Military rule in Egypt, de facto U.S.-Al Qaeda alliance in Syria, Yemen?

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Correspondent- | Last updated: Jun 19, 2012 - 1:16:11 PM

The Aftermath of the Arab Spring

Egyptians rallying in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Photo: MGNOnline/Courtesy of Tom Perry and Marwa Awad

The U.S. and Al-Qaeda appear to be on the same side in the Syrian civil war, Dr. Horne said. Al-Qaeda basically endorsed the effort to destabilize the al-Assad regime, which puts (assassinated Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libbi) on the same page as those who supposedly are trying to kill him, speaking of the North Atlantic powers and Washington in the first place.”

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood declared that its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won Egypt’s run-off presidential election June 18, despite a ruling three days earlier by the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court which disbanded Egypt’s democratically elected parliament—a parliament which had been dominated by the organization’s members.

With the legislature dissolved and martial law effectively in force, the generals issued an interim constitution granting themselves sweeping powers that ensured their hold on the state and which diminished the powers of the president. They will be Egypt’s lawmakers, they will control the budget and they will determine who writes the permanent constitution that will define the country’s future, state TV reported.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, in control of the country since former President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, said that it now has full legislative power and that it will appoint a 100-person assembly that will write the country’s new constitution.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party called the decision by the court and the Armed Forces to reinstate martial law a “coup,” declaring that the military council was taking the government into its own hands, “against any true democracy they spoke of,” according to published reports.

Official final results are not due until days after Final Call press time, and the other presidential candidate—Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq—challenged the Brotherhood claim, which was based on the group’s compilation of election officials’ returns from nearly all polling centers nationwide.

As the Freedom and Justice Party claimed a narrow victory over Mr. Shafiq, the Brotherhood challenged the military’s power grab. The group said it did not recognize the dissolution of parliament, and that it rejected the military’s right to issue an interim constitution and oversee the drafting of a new one, according to an Associated Press report from Cairo.

In a victory speech at his headquarters, Mr. Morsi, a U.S.-educated engineer clearly sought to calm the fears of Egyptians that the Brotherhood would try to impose stricter provisions of Islamic law. He said he seeks “stability, love and brotherhood for the Egyptian civil, national, democratic, constitutional and modern state” and made no mention of Islamic law, according to published reports.

“Thank God, who successfully led us to this blessed revolution. Thank God, who guided the people of Egypt to this correct path, the road of freedom, democracy,” said Mr. Morsi. He vowed to all Egyptians, “men, women, mothers, sisters ... all political factions, the Muslims, the Christians,” to be “a servant for all of them.”

“We are not about taking revenge or settling scores. We are all brothers of this nation, we own it together, and we are equal in rights and duties,” Mr. Morsi continued.

The troublesome Egyptian transition to a freely elected government, and the ongoing warfare in the streets of Syria raise questions about the victories attributed to the so-called “Arab Spring,” which swept through the Middle East in 2011, toppling governments from Tunisia, to Egypt, and in Libya with major military intervention by NATO, while undermining the authority of pro-Western dictators in Yemen and Bahrain.

“So we see that the promise that many of us had for the ‘Arab Spring’ or the ‘Arab Awakening’ has been hijacked,” Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston told The Final Call. “Hijacked, not least because of the kind of gross interference of the North Atlantic powers as evidenced most directly and dramatically in the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011.”

The lines distinguishing friends and foes have been blurred, according to Dr. Horne, by the ongoing U.S. interference and military intervention in the region. “I think that it would be charitable to call it unintended consequence, and certainly I understand that. But as you go around the region and you look at Syria, for example, where it’s clear and evident that the North Atlantic powers are trying to destabilize the regime of Bashar al-Assad, have entered into an objective, de-facto alliance, which works quite closely with Al-Qaeda, which we are told repeatedly is ‘Public Enemy Number 1.’ ”

The U.S. and Al-Qaeda appear to be on the same side in the Syrian civil war, Dr. Horne said. Al-Qaeda, which “releases more videos than Mary J. Blige … basically endorsed the effort to destabilize the al-Assad regime, which puts (assassinated Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libbi) on the same page as those who supposedly are trying to kill him, speaking of the North Atlantic powers and Washington in the first place.”

Also in Yemen, Dr. Horne pointed out, “where Al-Qaeda has made its greatest strides,” the group’s success was aided by U.S. opposition to a strong Socialist Party—the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen in the Southern part of the country based in Aden that “was destabilized by the United States in the first place, and its allies in the second place, which paved the way for the rise of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

“So, as we go around the region, it’s hard to say there is an unintended consequence of NATO action and U.S. action in helping to empower Al-Qaeda.

“One intends the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions. And it’s certainly foreseeable that when you take positions that are congruent with that of Al-Qaeda, such as destabilizing Bashir al-Assad, it’s foreseeable that Al-Qaeda might be coming to power, sooner rather than later in Damascus,” Dr. Horne explained.

“You cannot understand what is going on in Syria unless you understand the broader regional agenda of Washington and its sidekick Israel in the first place. And this ongoing attempt to destabilize the al-Assad regime is part of this larger regional agenda of Israel and the United States, with the United States and Israel trying to retain their footing which has been shaken by the Hezbollah victory against Israel some years ago (in Lebanon). And, as of today, it seems that their plot is working.

“Now I don’t want to downplay any human rights violations that can be laid at the doorstep of the al-Assad regime. Certainly there’s been a fair amount of bloodiness. But, as the United Nations official said the other day is what we are enduring right now in Syria is a civil war, and in a civil war that means that one side is shooting at another side. I think it would be a mistake to simply focus on the al-Assad forces shooting at the other side, because we have two sides shooting at each other.”

Even some of the massacres—such as the Houla massacre that took place some days ago in Syria—that was laid at the doorstep of the al-Assad regime, “according to RT (formerly “Russia Today” TV), that massacre bore an eerie resemblance to a similar massacre in Kosovo that had been laid at the doorstep of the Serbs, but as it turned out was basically the handiwork of NATO allies in Kosovo.” The resulting government, the so-called Kosovar regime, which was boosted into power by a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, “has been accused of all manner of violations, including the harvesting of organs of different individuals and then selling them to hospitals and rich individuals.

“So I think it’s very important for the progressive movement to be very careful at this very perilous moment. Some within our ranks got snookered last year with that so-called ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Libya that turned into regime change of the worst sort. It would be a major blunder to get snookered again in 2012,” said Dr. Horne.

Related news:

The Hijacked Arab 'Spring' (FCN, 03-16-2012)

The Final Call