002023-01-02T19:12:00.220+02:00What Awaits the Middle East in 2023? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4M_hGJYzQfTb8ZKG1fyXra3iI2D_IRCk0xtwTudV-NyZZwLcA-dwCRtcXIWEIbGXvD5m2ZZhVZzH1-zYCQeBW21Zbi2AW0f4axg2Dx2j4AJy4fCtSKSHHWwT2zi1iNVylJNzXDpq5wiA4GoqSij1wH_Zqdj0ixVeUQ4y8I-uvOclH20lLEw/s3500/107089820-16579715722022-07-16t112643z_1062097136_rc2zcv98xrjb_rtrmadp_0_usa-saudi.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2333" data-original-width="3500" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4M_hGJYzQfTb8ZKG1fyXra3iI2D_IRCk0xtwTudV-NyZZwLcA-dwCRtcXIWEIbGXvD5m2ZZhVZzH1-zYCQeBW21Zbi2AW0f4axg2Dx2j4AJy4fCtSKSHHWwT2zi1iNVylJNzXDpq5wiA4GoqSij1wH_Zqdj0ixVeUQ4y8I-uvOclH20lLEw/w400-h266/107089820-16579715722022-07-16t112643z_1062097136_rc2zcv98xrjb_rtrmadp_0_usa-saudi.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Individually and collectively, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have experienced a slew of concerns in 2022 as the world has shifted under the weight of superpower conflicts. The unfathomable security and economic consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Iran's massive anti-regime protests, and the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan were the defining aspects of MENA's most pressing strategic concerns.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Middle East region has been boiling with regional and domestic conflicts for decades. They range from tribal competitions to civil wars, geopolitical conflicts, and fighting against state-sponsored militia and ideological terrorist organizations. Many of these conflicts have been stuck at a stalemate for decades. Over time, the relatively stable countries in MENA learned to work their way around these regional conflicts to keep developing on the national level.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, the new conflicts on the world stage and those happening on the verges of the region, including the re-rise of Taliban in Afghanistan and the shaking of the Mullah-led regime by popular protests in Iran, have forced MENA leaders to prioritize cooperation over rivalry. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As the year draws to a close, it appears that the region's leaders have already figured out how to exit this internationally imposed state of emergency, promising a less stressful progression in 2023.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Economic Crises and Opportunities</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Economy-related mishaps were the overwhelming theme for the Middle East region, and the entire world, in 2022. The clash between western and eastern world superpowers, namely the United States and Europe on one side versus Russia and China on the other, is expected to continue throughout 2023. Russia does not seem to withdraw its troops from Ukraine any time soon, while the United States is still pouring generous finances and military equipment into supporting the Ukrainian army. This simply means more economic shockwaves will continue to hit the fragile economies in MENA in the coming year. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The global standoff around the war in Eastern Europe is based on inflicting as much economic pain as possible on each other. In the process, several countries in the Middle East and Africa found themselves struggling with a cluster of crises ranging from the scarcity of food commodities and energy resources to the uncontrollable rates of inflation and national currency depreciation. Most countries in North Africa, perhaps with the rare exception of Morocco, have been frying in this economic pan since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in March. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In particular, Egypt is, allegedly, the MENA country that has been suffering the most from this war. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are top suppliers of grains and tourists to Egypt, which is one of the world’s top five importers of wheat. The Egyptian population of more than one hundred million citizens consumes an average of four million tonnes of wheat per year. At least 80% of this consumption is imported from Russia and Ukraine. Meanwhile, Egypt’s tourism sector, which represents more than 9% of Egypt’s GDP, is highly dependent on the Russian and Eastern European tourists who used to flood Red Sea resorts in the Winter and Spring seasons. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Notwithstanding the Egyptian state's sincere efforts to control these massive economic losses, the Egyptian economy is heading into the new year with a load of uncertainties. Governmental initiatives to secure basic commodities, generous deposits from neighbors in the Arab Gulf, and a modest loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have barely kept the Egyptian economy standing during 2022. However, the purchasing power of the Egyptian Pound has severely declined because of the dollar scarcity and the rapidly spiking inflation. At the end of 2022, the inflation rate reached 21%. Egypt has not seen inflation at such a high dash since 1965 when the inflation surged to 26% causing a severe recession. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That being said, there are positive indicators that make Egyptians hopeful that the new year may be relatively less economically stressful, regardless of the outcomes of the war in Ukraine. Official Statistics show that Egypt’s volume of exports has increased by 12% in the last quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, and the GDP has increased to 4.4% in 2022 from 3.3% in 2021. In addition, the new discoveries of hydrocarbon resources in Egypt’s maritime zone in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt’s rising profile as a hub for natural gas, are quite promising for the Egyptian economy in the medium term. In June, the European Union signed a landmark agreement with Egypt and Israel to import their liquefied natural gas production as a substitute for the sanctioned Russian gas. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Rising Powers</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Energy is one of the winning cards on the table of international conflicts. Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf countries, which owns a great portion of the world’s fossil energy resources, have cleverly used this card to protect their economies from being dragged into the tug of war between the eastern and western superpowers, in 2022. Saudi Arabia is the top producer of crude oil in the MENA region and the third in the world after the United States and Russia. Next to it, Qatar is the top producer of natural gas in the region, and the top third in the world after Russia and Iran.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For some reason, western leaders were thinking that they can use the petroleum wealth of Arab Gulf countries to manipulate the global energy market and protect Europe from paying the price for the sanctions they imposed on Russian natural gas. Senior politicians from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe visited the region in an attempt to convince the OPEC+ leaders in Saudi Arabia to increase the volume of oil production. On the flip side, China has been courting Saudi Arabia and Russia has been courting UAE with the hope to align them with their camp. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, the new strategy-oriented leaders of the region, especially the Saudi Crown Prince, have decided not to get involved in this international game. This wise strategic thinking has been keeping the Arab Gulf countries immune to the damaging effects of the Russia-Ukraine war and is believed to put the Gulf region in even more advanced economic and political positions in the coming year. Like has been the case with all the major events that have been happening since the eruption of the Arab Spring, it seems that the Arab Gulf countries will continue to take the lead on most of the geopolitical and economic issues that are expected to face the MENA region in the new year and for many years to come. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As part of the changing world order, it may not be surprising to see Saudi Arabia, with this strategic policymaking practice and economic influence, rising as a new superpower in the coming decade. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Geopolitical Balances</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In parallel, the global conflict between Russia and the west has offered Turkey a golden opportunity to prove itself as a geopolitical star in 2022. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turkey has been playing a tremendous role on the economic, diplomatic, and military fronts, in mitigating the influence of the war in Eastern Europe on the rest of the world. Turkey has mediated talks between the Russians and Ukrainians, safeguarded the Black Sea against the consequences of the ongoing war, and is now leading an impressive effort to keep the ship cargos of grain traveling from Ukraine to other countries, rescuing millions of people from famine.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Also, in 2022, Turkey has been able to fix its torn ties with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, and eventually Egypt. Mending the broken ties between Egypt and Turkey, in particular, is paving the way for a new geopolitical balance in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and better control of the state-sponsored militia and terrorist organizations that have been wreaking havoc all over the region for years.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the new year, Turkey’s geo-strategic importance is expected to be steadily growing, mainly due to its prospected role, as a NATO ally, in managing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iran on behalf of the United States. Turkey is the only country that can keep a perfect balance between the competing alliances that it deals with, extending from the United States and Europe, NATO, Russia, and Eurasia, to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Turkey has become a key strategic actor that none of these power coalitions can do without.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Peace and Security</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The domestic conflicts in Libya, Syria, and Yemen are expected to grow even bigger. That is despite being the Russian regime too busy with the war in Ukraine and the Iranian regime too busy with the popular outrage. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">At least since June, Russia has been withdrawing its troops and mercenaries from Libya and Syria to help with its so-called military operation in Ukraine. Counterintuitively, this allowed a space for the conflicting parties inside Libya to further escalate their heated conflicts by depending on local militia groups. This has not only given the militias more financial and political leverage but also added an extra layer that further complicates the political solution. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Russia’s temporary absence in Syria and Turkey’s outreach to the Assad regime have paved the way for Turkish renewed operations in northern Syria and Iraq against the PKK and YPG organizations. That coupled with the interventions of the Iranian regime in the levant region may further threaten the Kurdish communities there. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In Yemen, the reconciliation initiative that Saudi Arabia and UAE led in 2022 is apparently faltering, while the Iran-sponsored Houthi militia is recapturing control territories in the north and controlling decision-making in the state bureaus. The potential fall of the Iranian regime under the growing pressure of popular protests may mean a better future for Yemen, but it all depends on how the popular protests are going to unfold in Iran throughout 2023. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In contrast to this melancholy, the words “reconciliation, rapprochement, and inclusivity” have been written, read, and heard many times in the Middle East this year. In 2022, we have seen reconciliations happening between Turkey and Arab Gulf countries, between Qatar and Egypt, and even between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Al-Aula agreement, which ended years of diplomatic conflicts between the Arab Gulf states, was the first spark for this reconciliatory mindset that has been electrifying the region in the past two years. This trend of rapprochements is expected to continue gaining momentum throughout the new year as international conflicts are expected to intensify. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-17601275737689899582022-12-28T19:09:00.001+02:002022-12-30T19:12:43.900+02:00Egypt 2023: Economic Pains and Political Hopes<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtiilOd4sp3uwsO2Wx5vhmkavMlsPcH7OOxpX5hxW4q8JIZQ4LiIMxdKFF8gutUJ_81AvJym6swg8aMPORXkb3kn8VDeEpmq3sVEZFnEFB1dB6w6Q3_-Ia6NnFL8hs7xCtD5hSr55F6NXwZMaBw_IS8jtZSi7QRhZUqXTX_-jTOFw1HzS_g/s1000/egypt-cairo-garbage-city-street-kids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1000" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtiilOd4sp3uwsO2Wx5vhmkavMlsPcH7OOxpX5hxW4q8JIZQ4LiIMxdKFF8gutUJ_81AvJym6swg8aMPORXkb3kn8VDeEpmq3sVEZFnEFB1dB6w6Q3_-Ia6NnFL8hs7xCtD5hSr55F6NXwZMaBw_IS8jtZSi7QRhZUqXTX_-jTOFw1HzS_g/w400-h265/egypt-cairo-garbage-city-street-kids.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>Egypt is heading into the new year (2023) with a load of economic uncertainties. Yet, there are a few threads of hope that we should cling to throughout the process of recovery that Egypt is believed to experience during the coming months. </span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It is not about fooling myself and my fellow Egyptians into unrealistic optimism. It is about believing that there are always hidden opportunities in every crisis. One of these opportunities could be accelerating the process of establishing a modern macroeconomic system in place of the old and barren structure that kept the Egyptian economy struggling for seven decades. The success of the economic reform plan led by President El-Sisi, between 2016-2020, should make us optimistic about Egypt’s potential in that regard.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February, the Egyptian economy has been weathering significant pressures, blowing away the hard-earned gains of the national economic reform program that the government launched seven years ago. As the year comes to an end, the pain of the economic crisis is deeply felt by Egyptian citizens from all social and professional backgrounds. The wealthy, the poor, and the middle class are struggling, with variant degrees and for distinct reasons, to cope with the spiking inflation rates and dollar scarcity.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Over the year, the hot money investors withdrew from the Egyptian market causing a sharp decline in foreign investment rates. As a result, the dollar reserves in the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) started to deplete, especially that the tourism sector, too, has become unable to generate appropriate revenues because of the sharp fall in Russian and Eastern European tourist turnout. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">By the end of the year, between the end of November and early December, the dollar scarcity issue got more complicated as more people started to purchase dollars to hedge against inflation. In December, the CBE announced that official inflation rates reached slightly over 21%, adding huge pressure on the purchasing power of the Egyptian Pound. In the unofficial market, the dollar exchange rates spiked to 32-40 EGP compared to 24-25 in the banks supervised by CBE.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, the government is careful to keep the basic commodities, such as food and energy products, abundantly available in local markets. Since the beginning of the crisis in March, the Egyptian government has been exerting a huge effort to keep food products, especially bread and oil, available to most consumers at affordable prices. In the process, the government had to postpone its plans to remove the subsidies on bread, fuel consumption, and electricity subscriptions until the current crisis is resolved. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, many citizens are unable to benefit from this governmental support because merchants manipulate prices to cover up their losses. Most merchants and manufacturers have been struggling to cope with the restrictive policies imposed by CBE on importation. One of these restrictions complicates the procedures of releasing imported products at Egyptian ports, either by requesting additional documents or by banning the importation of certain products. The CBE’s main goal in applying such restrictions is to keep the dollar reserves for the longest period possible and encourage consumers to buy local products to strengthen the Egyptian pound. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unfortunately, the premature restrictions backfired by pushing merchants and manufacturers to get the dollars they need from the parallel market and thus increasing the exchange rate of the dollar and further depreciating the Egyptian pound. The CBE promised that these restrictions will be gradually removed over the coming few months thanks to the release of the long-awaited loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In mid-December, the IMF Executive Board approved the release of $3 billion over 48 months for Egypt. The amount is like a drop in the sea when compared to Egypt’s needs; it hardly covers Egypt’s annual budget for grain importation. In addition, the loan is tied with a number of provisions seeking to liberate the Egyptian market from the grip of the state and allow greater flexibility to the Egyptian pound against the dollar. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last week, the CBE’s Policy Committee decided in its last routine meeting of 2022 to raise the interest rate by 3% to control inflation and strengthen the Egyptian pound before allowing it to float per IMF instructions. Since March, the CBE gradually raised the interest by 8%. This policy succeeded in attracting massive investments from Egyptians, local and living abroad, in the high-profit Egyptian pound certificates at Egyptian banks. In the medium term, this policy seems to be able to control the inflation rates and bring the exchange rates to a reasonable range. However, until this happens, the government still needs to take other procedures to protect the citizens from the manipulations of the merchants.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Based on our former experience with the current political leadership in managing the previous economic crisis of 2016, I am optimistic that the Egyptian economy will survive the current crisis, too. That is even more possible thanks to the generous deposits and investments by the Arab Gulf countries and the continued support of the IMF. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Despite the painful pressures on the daily spending power of most Egyptian citizens, there are some promising indicators on the state / governmental level. For example, Egypt’s GDP has grown by 4.4% at the end of 2022 compared to the 3.3% growth rate in 2021. Egypt's non-oil exports rose during the period extending from January to October by about 12% to reach $30.4 billion compared to $27.1 billion during a similar period last year. Meanwhile, the government has not given up on its mega national projects targeting to improve the infrastructure and protect the poor. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That being said, we have to keep in mind that all the efforts exerted by the government to contain the current economic crisis are only going to provide a temporary fix to a chronic disease that has been dragging Egypt since the 1950s. In that sense, the question that the Egyptian government, and its regional and international supporters, should consider is: how to avoid the crisis after the current crisis. Or, even better to ask: how to get the Egyptian economy liberated from the painful roller coaster of extreme stress followed by a short recovery that has not stopped for seventy years.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-16375032990850799912022-12-24T19:05:00.001+02:002022-12-30T19:09:20.186+02:00Taliban Quest to Bury Women Alive <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmFPOvmwetEU9W77ywJrQTINJ3aB5BgY3zY4H5vzB0tTEibotCs5xPDkG20oyJugcQq7zuPy5arDzN9x3Cbg8qnnMB_uQkdin4JpgBKkvzJExtK648jGqRDv2DcWHNbzXkq8vxvivChOuodPlAVC-JVUSY_HYcoRPxpNP3RZ7OrgilETH_g/s679/FkrHaIbWAAMW2ro.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="679" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNmFPOvmwetEU9W77ywJrQTINJ3aB5BgY3zY4H5vzB0tTEibotCs5xPDkG20oyJugcQq7zuPy5arDzN9x3Cbg8qnnMB_uQkdin4JpgBKkvzJExtK648jGqRDv2DcWHNbzXkq8vxvivChOuodPlAVC-JVUSY_HYcoRPxpNP3RZ7OrgilETH_g/w400-h266/FkrHaIbWAAMW2ro.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It did not take long for Taliban to show their ugly face, proving wrong those who were optimistic about their rule.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In December, Taliban leaders instructed school directors and local community leaders that women can no longer attend or work at schools and universities. The decision of the extremist group is the latest item on a long list of similar policies targeting to bury women and girls alive under the claim of “protecting society against vice.” Banning women from participating in public life is at the core of the extremist ideology adopted by Islamist extremist organizations, including Taliban.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Forcing women to cover from head to toe, stoning women in public, and preventing women from participating in public life through work or education were daily practices under the rule of the former Taliban. Sadly, the new Taliban is gradually heading in that direction by first banning women from working at certain occupations, now preventing women from education, and very soon preventing women from going to markets or appearing in public.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In response to Taliban’s appalling move, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayib, issued a statement harshly condemning the systemic discrimination against women in Afghanistan. “Preventing the Afghan girls from university-level education is a shocking procedure that contradicts Islamic Shariah;” El-Tayib stated. “Shariah explicitly urges men and women to continue to seek education from cradle to grave. Several women have proven their scientific and political genius over the long history of Islam. Women’s education should be a source of pride and admiration for every Muslim devoted to Allah, His Messenger, and His Shariah.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Taliban took power in August 2021, following the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of the United States and allied forces from Afghanistan and the inevitable surrender of the Afghan army and the government. At the beginning of their shockingly effortless ascendance to power, the extremist group’s spokesperson told the media that they would not practice discrimination against women similar to their founding fathers who dominated the country in the 1990s and 2000s. They even claimed that the new Taliban is more “open-minded.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Some western politicians and observers had fallen easy prey to Taliban’s false claims, perhaps out of ignorance of the nature of their ideology. The U.S. Administration of President Biden urged the international community to give Taliban a chance under the assumption that “the new Taliban is different from the old Taliban” and that Taliban’s rule is what the Afghan people want. The hundreds of thousands of Afghans who fled the country, during the past year since Taliban took power, offer living proof of the falseness of these relaxed claims by international community leaders. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Among all the shocking statements made by world leaders, such as the European Union and UNICEF, about their optimism toward Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, one particular statement stood out. In an interview with Sky News TV, a few days following the U.S. and allied forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chief of Staff of the British Army, Nick Carter, described Taliban fighters as “country boys” that the world needs to be patient on and give them a chance to prove that they are “more reasonable” than the old Taliban. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Taliban’s unapologetic discrimination against women is proving wrong the claims of officials and media personnel who were so optimistic that the current Taliban is different from the former Taliban, which in the 1990s turned Afghanistan into a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, one of the most dangerous Islamist terrorist organizations known in history. Sooner or later, the new Taliban will follow the steps of their ancestors and grow as a threat to the security of other countries in the east and the west. It all starts by suppressing women under the passive watch of the free world.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-71404899964472784852022-12-22T20:13:00.005+02:002022-12-22T20:13:54.413+02:00Chat: Egypt, Turkey, Muslim Brotherhood, and Women's Rights<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="358" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JKIDJbcpnhE" width="439" youtube-src-id="JKIDJbcpnhE"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Dalia Ziada and Hediye Levent chat about Egypt, Turkey, Muslim Brotherhood, and Women's Rights</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Watch the original video (live stream) in Turkish on Hediye Levent's YouTube channel <a href="https://youtu.be/JAjCNWh7FiE " target="_blank">here</a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><div class="nLG8d5" data-hook="post-description" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); 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background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="NjQ71C" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="NjQ71C" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="ZylKKv md1nXG SwMATA" data-rce-version="9.3.6" style="--rce-active-divider-color: rgba(57, 63, 68, 0.5); --rce-divider-color: rgba(57, 63, 68, 0.2); --rce-header-five-font-size: 20px; --rce-header-four-font-size: 22px; --rce-header-six-font-size: 18px; --rce-header-three-font-size: 24px; --rce-header-two-font-size: 30px; --rce-highlighted-color: rgb(57, 63, 68); --rce-link-hashtag-color: rgb(139, 0, 0); --rce-mobile-font-size: 16px; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: var(--ricos-bg-color-container,unset); background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; height: 656.25px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; tab-size: 40px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap !important; width: 740px;"><div data-hook="rcv-block6" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: var(--ricos-font-family,unset); font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" type="paragraph"></div><div data-hook="rcv-block-last" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: var(--ricos-font-family,unset); font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" type="last"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></article></div><div class="OFA52E jG7PL8" id="post-footer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #393f44; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="ux83lW" data-hook="post-main-actions-desktop" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 50px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-19381913669721797792022-12-18T19:37:00.001+02:002022-12-22T19:41:33.199+02:00The United States Scramble for Africa <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxnVIqfBwM5QnMKqeFIZIzr9_FheE2YsAGbvRN523IO2NOR2PaGTtaXtPqF_rYdgbwr0yQn_l8lSpyPs59D_4g1UWxum_NeuHP9pdzrD3vinumpTfqqcxtRU5iEQsI0XY77tyRuD2bFUrlx8JvQ3cxHcPLiNEVmS5nrHgngNK4QPDYgtN6A/s735/00590916_a0ba4555eb8bbf653bbb513b5e54aece_arc614x376_w735_us1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="735" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxnVIqfBwM5QnMKqeFIZIzr9_FheE2YsAGbvRN523IO2NOR2PaGTtaXtPqF_rYdgbwr0yQn_l8lSpyPs59D_4g1UWxum_NeuHP9pdzrD3vinumpTfqqcxtRU5iEQsI0XY77tyRuD2bFUrlx8JvQ3cxHcPLiNEVmS5nrHgngNK4QPDYgtN6A/w400-h245/00590916_a0ba4555eb8bbf653bbb513b5e54aece_arc614x376_w735_us1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The United States Administration of President Biden is assertively pushing the reset button on its foreign policy in Africa. However, its potential to outpace other regional and international competitors over the resources of the most fertile continent is still pretty limited. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In mid-December, Washington hosted a three-day summit under the title US-Africa Leaders Summit, calling in forty-nine political leaders from Sub-Sahara and North Africa and the Commissioner of the African Union to discuss ways to revive and enhance America’s socio-economic partnerships with the continent. A senior U.S. official told the press that “the summit is rooted in the recognition that Africa is a key geopolitical player and one that is shaping our present and will shape our future.” Indeed, Africa is a fertile continent with an unparalleled wealth of minerals and fuels. It is also home to 1.3 billion people, most of whom are youth, offering an enormous market of lucrative business opportunities to foreign investors. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The overdue summit is the second episode of a historic meeting that former U.S. President Barak Obama held eight years ago, in August 2014, under the same title. The theme of the two summits and the agenda items are almost identical, but America’s geo-strategic standing and the surrounding global context are quite different. While the 2014 summit had prioritized discussions on civil society, good governance, and democratization, the current summit pushed these critical topics down the list after strategic economic partnerships, food security, and response to the climate crisis.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Business Forum is the star of the show in this year’s US-Africa Summit. The summit organizers dedicated a physical “Prosper Africa Deal Room” for American and African business tycoons, investors, and government officials to meet, discuss, and announce future business agreements. The goal of the Deal Room is to “advance mutually beneficial partnerships that create jobs and drive inclusive and sustainable growth on both sides of the Atlantic,” according to the description of the summit organizers. Yet, the real purpose of such a room, which has been live-streamed by top media outlets all day, is perhaps to show off, in real-time, the progress of US-Africa relations with America’s superpower competitors, especially China.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Economic Question</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the African domain, the United States is entering a new level of competition with several international and regional actors that already have sturdier economic and security partnerships in the fertile continent. On the top of this competitors’ list are China, Russia, Turkey, and two of the wealthiest countries in the Arab Gulf region, namely Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Their collective power as pragmatic allies outweighs the power of the United States and Europe.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the past few years, the UAE, as one example, emerged as a primary logistics hub for China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa region and a host of more than six-thousand Chinese companies. In addition, China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have been running joint and parallel infrastructure and tourism projects in east Africa. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Last week, the first-ever Arab-China Summit was held in Riyadh. The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, and a dozen of Arab leaders returned home after the summit with several economic and security agreements that some of them described as a milestone for “high-quality” cooperation. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Unlike the United States, eastern superpowers do not tie security and economic cooperation with Arabs to improving human rights and governance conditions, which most Arab countries view as interference in domestic affairs. Likewise, most African countries, including those who yearn to establish solid alliances with the United States, find working with China much easier because it does not load agreements with political change provisions. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The fierce economic standoff between the west and Russia since the latter’s invasion of Ukraine in the Spring is believed to be one of the key motivators behind convening the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington this week. After losing several of its best Arab allies to Russia and China, mainly because of inconsistent foreign policy moves in the past two years, the Biden Administration is keen on winning over Africa to compensate for this massive loss. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That raises the question about what the U.S. Administration can realistically offer to Africa to win this competition, especially in the lack of a collective African perception of what Africa needs from Washington that the other powerful competitors have not already introduced.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The United States has been the second top investor in Africa, after China, over the past decade (2010-2019), according to data from the “Swiss-African Business Relations Status Quo 2021” report. The distance between China and the United States' positions on the index compared to other countries on the top ten list, such as France, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, is as wide as eleven-thousand newly created jobs. Yet, the gap between China as the top investor and the United States in the second position is as large as six-thousand newly created jobs. China poured in Africa at least 27% of its foreign investments in that period.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the regional level, the report shows that the UAE is the only Arab country that made it to the top ten investors in Africa in the past ten years. UAE holds the 9th position on the index with 2,968 newly created jobs. That puts UAE above wealthy western investors like Switzerland, Spain, and Canada. The UAE is determined to continue expanding its investments in Africa, especially in the countries of eastern and southern Africa, in the coming decades. According to a white paper issued in October 2021 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by Dubai Chamber, the UAE held 88% (US$1.2 billion) of total investments by all Arab Gulf countries in Sub-Sahara Africa in the period between January 2016 and July 2021.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's Turkey, Not China! </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turkey is another remarkable competitor that the United States should watch out for its growing influence on Africa. Turkey is the fourth largest investor in Africa, after China, the United States, and France. The difference between Turkey’s investment power in Sub-Sahara African countries, compared to the power of European investors, such as France and Germany, is slightly a few hundred newly created jobs over the past ten years. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 2020, the total trade volume between Turkey and Africa reached as high as US$25.3 billion, compared to a trading volume of US$20 billion between Africa and the entire continent of Europe. Most African imports from Turkey are textiles, furniture, electronics, steel, and cement. Meanwhile, Turkey made a direct investment of US$6.5 billion in the construction sector in Africa over that period.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Nevertheless, Turkey’s political influence on Africa is much thicker than any other competitor, even China’s. That is basically due to the clever employment of the military diplomacy tool by the leadership of the Turkish Armed Forces to win over allies in a continent boiling above a myriad of security threats, ranging from terrorism, border conflicts, and civil wars. This week, while the United States is hosting a summit for Africa, African military leaders have visited the Turkish Minister of National Defense, Hulusi Akar, in Ankara to discuss cooperation and review military deals.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turkey’s military diplomacy pattern is designed to create a double-layered bond of economic and security co-dependency with targeted countries that can hardly be broken once tied. This pattern was successfully applied in the long-term partnerships that Turkey established with pivotal countries in Asia, such as Pakistan and Azerbaijan, in the 1990s and early 2000s.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Turkey’s indigenous defense industry is about to hit a self-sufficiency rate of 80% by the end of 2022. The starving market of arms and ammunition in Africa is one of the ideal destinations for Turkish military products. Today, Turkey is already exporting weapons to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, and the list is expanding by the day. The African countries are particularly interested in the Turkish drones and helicopters, as well as technologically advanced electronic war systems that they can procure from Turkey for a relatively lower cost than the price of similar equipment from the United States, Russia, or even China. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Flaw in Western Perception</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In general, western powers are usually unlucky when it comes to competing against the eastern superpowers, or even regional actors, in the African continent. Europe’s vain quest to revive ties with Africa is an example that the United States should study and learn from. At least since 2020, Europe has been trying to redefine its relationship with Africa as a strategic partnership rather than a “donor-recipient” affair. The highlight of this effort was creating a new EU-Africa Strategy that encompasses a huge budget of thirty billion Euros for social development projects in North Africa.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In early 2021, the European Council approved a proposal by the European Commission to establish the “New Agenda for The Mediterranean” to “relaunch and strengthen the strategic partnership between the European Union and its southern neighborhood partners.” Consequently, a new instrument titled “Neighborhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument - (NDICI)” was issued to guide Europe’s policy in the Mediterranean. The NDICI set an investment recovery plan in targeted African countries with a budget of seven billion Euros for the period 2021-2027, with a promise to mobilize up to thirty billion Euros in private and public investments over the next ten years.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Europe’s urgent interest in regaining its long-lost influence in Africa is not new. Leading voices of major European collegiate bodies have been calling to strengthen the bond with Africa, for years. However, the wide gap between Europe’s vision and Africa’s needs has blocked positive measures and tangible results. That is the core of the lesson that the United States needs to derive from the European failed endeavors in Africa. Despite its proven sincerity to renew and foster ties with Africa, the U.S. Administration may fail if it does not abandon its western perception of politics and business conduct for a while and try to look at Africa with African eyes.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28531442.post-21984807057110012532022-12-13T19:34:00.001+02:002022-12-22T19:37:27.684+02:00Human Rights in the New World Order<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUyppE8MQJrP64xVHofhju_6cTfgYMj6HLe3S2haHntk4ITdy82ED6V4Wm43o4NYr9P2GwCQ5pBebfdpd4uKA6F1J0uaVEP2eHkqSxtnBzugkJsicMtmyzWz-kC4UgTB6Xgyxet8hLJ1wRQ8nnGN8Z9JCwunHYPSq9d5vTexKkGpz0BtiJVQ/s600/600600p12204EDNmainimg-Human-Rights-22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="600" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUyppE8MQJrP64xVHofhju_6cTfgYMj6HLe3S2haHntk4ITdy82ED6V4Wm43o4NYr9P2GwCQ5pBebfdpd4uKA6F1J0uaVEP2eHkqSxtnBzugkJsicMtmyzWz-kC4UgTB6Xgyxet8hLJ1wRQ8nnGN8Z9JCwunHYPSq9d5vTexKkGpz0BtiJVQ/w400-h255/600600p12204EDNmainimg-Human-Rights-22.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This year, the world is observing Human Rights Day amidst a global mess of security and economic crises. That makes us wonder about the future of the international movement for defending and supporting human rights, and whether it will be able to survive this huge amount of political and economic uncertainties that have been overwhelming the world stage since 2020. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Europe, where the concept of human rights started millennia ago, is struggling to secure hydrocarbon resources to warm homes this winter. Most of the countries in Africa and the Middle East are suffering from grinding economic crises that are putting a large number of them on the verge of famine. On a wider scale, the entire globe is facing serious security threats, ranging from Russian threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine to the unsettling conflicts in Syria and Libya, and the rise of Islamic extremists and terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and its surroundings.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The global standoff between western and eastern powers around the war in Eastern Europe is escalating by the day. Russia and China are taking strides in mobilizing Arab and African countries to their side, while the United States is losing its best allies in the Middle East. Sooner or later, this is going to change the balance of power in our modern-day world. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">If the eastern camp wins, which is highly likely given the unexplained confusing policies of the U.S. Administration of President Biden, human rights as a set of universal values are going to suffer. The leaders of the eastern powers, who mostly adopt negative views towards human rights as we know them today, may implicitly try to push the conversation around defending human rights to the back burner. Even worse, they may take measures to avert the gains achieved by the international human rights movement, especially on the set of rights related to individual freedoms. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a recent meeting with his national organization for human rights, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, publicly attacked human rights doctrine and labeled it as a weapon the West used to mentally occupy the world. “The doctrine of international human rights is being used to justify Western ideological hegemony;” Putin stressed after blaming the international human rights organizations, which he describes as controlled by the west, for “not condemning Ukraine for bombing residential neighborhoods on the territory of Donbas.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ironically, Donbas is originally a Ukrainian territory that was occupied by Russia. It is also appalling to see Putin who invaded Ukraine, in February, leading to horrible consequences inside Ukraine and worldwide, using the “human rights” terminology to blame Ukraine for defending itself against his invading troops.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In China, another leading power from the east, the human rights notion is no less hated than it is in Russia and other autocratic countries. In October, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, whose state has been overseeing the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims for years, told the media that China has its own understanding of human rights that is different from the western concept. Quoting Karl Marx, the philosophical godfather of the communist movement, Xi said that his country adopts Marx’s perception that "right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The COVID-19 pandemic offers a context that enhances this autocratic approach to human rights. Under the pandemic, the countries that had centralized – and even repressive – systems of governance were more successful in controlling the pandemic and its economic consequences than the free countries. Also, during this period, governments worldwide heavily suppressed individual freedoms to protect the collective. This strongly resonated with the eastern cultural perception of prioritizing the community over the individual, in comparison to the western culture which glorifies individual freedoms above all else. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In her statement on the COVID-19 pandemic informal briefing to the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, adopted a balanced, but rare, vision of how the UN and similar bodies should handle the pandemic crisis. She noted that “the pandemic is exposing the damaging impact of inequalities, in every society. In developed countries, fault lines in access to health care; in labor rights and social protections; in living space; and in dignity are suddenly very visible.” Then she emphasized the respect for civil and political rights during this crisis, as “difficult decisions are facing many governments. Emergency measures may well be needed to respond to this public health emergency. But an emergency situation is not a blank check to disregard human rights obligations.” </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This gloomy scene makes us worried about the future of human rights after the world recovers from the ongoing cluster of crises, regardless of who wins the west-east power competition. Will the people continue to believe in the importance of observing human rights values? Will governments continue to show commitment to protecting human rights? And, the most important question is about the future roles and credibility of international bodies, such as the United Nations, which are responsible for preserving and protecting human rights, worldwide.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">by Dalia Ziada on http://daliaziada.blogspot.com</div>Dalia Ziada داليا زيادةhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12627481975357383232noreply@blogger.com