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Cameron threatens to 'temporarily withdraw' from the European Convention on Human Rights in order to expedite radical cleric's deportation. The worst kind of populist politics drives Britain towards international outlawry.

Home Secretary Theresa May was thwarted again last week in her battle to deport the radical preacher Abu Qatada. This time, the court of appeal turned down her attempt to take the case to the supreme court.

The government's next move? "David Cameron is considering temporarily withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights so that Abu Qatada can finally be removed from Britain," proclaimed the Daily Telegraph.

A few years ago, that would have provoked incredulous laughter. Not so now. The possibility of leaving the Convention – whether temporarily, as the PM reportedly discussed with his home secretary, justice minister and attorney-general, or permanently – can no longer be dismissed as unthinkable or absurd.

Because of the government’s populist response to a troublesome cleric whom it cannot deport, we are at risk of losing the human rights framework painstakingly erected after the second world war to protect us from state oppression and illegality, unwarranted intrusion and arbitrary interference in freedoms fought for over centuries – a framework the justice ministry describes on its website as "fundamentally important in maintaining a fair and civilised society" (PDF).

The Eastleigh effect

Some of the Tories’ recent proposals are clearly a response to UKIP’s showing at the Eastleigh by-election in February on an explicitly anti-EU, anti-immigration platform.

Populist measures announced since then include removing prisoners’ ability (through legal aid) to challenge the conditions of their incarceration; checking the immigration status of children at school, stopping migrants getting social housing; and restricting access to benefits and the NHS for EU nationals, to stop ‘benefit tourism’ (targeting in particular the Romanians and Bulgarians who, Cameron claimed in March, are preparing to swarm in and sign on as soon as restrictions on their employment in the UK are lifted on 1 January 2014).

EU employment commissioner László Andor warned Cameron his claims were ‘unintelligent’ and risked pandering to "knee-jerk xenophobia", and Nils Muižnieks, Europe’s human rights commissioner, accused him of "shameful rhetoric" which was "fuelling stereotypes and hostility towards migrants". But in the context of the increasingly naked attacks on the rights and living standards of demonised groups – a category which seems to be ever expanding to include all poor people – the possibility of leaving Europe’s human rights system no longer seems so remote.

Greece under the colonels

The Convention allows signatory states to withdraw on six months’ notice, but the only precedent is Greece, which withdrew from the Convention and from the Council of Europe (the 47-state group of states which oversees human rights in Europe) from 1970 to 1974, under the dictatorship of the colonels.

The UK would probably have to withdraw from the Council of Europe too, as all members are expected to comply with the human rights standards set out in the Convention. When justice minister Chris Grayling advocated repeal of the Human Rights Act and a radical reduction in the influence of the European Court, the attorney-general warned him that Britain could become a pariah state like Belarus, the only European country currently outside the Convention and the Council of Europe.

But the implications go further. Senior lawyers and judges have pointed out that deporting Abu Qatada would put into question Britain’s membership of the European Union, which requires adherence to its values by member states (some Eurosceptics would welcome leaving the EU, having pushed Cameron into pledging a referendum on the issue in a majority Tory government), and of the United Nations, whose Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Convention Against Torture both prohibit exposing someone to a trial tainted by torture evidence. And of course, the Human Rights Act, which requires Britain’s laws and decisions to be compatible with the human rights set out in the Convention, would have to go.

Attack on universality

Abu Qatada represents the hard case, the most demonised demon in the Right’s campaign against the universality of human rights, but not the only one. In January 2013, human rights commissioner Muižnieks singled out the UK for special criticism over its continuing refusal to comply with the court’s 2005 ruling on votes for prisoners, "openly challenging the essence of the European human rights system" of which it was a founding member. (See Hirst v. the United Kingdom (no. 2) (74025/01), 6.10.05.)

The only other states singled out in the Commissioner’s survey of the state of human rights protection in Europe were Azerbaijan, Hungary, Russia and Greece.

Cameron said in November 2012 that the thought of prisoners voting made him "physically sick", a stance in keeping with a divisive, punitive polity which is content to cast prisoners – along with foreign offenders, asylum seekers, Muslims, Romanians, Bulgarians and welfare ‘scroungers’ – as outcasts and non-persons.

So although a new bill on prisoner voting presented to parliament later that month offered MPs three options: a voting ban for prisoners serving four years or more; for those serving six months or more; or for all serving prisoners (ie, maintaining the status quo, which the European Court has said is illegal), Grayling and Cameron made no bones about their preference, which is the third option. (The bill has gone to a parliamentary committee; MPs will vote on it later. Meanwhile over 2,500 complaints by prisoners are awaiting hearing at the European Court, which has adjourned them until September to see what the British government will do.)

Foreign offenders’ ability to avoid deportation by the invocation of rights to family life is another issue that ignites the Right’s fury. Last year, May and justice minister Ken Clarke (since removed as too liberal) sought to renegotiate the European human rights system to reduce the Human Rights Court’s scrutiny of deportation decisions, and their Brighton Declaration, adopted in April 2012, promised to make complaints to the Court more difficult to initiate and harder to win.

But without waiting for these changes to be implemented, May brought in new immigration rules in July 2012, seeking to limit British judges’ ability to take family life into account in deportation appeals. The judges (who are not soft touches when it comes to the human rights of foreign national offenders) rebuked her. The Convention, not her new rules, determined what would and would not violate deportees’ family life rights under the Convention, they reminded her, and moreover her rules ignored children’s rights, in breach of the UK’s obligations under the UN Children’s Rights Convention. (See MF (Nigeria) v SSHD [2012] UKUT 393 (IAC), 31.10.12, and Ogundimu v SSHD [2013] UKUT 60 (IAC), 18.2.13).

Despite the drop both in crime and in the proportion of offenders who are foreign, May now proposes primary legislation further limiting foreign deportees’ family life rights. But as long as Britain subscribes to the European human rights court, anyone facing deportation can go there to complain that British law penalises them disproportionately. That is why, in March, she rejected as counter-productive Dominic Raab’s legislative proposal to effectively abolish family life rights for those facing deportation, incurring the wrath of right-wingers in her own party. (See "The strange case of the Raab amendment", The Justice Gap, and Mark Reckless's blog "Home secretary falls at first hurdle").

Cameron notoriously described the Court as a "small claims court" when it stopped Abu Qatada’s deportation, but it is this individual right of petition direct to the Strasbourg court which has made Europe’s system so (relatively) effective in human rights protection.

The commissioner’s and the judges’ intervention in the debate are an indication of just how worrying is the government’s assertion of a nineteenth-century view of British sovereignty and its rhetorical denunciation of the universality of human rights and the institutions designed to protect them, in its frantic pursuit of the right-wing vote.

This article is drawn from Frances Webber's briefing paper, "Europe's pariah state? The future of human rights in Britain", published by the Institute of Race Relations. (PDF here).

Sideboxes Related stories:  Abu Qatada, British justice and human rights Two fingers to the court: why right-wing criticism of the ECtHR is misguided Re-thinking detention without trial Time to end exceptional security policies targeting Muslims: they don't work

Last November a law was passed in Russia requiring foreign-funded NGOs to register as ‘foreign agents’. This triggered a massive and unwieldy inspection programme, which has hit everyone from human rights activists to rescuers of stray dogs. 

At a meeting with FSB leaders on 14 February, Vladimir Putin put an end to any doubts about his intention to implement his controversial ‘foreign agents’ bill. ‘We have a law’, he announced. ‘And we need to enforce it.’ With this instruction, Putin turned a poor law into a conspicuous and ugly witch-hunt. The heat (if you’ll excuse the pun) is now on, as the first ‘agents’ are paraded before the Russian public (and it is by no means just human rights organisations that are feeling it). The worst thing is that this law has set in motion yet another mechanism for the repression and harassment of anyone involved, however marginally, in civil activism.

'Foreign agent here' says the banner displayed atop the Moscow HQ of Memorial, a civil rights NGO. Photo: Polit.ru

What to expect from an inspection

Russian NGOs are already very familiar with so-called ‘inspections’ by regulatory authorities. For many years now, they have submitted comprehensive and regular reports of their activities and finances to the Justice Ministry and other bodies. With a fraction of the resources, the voluntary sector is subject to as much paperwork and monitoring as the business world, if not more. Just imagine, then, to also, suddenly be subjected to inspection in connection with the ‘foreign agents’ law, to be accused of ‘extremism’ in your activity, and to be investigated under another such pretext - possibly all at the same time? That’s exactly the situation in which hundreds of Russian NGOs have been finding themselves since February.

Across Russia, small and understaffed organisations have become the subjects of inspection commissions. Led by officials from the Prosecutor’s Office, the commissions usually include representatives of the Justice Ministry and Tax authorities, and less frequently from the FSB, the Police, the Federal Migration Service (FMS), the Fire Service and so on. Some Moscow based organisations have also found a film crew from the NTV channel on their doorsteps. This happened, for example, at ‘Memorial’, when staff had to eject ‘reporters’ illegally attempting to film the inspection process.

One inspector spied something suspicious on a bookshelf – a volume whose title started with the words, ‘Polemical questions...’. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘Polemical sounds almost like ‘political’’.

Here are just a few examples of what has been going on, memorable for their farciality (although of course there was little amusing about them).

In St Petersburg inspectors asked staff of NGOs to produce such arcane documents as a rat control certificate and proof that they had all undergone chest x-rays. At the St Petersburg Human Rights Resource Centre employees were asked about their rubbish disposal arrangements, and at the NGO Development Centre the inspectors assiduously photographed the spines of all books with titles in foreign languages. 

In a Moscow organisation that runs academic exchange programmes, one of the inspectors also spied something suspicious on a bookshelf. It was a volume whose title started with the words ‘Polemical questions...’. ‘What’s this?’, asked the inspector. ‘Polemical sounds almost like ‘political’’.

One member of the auditing group visiting the Moscow office of an international NGO quietly asked its staff, in a moment of empathy, ‘You wouldn’t on the off chance know what we’re supposed to be finding here?’

Background

The Russian Foreign Agents Law (an amendment to the Law on NGOs) came into force on 21st November 2012. It requires all foreign-funded NGOs involved in ‘political activity’ to register at the Russian Ministry of Justice as ‘foreign agents’. Organisations engaged in ‘activities relating to science, culture, the arts, health, social support, support for the disabled, environmental protection and philanthropy’ are, theoretically at least, not subject to the new law.

The law has attracted widespread criticism as being discriminatory, unlawful and unconstitutional. Most have noted that the phrase ‘political activity’ is ambiguous and can be used to encompass any activities that protect public interests. With its MI6 and James Bond undertones, many NGOs also find the ‘foreign agent’ label ethically unacceptable. The law represents a significant tightening of the screws on NGOs, and provides for the criminal prosecution of people working in the sector. Organisations that refuse to register as ‘foreign agents’ face various sanctions, up to and including closure.

A second wave

In an interview on German television on 5 April, Vladimir Putin stated that  ‘654 non-governmental organisations operating in the Russian Federation between January and April received a total of 28.3 billion roubles from abroad, almost $1 billion [£580 million], and 855 million roubles of that was channelled via diplomatic missions.’ Listening to the president, many people working in the Russian voluntary sector probably imagined that his aides had accidentally given him the wrong figures, and were confusing NGO funding with deposits by Russians in Cypriot bank accounts. No one has confirmed this, of course, and meanwhile the second half of April has seen a new wave of inspections, some of them repeats of earlier ones.

On 22 April, for example, inspectors returned to the Moscow offices of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, a well known NGO working with migrants. The reason for the visit was ‘information’ passed on to them from Georgy Fyodorov, a member of Russia’s Public Chamber. Officials from the Prosecutor’s Office and the FMS checked the IDs of everyone on the premises, given that Mr Fyodorov had claimed that the Forum was involved in ‘organising illegal immigration and the legalisation of illegal immigrants’. A day later other members of the Public Chamber passed a motion in support of Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Forum, but tellingly only nine of the Public Chamber’s 126 members signed the motion.

Inspections do not, of course, stop with human rights organisations. Judging by the growing number of NGOs who have been subjected to one, the main qualification for this honour is simply the receipt of foreign funding. ‘Perspectiva’, for example, an organisation working with disabled people and one of Russia’s leading NGOs, received a letter from its local Prosecutor’s Office in Moscow on 22 April. Just the day before, it had organised a grand dance marathon for people with disabilities, which included a collection towards funding for its support projects. Now it was faced with an administrative marathon: it was required to produce, within 20 hours, a huge list of documents going back three years, including everything relating to funding and any media publications.  

‘In normal countries support [for disabled people] is provided by the state, whereas here all the state does is run checks on the people who provide the support.’  (NGO director) 

You only have to call in at Perspectiva’s offices to see that there are no agents here, and that the organisation does immensely valuable work supporting disabled people in Russia. ’Perspectiva is a very important and professional organisation' agrees Natalya Taubina, director of‘Obshchestvenny Verdikt’ (Public Verdict), an organisation that provides free legal aid for victims of unlawful actions by the law enforcement authorities (of course, Public Verdict has not escaped inspection either). ‘In normal countries this support is provided by the state, whereas here all the state does is run checks on the people who provide the support’. 

In the second phase of its inspection, ‘Memorial’ was asked to, produce, in the space of 24 hours, documents adding up to 8766 pages – the equivalent of ten copies of Tolstoy’s massive ‘War and Peace’. Although, frankly, the absurdities of the present situation are perhaps more reminiscent of writers such as Gogol or Kafka.

There is only one topic of conversation in Russia’s voluntary sector these days — who has been audited and who not. Those who haven’t yet had an inspection are preparing for one; those who have, for another one. In these circumstances it is very difficult to actually get on with the work the organisation was set up for in the first place.

Only obeying orders

‘Today I was planning to visit Boris Yeltsin’s grave’, Georgy Satanov, head of the INDEM Foundation wrote on his Facebook page a couple of days ago. ‘But I, like others, had a second visitation from the inspectors, and had to go to work. Forgive them, Boris Nikolaevich; they are only obeying orders.’

Voluntary organisations are not, in fact, the only hostages to this situation. The authorities themselves have seen their workloads increase exponentially, forced to drop what they were doing and race around the country inspecting NGOs.

Igor Kalyapin, director of the Nizhny Novgorod Committee against Torture sympathises with the bureaucrats who were forced to inspect his organisation. ‘In Nizhny Novgorod’s central district alone there are 40 NGOs to be inspected over three years. The office of the local public prosecutor, who is responsible for the process, is simply disappearing under piles of documents. When she asked me to come for an interview, she said, ‘Come whenever you like – the weekend, in the evening, at night – whenever suits you.’ Her staff are being asked to get their heads round the totally unfamiliar activities of very specific organisations: among the NGOs on the list are the Hari Krishna group, the Jewish Cultural Centre, the environmental lot and the people who rescue stray dogs. I asked her why she hadn’t asked the Ministry of Justice for information about them – after all we all have to lodge our annual reports and accounts with them. Her answer?  ‘We were told to get on with it ourselves.’  

Sign up as an agent

According to Tatyana Vagina, deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s NGO department,  as of 15 April 528 inspections had taken place in 49 regions. None of them had been registered as a foreign agent; none of them had been judged to be involved in political activity. In the two weeks since then, however, the situation has changed considerably. NGOs have been receiving ‘warnings’ about the dire consequences of breaking the law and recommendations that they register as foreign agents.

On 25th April, Ms Vagina was in court for the first case brought against an NGO under the new law. The charge placed before the election watchdog Golos was that it had failed to register as a foreign agent. The organisation presented a convincing case that since the law came into force it had not received a penny of foreign funding, that its activities had nothing to do with politics, and so on. It was all to no avail - the organisation was fined 300,000 roubles (£6000) and its director Liliya Shibanova 100,000 roubles (£2000). Shibanova summed it up: ‘today was a test-drive for a plan to destroy every NGO in Russia.’

Golos, the only election watchdog active in Russia that is independent of the government, became the first NGO to be charged for its refusal to register as a 'foreign agent'. Photo: Polit.ru

The most surprising thing about how the ‘foreign agent law’ has worked thus far is the indecent haste with which the authorities are ‘flushing out’ agents who do not even formally meet the definition of what is very controversial legislation. The sledgehammer seems to be working in a very hit-and-miss manner, forced to stretch the law in unbelievable directions. ‘People and the Law’, an NGO working in the Mari El Republic, has been advised to register as a foreign agent because its constitution includes a clause about ‘holding to account officials who infringe human rights’, a phrase interpreted to indicate ‘political activity’. ‘Help for people with Cystic Fibrosis’, meanwhile, has been taken to task by the Moscow region prosecutor’s office for having an founding objective to ‘promote the rights and legal interests of people with cystic fibrosis with the statutory authorities’.

'Even if your organisation has been cleared of ‘agent’ status, this doesn’t mean it’s off the hook. You can be fined if your office’s electrical wiring is too old, if you haven’t installed soundproofing or if you don’t have a sign advertising your opening hours.'

The Kostroma Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committee has also fallen foul of the law because its members acted, in a private capacity, as election observers (again, before the law came in to force), while several environmental organisations (the Baikal Environmental Wave in Irkutsk; the ‘Green House’ in Khabarovsk, etc.) have also been told to register, even though it is difficult to classify their remit as political in the broad and amorphous definition used in the new law.     

Even if an organisation has been cleared of ‘agent’ status, this doesn’t mean it’s off the hook. You can be fined, for example, if your office’s electrical wiring is too old, if you haven’t installed soundproofing or if you don’t have a sign advertising your opening hours. One regional organisation has just been fined a total of over 600,000 roubles (£12000) – more than many Russian NGOs’ annual turnover.

Clearly, some of these unlawful and impulsive decisions will be challenged and some will be overturned. There may even be an acknowledgement of officials acting in an overzealous fashion. Might we even dare to imagine that under a principle of ‘one step forward, two steps back’, this discriminatory law might even be repealed?

Alas, even if all this happens, it will be next to impossible to undo the harm caused by these few months of mudslinging and harassment. It has simply become very difficult for the Russian public to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ NGOs.

In the speech to FSB leaders that I quoted at the beginning of this article, Vladimir Putin stated that it is his government’s intention to support the development in Russia of a strong, competent and mature civil society. The process he had in mind will presumably begin only once Russia’s fledgling, self-reliant and self-nurturing civil society has been conclusively inspected and neutralised.

Sideboxes Related stories:  Russian NGOs: the funding realities Funding Russian NGOs: opportunity in a crisis? Russian government declares ‘cold war’ on civil society What do Russians think of their ‘foreign agents’? Why domestic philanthropy isn’t enough for Russian NGOs Country or region:  Russia Topics:  Civil society

The controversy over Alasdair Gray’s contribution to a recent collection of essays on Scottish independence points to the often fraught and false relationship between the arts and politics. This is the fourth piece in the ‘Restating Scotland’ debate series.

Last December saw the publication of a collection of essays on independence by a number of well-known Scottish writers. The writers’ contributions were diverse, reflecting the plurality of contemporary literature in Scotland.  However, one contributor was the subject of almost all media response to the collection: the writer and artist Alasdair Gray. Much of this was hostile, premature and gave the impression not only of certain critics’ ignorance of Scottish culture, but of the actual content of Gray’s essay, which was accused of promoting nationalism alongside hostility and anti-English sentiment.

The Booker Prize winning novelist James Kelman has eloquently defended Gray, pointing out that sixty years of seminal artistic activity, from the great 1980 novel Lanark to the large murals visible in various locations throughout the West End of Glasgow, emphasise his profound opposition to all forms of racism and cultural inequality. The polymath Gray, who will publish a larger work of non-fiction discussing Scottish independence in summer 2014, is undoubtedly a great many things, but bigot is not one of them.

The events surrounding the publication of Unstated highlighted a far broader lack of comprehension between politicians, the media and artists in Scotland. For at least three centuries, Scottish artists, musicians and writers seem to have anticipated political events, laying the cultural foundations for certain political sentiments that were then realised years, sometimes many years, later. Two key instances from the recent past are the Scottish Renaissance’s crystallisation around Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1930s and the process of radical cultural re-imagination following the failed 1979 referendum. In the 1980s and 90s, writers like Kelman, Gray and the poet Edwin Morgan, alongside a talented generation of visual artists including Ken Currie, Peter Howson and Adrian Wisniewski, were integral to the formation of alternative political narratives to those promoted by Westminster. Some of these narratives may have been partially realised in 1997 and 2011. Some of them may yet be realised further.

But this view of artworks, which temporarily limits them to the sphere of political sentiments, omits a great deal. Political and cultural feeling may be important to the impetus driving artistic production, but they are arguably subservient to more aesthetic imperatives. In their discussions of literature and art, inevitably predicated on the ultimate political results of such discourse, politicians tend to forget this. One of the functions of art would seem to be the broadening of meaning, or the multiplication of potential narratives. Deployed politically, much of this is lost.

The alternative position is that political action is concerned with the realisation of human potentiality and creating the material conditions in which this can take place, and therefore justly sublimates artistic production to this greater end. This might be an extreme formulation, but is implicit to varying degrees in most of our politicians, who are rarely willing to discuss art on its own terms. Clearly, most serious artists are equally unable to meet politicians halfway.

MacDiarmid’s greatest poem, ‘On a Raised Beach’, presents a good example of this sort of paradox. Employing the language of geology and words derived from the extinct Shetland Norn, it is undoubtedly a challenging work. It would be very difficult to use it politically in the way the SNP, for instance, have deployed other poems by MacDiarmid, Burns and Norman MacCaig – to add cultural or emotional significance to an apparently materialist argument. However, the central symbol of ‘On a Raised Beach’, the unfeeling stones with which the speaker attempts to align and infuse his consciousness, is political at its core. The stones on the Shetland beach are presented in absolute terms, as unconscious entities against which human thought and societies must measure themselves. Such extremity pushes MacDiarmid’s argument far beyond what might be generally acceptable or credible in the political sphere, but makes for an enormously powerful statement of opposition towards material injustice. It is also, crucially, an argument against intellectual complacency, since the poem’s complexity militates against precisely the sorts of easy, superficial reading which characterised the media backlash against Gray’s essay.

Edwin Morgan’s 1984 sequence ‘Sonnets from Scotland’ is another work which broadens, rather than constrains, the Scottish vocabulary of response to unsatisfactory political conditions. A long poem comprising fifty-one sonnets, Morgan employs the traditional form with great skill and sensitivity, marrying science and historical fiction with his personal experiences of life as a gay man and university lecturer in twentieth century Glasgow. Such breadth defies paraphrase, but one of the better known sonnets, ‘The Coin’, is emblematic of the range of imaginative possibilities contained in Morgan’s work. The poem takes the form of a fourteen line dramatic monologue, in which an unknown speaker relates the discovery, on a strange, marshy planet, of a one pound coin of unclear provenance. The obverse shows Scotland, the reverse the head and antlers of a red deer. Most importantly, the alien archaeologist can make out a Latin inscription round the edge which reads Respublica Scotorum. The fate of this republic is left, as with so many things, unstated. Nevertheless, the image of the coin persists, an imagined trace of a state which might have been – and might yet be.

The Coin

We brushed the dirt off, held it to the light.

The obverse showed us Scotland, and the head

of a red deer; the antler-glint had fled

but the fine cut could still be felt. All right:

we turned it over, read easily One Pound,

but then the shock of Latin, like a gloss,

Respublica Scotorum, sent across

such ages as we guessed but never found

at the worn edge where once the date had been

and where as many fingers had gripped hard

as hopes their silent race had lost or gained.

The marshy scurf crept up to our machine,

sucked at our boots. Yet nothing seemed ill-starred.

And least of all the realm the coin contained.

‘Sonnets from Scotland’, like many other works by twentieth and twenty-first century Scottish writers, projects a vision of the nation which goes beyond the merely national boundaries of much contemporary political discourse. As with most great literature, the sequence resists attempts to reduce it to a single, utilitarian narrative. It would be foolish, however, to claim that it entirely subverts the promulgation of political sentiments. On the contrary, its main argumentative thrusts have the direct and intended effect of enabling them. Explicitly, Morgan was in favour of political actions which would lead to a Scottish Republic’s realisation in actuality, however unlikely that eventuality often seemed. Explicitly, he was in favour of the restatement of gender politics in an independent Scotland, and for putting an end to the old patriarchal inequalities which continue to blight so many of our people’s lives. His poetry is virtually a machine for the production of political sentiments. What it is not is a body of text to be mined for independence-friendly slogans, while glossing over those parts of it which seek to problematize or otherwise draw attention to its own emotional and sentimental mediation.

The same can be said of Alasdair Gray’s work. Since the 1950s, Gray has been a tireless and ingenious inventor in prose, poetry and the visual arts. The scantiest acquaintance with the sentiments expressed in his painting and novels would render absurd any accusations of anti-English racism. But absurdity emerges from politics as a matter of course. A deeper acquaintance with his work make plain the deeper absurdities ingrained in every level of contemporary political discourse. It is fortunate for the political class of this country that Gray’s art is less well-known than it should be!

There are many good arguments for enabling Scottish children to study Scottish Literature at school. There are just as many equally good ones for encouraging Scottish adults to absorb, criticise and most of all enjoy the real and important works of art which their country has given the world. They all go beyond the purely national, with the emphasis on locating Scotland in geographical relation to the international, supra-national realm of human expression. For example, an engaged reading of MacDiarmid naturally leads to an interest in the productions of Yeats, Eliot, Joyce and Pound, since the Scottish Renaissance remains unthinkable without the backdrop of international Modernism. Studying Morgan leads, through his myriad translations from many languages, to the poets of dozens of countries, many of whom faced similar problems of cultural marginality.

Scottish writers and those who attempt to make their works available to the wider public are often accused of blind nationalism. On closer acquaintance with these works and the individuals who produce and teach them these accusations seem misdirected. Blind nationalists (and blind unionists) do exist, but the engaged study of literature is one of the best ways of reducing their numbers and allowing more productive and enlightened political sentiments to replace reductive and reactionary impulses.

Country or region:  Scotland Topics:  Culture Democracy and government Ideas

The Novara radio show discusses the crisis of nominally left social democratic parties in Europe since 2008. For more Novara radio episodes, go to the Novara Media website.

On April 29th Egypt’s diplomats walked out of the NPT Conference in protest at the lack of progress in establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, thereby putting the NPT regime on notice. Reporting from Geneva, Rebecca Johnson analyses the reasons

In a dramatic act that signalled its frustration with the “unilateral postponement” of an agreed 2012 Conference on the Middle East, Ambassador Hisham Badr announced his delegation’s walk-out “to protest this unacceptable and continuous failure to implement the 1995 Middle East Resolution” and “send a strong message of dissatisfaction with the lack of seriousness in dealing with the issue of establishing a zone free of nuclear weapons, a central component of regional, Arab and Egyptian national security, which impacts directly international peace and security”. 

Amid mounting frustration, the walk-out occurred towards the end of the debate on the Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (MEWMDFZ) on Monday afternoon, 29 April 2013.  Though diplomats from the Arab States were initially as taken aback as the rest of the Conference, the walk-out did not come as a big surprise. Badr had reminded delegates that the Arab Group had seriously considered “whether we should be attending this meeting in the first place”.

At issue is not only an important commitment for a regional conference that has not been convened at the designated time; there are deep differences of view about the nature of the regional challenges and how to utilise such a conference.  Different stakeholders seem to want it to be a stick, a catch-all solution, a confidence-building tool, a one-off meeting, part of an ongoing process, a step towards negotiations, or even a reluctantly agreed nuisance to be cleared out of the way as soon as possible. In this volatile mix there are national security interests and domestic expectations; regional human rights and security challenges; real worries and a great deal of covert obstructionism and political grand-standing. 

For many Arab and Non-Aligned states, Israel is the main problem, with its “undeclared” nuclear arsenal outside the NPT. Iran’s nuclear programme is also a major anxiety but one they seldom admit to openly.  For the Americans and most of the Western allies, Iran is the NPT’s biggest problem, while Syria’s non accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and suspected chemical weapons use has been ratcheted up the agenda by the raging, bloody war.  Though they seldom acknowledge it publicly, many Western officials also regard Israel’s opaque nuclear policies as an intractable problem that undermines the NPT, and many also think that Israel’s occupation of Palestine and treatment of the Palestinians is a major obstacle to its own peace and security in the region.

Iran of course tries to blame Israel for everything and divert attention from its own uranium enrichment programme, which raises persistent international concerns that Tehran wants to have a nuclear weapons option for the future.  Apart from the familiar tirade against Israel, Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh sought to reassure by highlighting the words of Ayatollah Khamenei to NAM heads of state in August 2012: “Nuclear Weapons neither ensure security, nor do they consolidate political power, rather they are a threat to both security and political power…. The Islamic republic of Iran considers the use of nuclear, chemical and similar weapons as a great and unforgivable sin.”

With all sides in the NPT blaming each other, and a nuclear-armed state outside the room free-riding on the nonproliferation regime as long as its Western allies provide sufficient cover, the proposal for the 2012 Conference has so far failed in its primary purpose  -  to provide a practical mechanism for regional dialogue and to pave the way for a WMD free zone in the Middle East.

First to speak was Ambassador Jaakko Laajava, the Finnish Facilitator appointed after much wrangling, 18 months after the NPT decision.  He had scheduled the conference for Helsinki in December 2012, but after a year of indefatigable consultations with individual governments and various groups and combinations, he was unable to get all states to the table. Though Iran announced its participation late in the day, Israel remained reluctant, so the designated convenors (the UN Secretary General and the NPT depositary states, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States) decided to postpone.  While acknowledging that many states had asked for a new date to be set in 2013, Laajava had little to offer except “multilateral consultations” and further “preparations”. UK Ambassador Jo Adamson read a brief statement on behalf of the co-convenors, which did little more than express repeated confidence in Laajava. Indeed, the praise was so fulsome in some speeches that it began to sound a little hollow.

The reasons for Egypt’s walk out were underpinned in this and other statements, particularly from the United States. Thomas Countryman, US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation, acknowledged that postponing the Conference constituted a “major disappointment” but stressed that “this was not a breach of the [2010] Action Plan as some suggest”.  Most Arab states disagree, sharing Egypt’s assertion that “the breach of the 2010 Action Plan's clear decision to hold a Conference in 2012 is yet another failure to implement a key NPT commitment”. Reiterating the history of the 2010 commitment, Badr characterised the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East as "an essential element of the 1995 Conference and of the basis on which the Treaty was indefinitely extended without a vote in 1995" and declared “we cannot wait forever for this resolution to be implemented”.

For many in the Middle East, Countryman’s playing down of the failure to hold the 2012 conference uncomfortably echoed the way some nuclear-armed states have treated obligations on themselves as “political commitments” that are somehow less binding and important than the obligations undertaken by the NPT’s non-nuclear states parties. Since Egypt persuaded the remaining Arab states to join the NPT following adoption of the 1995 Resolution, many were incensed by Countryman’s lecture on how “leadership must also come from the states of the region”, with references to their responsibility for “creating the political and security conditions” to achieve a WMD free zone.  Having called on the regional states to back “the big idea”, he then urged them to show “creative thinking that is smaller, but big enough to get us to the first step, to Helsinki”.  He caused further irritation by criticising those that “impose preconditions”, apparently directing this at NPT states, with no mention of Israel, which has sought guarantees in advance of indicating its participation in the Helsinki conference (if one ever takes place).

To avoid a total impasse, the UK, Russia and the US back Laajava’s efforts to convene multilateral “preparatory consultations” among regional states. The hope is that Israel would be prepared to join such consultations (earmarked for Geneva), which could build agreement on issues like the conference agenda and next steps for inclusion in an outcome document. This may be a “positive track” forward, as Russia’s Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov hoped.  But it was clear many Arab states remain to be convinced. Some want clear guarantees that they won’t be side-lined into talks with no conference, steps or outcome.  Russia did its best to reassure them that the “proposed consultations do not at all substitute the idea of convening the Conference”.  Russia’s support at this stage appears crucial.  When arguing that “the convenors had no authority to postpone” the 2012 conference, Egypt singled out Russia to “appreciate”.

With the walk out and Badr’s statement, Egypt was issuing warning signals in a way that needs to be understood for the future.  In particular, the NPT is important, but support will not be unconditional. In Badr’s words, “Egypt strongly supports the NPT regime. It has always championed the cause of a nuclear weapon free world. However, the establishment of a Middle East nuclear weapon free zone is essential for our national interest. We cannot wait forever for the launching of a process that would lead to the establishment of this zone, a process that was repeatedly committed to within the NPT. We cannot continue to attend meetings and agree on outcomes that do not get implemented, yet to be expected to abide by the concessions we gave for this outcome.”

Egypt’s walk-out must be understood as a strong signal that patience is wearing thin. Despite earlier discussions about a collective boycott of the NPT meeting, Egypt did not seek to take the others with them, which would have made the stakes much higher (and could also have backfired and exposed divisions).  Rather than a collective non-appearance that might have served as a de facto gag, removing Arab voices from the meeting, Egypt chose to engage fully in the opening plenaries, nuclear disarmament, safeguards and Middle East debates.  Its walk-out was timed to enhance its political visibility and transmit a carefully calibrated strategic warning.  When a collective Arab boycott was being mooted earlier this year, some reasoned that only by leaving (or threatening to leave) the NPT would their regional concerns be taken seriously.  They pointed out that the US and others pay far more attention to Israel, which is not a member of the NPT, than to the security concerns of 22 Arab states that are NPT states parties. 

Egypt’s action is not the sabre-rattling of a state that wants to leave the NPT and develop nuclear weapons.  It is a strong signal from a non-nuclear-armed regional leader that it is losing confidence that this treaty will ever become fit for purpose in regional and disarmament terms.  As with the 1995 Resolution and its role in bringing the remaining Arab states into the NPT, Cairo has expended considerable political capital in trying to make the NPT deliver its core security objectives.   Egypt worked with New Agenda Coalition partners to negotiate with the nuclear-weapon states on a comprehensive step by step disarmament process (the so-called ‘thirteen steps’) which were adopted in 2000 to international fanfare – and then largely ignored and reneged on. Egypt was unfairly blamed for the failure of the 2005 NPT Review Conference after refusing to accept an agenda that – due to pressure from the Bush administration’s UN ambassador John Bolton – omitted the importance of the 1995 and 2000 agreements.  And in 2010 Egypt was the prime mover – as coordinator of the 120-something Non-Aligned states in the NPT – in crafting and achieving adoption of the key elements of the NPT Action Plan, of which the commitment to hold the 2012 Conference on the Middle East was its priority objective. That is a very large political investment in the NPT, with little to show for it.

Egypt has many domestic as well as regional security challenges.  For those that follow such events at home, the walk-out is reportedly popular.  Some NPT diplomats were dismissing it as “gesture politics”.  Gesture it may have been, but it would be a strategic error to dismiss this as something trivial.  In the history of the NPT, this walk out was a first, and not lightly undertaken. Egypt chose this time not to ask others to join in.  But make no mistake: one of its staunchest advocates has put the NPT regime on notice.

Read more articles by Rebecca Johnson reporting from the NTP Conference in Geneva for openDemocracy 5050  

Sideboxes Related stories:  NPT and risks to human survival: the inside story North Korea and Trident: challenging the nuclear non-proliferation regime Summoning political will to rid the Middle East of WMD Jody Williams: The true path to nuclear non-proliferation Standing on the threshold: banning nuclear weapons From banning nuclear tests to banning nuclear weapons From Fukushima to Hinkley Point Facing up to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear policies and mistakes The fetishists of nuclear power projection have had their day Non-Proliferation Treaty: the ground is shifting Is the nuclear non-proliferation regime fit for purpose? India and the NPT: what next? NPT: challenging the nuclear powers' fiefdom NPT: the gulf between the nuclear haves and have-nots Banning nuclear weapons: this time lip service will not be enough Topics:  Civil society Conflict Democracy and government

Looking for signs of life and the difference that was made, surely that dreary grey oblong could not have been the spiritual home of the 99%? But it was and it did.

“The goodness is in the work as much as in the benefits – so it doesn't matter if the work goes on and on, as it does. It is important and worthwhile work because of its mutuality, because of the talents and capacities it calls forth, and because of the moral value it embodies. That work is socialism-in-the-making, and that is the only socialism we will ever know.”

Michael Walzer, quoted by Sarah Leonard in Occupy: Scenes From Occupied America (Verso, 2011)

I read that final clause on the F Train back to Queens, NY last week, and immediately felt a bit sick. It was an answer to the question I've been asking myself a lot since the English student riots and occupations in 2010: what happens when the music stops? Did we experience just a moment of liberating exception to the relentless misery of capitalism's crisis, or was it a permanent rupture in the psyche, a tantalising foretaste of the socialism (with a determinedly small 's') we can and will make in the future? 

I was in New York visiting friends and relatives for the first time in a couple of years, in which time, I had missed both the highs and lows of Occupy Wall Street. I had a nagging sensation that I needed to see its infamous base, Zuccotti Park, for myself – even though it was 18 months since the movement's high point and there would be nothing ostensibly there. So I took the subway to downtown Manhattan, to Bowling Green, and walked up Broadway, knowing it was somewhere up there, on the left. I walked past the Amalgamated Bank, Chase Bank, HSBC, Citibank, and a rather nice, utterly incongruous old church nestled amidst the skyscrapers. After ten minutes the narrow gauntlet of high finance opened out to my left to reveal a dreary grey oblong that surely – surely! – could not have been home to a global movement to reclaim the streets and end capitalism, the spiritual home of the 99%? 

I knew it was supposed to be small, and I knew it wasn't really a park, but really? I checked my Google Maps cache against the road-signs, and checked it again. It was Zuccotti Park. 

It was early afternoon, and chilly for late April, and only a few bored-looking office lunchers sat scattered on the park's hard, flat, granite benches, the skeletal trees above their heads in shadow, still unsprung. The square is so tiny that it is entirely overpowered by the giant dark glass obelisks drawn up and up into the blank skies above. When they cleared the park in mid-November 2011, oh how they cleared it. Not a single sign of Occupy's tents, propaganda, working groups, or... humanity remains: no fragment, no faded graffiti, no half-torn stickers or posters. Occupy Wall Street's physical presence is now erased from history, and year zero is watched over by this extra from War of the Worlds, the NYPD's articulated panopticon robot:

Inadvertently, I spent a lot of my time in New York talking to people about Occupy; their memories, their sense of what was no longer there, and what still remained. As with any moment of popular rebellious fervour, the vital question – from enemies and friends alike – is how you historicise that moment, and what you do next. Whether under duress or through exhaustion, if you're dispersing, where are you dispersing to, and with whom?

Talking to New York friends new and old about what they'd been through, I recognised that same feeling of resignation over recent failures to maintain the energy. Ahead of today's general strike there was a weary acceptance that it was to be a very un-general attempt at struggle, with no formal trade union involvement: though the attempt to organise those Americans with the most unstable, badly paid and exploitative jobs into Precarious and Service Workers Assemblies is at least in the right spirit – addressing post-Fordist capitalism with a post-Fordist solution, like Sussex University's new pop-up union.

The forging of these tangible connections with organisations new and old are the most identifiable afterlife of a street movement. “Things are all very ‘molecular’ right now”, a friend in Barcelona wrote to me yesterday, about the legacy of the 8 million-strong indignados/15M movement – and there's no inherent problem in things being molecular, far from it; the work goes on, and it brings meaningful change for people at a local level. The greatest of the indignados' molecular achievements is perhaps the Corralas movement in Andalusia, where people evicted by their banks are moved – permanently, and against the efforts of the authorities – into large de facto squats of empty buildings abandoned in the housing crash.

In New York this year, the so-called 'hackathon' for Occupy Sandy established vital architecture for information gathering and management, saving lives and livelihoods faster and more effectively than FEMA or the Red Cross could manage, and doing so thanks to the collective talents, sense of mutuality and social networks established at Occupy Wall Street. 

Occupy Sandy was, another friend pointed out kindly, not an example of an emergent post-Occupy politics, however: it wasn't mutual aid (the replacement of capitalism with demonetised exchange), just aid. Philanthropy. And a very good thing too – but let's not overstate it.

The psychological legacy of Occupy on its participants (indeed, all its supporters) should not be underestimated either. Latent solidarity, we could call it.

Beyond the depression of a moment passed, a revolution unrealised, I encountered in New York a familiar desire to get back that high, especially what was perhaps Occupy Wall Street's most spectacular moment, the occupation of the Brooklyn Bridge. That ineffable, transcendental sense of empowerment doesn't die, that moment of experiencing socialism-in-the-making – it stays with people, an undying half-life still glowing under the surface of the skin. 

One friend emotionally lamented Occupy and Zuccotti Park, before turning to the moment where she realised they had actually shut down the 13,300 tonne Brooklyn Bridge, and that they weren't leaving, unless it was through arrest (as it turned out to be - for 700 of them). It made her sad eyes light up. She grabbed my arm, in a now-listen-here sort of way, as she tried to find the words to express what she had felt in that moment. 

“I just didn't... I didn't want to go home.”

And once you've experienced socialism-in-the-making, perhaps you can't ever really go home again? Your sense of what is possible has been irreversibly reconfigured. The greatest claims made for Occupy: in Wall Street, in St Paul's in London, in Oakland, California – hell, everywhere – was that it 'changed the conversation' about banking, about capitalism, about the financial crisis. But maybe it changed us, too?

Sideboxes Related stories:  Clearing Zuccotti Park: the strange resilience of democracy with a thin skin How Occupy Wall Street must adapt its strategy after the Zuccotti Park eviction The movement moves on: what happens after Zuccotti Park Uniting States of Americans: Are we the 99%? Liberty Park can be anywhere On playing by the rules – the strange success of #OccupyWallStreet Batman in Wall Street Country or region:  United States Topics:  Civil society Conflict Culture Democracy and government Economics Equality Ideas International politics

Last year, the Philippine government struck a historic peace deal with the Islamist rebels. But the devil is in the details, which have yet to be agreed upon. Who will make sure they create a just and lasting peace, and how?

Protesters call for continued peace talks in Davao City, Southern Philippines.Demotix/Eli Ritchie Tongo. All rights reserved.

It has been about seven months since the signing of the peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF or ‘Islamic Front’), and while both sides continue to work through details, it is reassuring that peace has held. In the context of some personal insights on the People Power Revolution, and recent events in Malaysia, I hope to offer suggestions on how this peace agreement can reach its full potential.

Initial suspicion

When I first heard the news of the agreement, I naïvely rejoiced and immediately told my parents. My parents however, received the news with suspicion.

‘This is not news; this peace agreement is always on and off. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is broken yet again’, my father immediately replied. I am a second-generation Philippine-American, and my parents, having both lived most of their lives in the Philippines, knew the situation much better than I did. They have seen how peace between the Philippine government and various incarnations of the MILF has been attempted and lost numerous times. They have become desensitised by the seemingly hopeless project.

The MILF was formally established in 1984, but its primary motives – that is, greater autonomy for the Bangsamoro (‘Moro’) people of southern Philippines and parts of Sabah in Malaysia – began as early as the sixties. Then, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) formed as a response to a mass killing of Moro people, supposedly by the Philippine government. The details of the events of this mass killing, known as the Jabidah Massacre, continues to be widely debated, but nevertheless is a narrative that continues to be told to explain the violence in the geographical regions of the Moro people. Since the sixties, numerous agreements have been attempted by the Philippine government and various incarnations of Moro militia, including offers of autonomy, but none of them being completely successful or lasting.

Going back to my parents, it is good to note that they are not your ordinary citizens; they were a couple of the very first civilians who helped the rebel soldiers at Camp Aguinaldo during the People Power Revolution of 1986. To this day, my parents remain social and political activists in the Philippines as well as the United States. So to hear these two people – figures I look up to for their socio-political idealism – express suspicion towards the new peace agreement opened my eyes to the complexity of the current situation.

"This one is different"

Tim Wallis, Executive Director of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, which has played a role in the agreement, is more hopeful. ‘This is different’, he says in his piece in October entitled ‘Philippines Peace Agreement—Why This One is Different’, because of the presence of the Nonviolent Peaceforce on Mindanao.

The Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) is a group of international unarmed civil society personnel trained in peacekeeping at a grassroots level. Wallis explains that leading up to the peace agreement,

"[NP] had been quietly working away on the island, building relationships with both sides of the conflict, establishing their credentials as a neutral, independent, impartial actor willing to help both parties to find solutions to practical problems they faced on the ground—like how to avoid unnecessary bloodshed without appearing to be weak or to be seen to be backing down; how to ensure safe passage for civilians caught in the crossfire without losing ground militarily; how to maintain contact with the “enemy” and avoid misunderstandings while at the same waging a war against them; how to put out feelers for a ceasefire without appearing to give in…"

Furthermore,

"[NP] helped both sides of this war to be more civilised and more respectful of civilians and as a result, when a ceasefire was finally agreed, both sides asked NP to play an official role in the ceasefire mechanism that would hold both sides to their commitments and obligations under the ceasefire. It is not that unusual for two sides to appoint an intermediary to monitor a ceasefire. Often the United Nations plays that role, other times another country or set of countries will be invited to do it. But never before in the history of war has a non-governmental organisation made up of unarmed civilians from civil society been asked to play a role quite like this. This was – and is – historic, and is why the peace agreement just signed in the Philippines is also historic."

Wallis argues that this agreement is different not just for the Philippines, but for the world, because NP involves peacekeeping at a grassroots level, where all parties involved are willing participants. Historic and different it is indeed, but is it enough?

Peace movements in the Philippines

The People Power Revolution, though it may have been a completely different situation from that of the government and the MILF still provides insight into maintaining the success of the agreement in the latter context. Two things bear inspection: (1) what made it successful, and (2) what were its shortcomings.

Successes

From the perspective of my parents, what made the People Power Revolution ‘work’ was the religious nature of the Philippine culture. (Note that this is a culture where the Angelus is broadcasted and prayed collectively in public metropolitan spaces, like shopping centres.) Led by Jaime Cardinal Sin, the people were encouraged to engage in Christian altruism by supporting the military rebels—the focus was peace, not politics. What started off as just the few like my parents and their friends then multiplied into a mass movement all over EDSA and throughout the nation. The masses also prayed together. Additionally, my mother would often recall that the soldiers from Marcos’ military were so inspired by the religiosity of the masses that they could not find it in their hearts to shoot or trample or bulldoze their tanks over them, despite their orders.

Because religion is such an imperative aspect of at least one side of the current peace agreement, and because the Philippine culture in general is such a religious one, the spiritual component should be made more explicit for the maintenance of peace. Religious leaders on both sides, of all religions, should engage in leadership like that of Cardinal Sin’s, encouraging the people towards continuous collaboration toward the goal of peace. They could, for example, engage in interfaith dialogue among themselves, and lead their constituents by example.

Shortcomings

Critics of the People Power Revolution point out that although it was successful in overthrowing Marcos’ dictatorship, it was unsuccessful in overthrowing the corruption of the government in general, and the nation still struggles to establish a working democracy. The People Power Revolution was too fixated on overthrowing Marcos and thus failed to address the underlying problems: a culture that allowed corruption in the government. This is where I see a blind spot in my parents’ ideology: they, like many Philippine citizens, still see the People Power Revolution as a success story, and fail to see that there could have been an opportunity in the revolution to end government corruption.

Now because NP works at a grassroots level, it is better able to stave off the potential for a break of the agreement. Civilians, military leaders, and government leaders alike are all involved in the process of peacekeeping. Yet, at the end of the day, I hold a similar position to my parents on the current events. In the same way that the People Power Revolution was actually a limited success, I see a potential danger that the signing of the peace agreement might be perceived as an end-all task that will by itself solve all the political issues between the Philippine government and the MILF. I suggest that civilians, military leaders, and government leaders maintain diligence with the current collaborations for peace until both sides reach a level of unity—the day that both sides can almost forget there was even two sides to begin with is the day the peace agreement has fully found it success.

Last month, a standoff in Malaysia has shed light on an even more complex layer regarding the peace agreement. Up until this point, the peace discussions were only between the MILF and the Philippine government, but not the Malaysian. What the people behind the peace agreement failed to recognise were that the Moro people are not only inhabitants of southern Philippines, but also Malaysia, and that the peace agreement would also be beneficial for this extended population. Fortunately, these events have brought Malaysia into the discussions on peace. Unfortunately, the casualties that did happen during the standoff might have been prevented if these considerations were taken alongside the initial discussions last autumn. This event in Malaysia only shows to prove that though the peace agreement is a positive step forward for relationships with the MILF, there is still much work to do.

It is different, but it’s not over yet

The current peace agreement, as Wallis had pointed out, is an historic one for the Philippines as well as the world. It is also different, specifically in its application of methods like NP. However, seven months since the signing of the agreement is nowhere near time for celebration. Religious leaders, in addition to the already active and involved population of civilians, military leaders, and government leaders, should offer their explicit support and encouragement towards a lasting peace. Other extended relationships connected to the MILF should also be considered. People in general should remain diligent in seeking even more creative ways to make this peace agreement a lasting one.

Sideboxes Related stories:  Philippines Peace Agreement – why this one is different What now for the Philippines' Communist insurgency? Country or region:  Philippines Topics:  Conflict

The TUC’s new General Secretary seems to represent real change in the 'pale, male, stale' world of British unions. But can she shake them up in policy terms, and draw in the energy of a disparate anti-austerity movement?

What is the future for trade unions in Britain? Last Friday, forty or fifty of us jammed into an Oxford college seminar room to hear that question answered. It was the annual Clement Attlee Memorial Lecture, at University College where the Prime Minister of the post-war settlement spent his student years. Less to remember the great man, we were there to hear Frances O'Grady, the new TUC General Secretary and the first woman to occupy this most pivotal office for the British labour movement. 

O'Grady was little known outside the movement until her appointment late last year, but popular within it. She was the only candidate nominated for the post, with 32 of the 54 affiliated unions putting her name forward. Since then, her sex has been the obvious talking point. So many hopes are pinned on her. Billed as the face to break the 'pale, male, stale' stereotype, she is suited to head a federation whose six million plus members are now almost half women. Numbers aside, it is women who are bearing the brunt of austerity. Disproportionately hit by the privatisation of the public sector, last year female unemployment reached a 25-year high, while cuts in vital services are tying women back to the kitchen sink, to do the caring once provided by the state. There has never been a better time to have a woman at the head of the Trades Union Congress.

I was looking forward to encountering O’Grady in person. Not only to know more about her views, but literally to hear her speak. However much this degrades our politics, her ‘manner’ and ‘image’ will prove crucial. For a decade in the role, Brendan Barber had confronted a press machine set on demonising union 'chiefs' as power-hungry militants, lording over an authoritarian and paternalistic movement. It will be harder to likewise brand O’Grady. Opening with a personal anecdote – how she first joined a union at Oxford after “a disastrous experience of serving at table in a college” – she is personal and relaxed, with friendly gusto. This year, the spending cuts will truly bite, and the thirst for industrial unrest is not likely to be slaked by the action planned for 20 October. The scene is set for confrontation, and if O’Grady is able to evade stereotyping, she may stand a chance of beginning to win public approval.

It is important, then, that in the ‘Attlee to Miliband’ history set out in her lecture, O’Grady fixed on the failure to compromise, co-operate and adapt as behind the long-term decline of the union movement. She bemoaned the “strategic error” in the ‘70s of “failing to seize the opportunity of the European model of co-determination and industrial democracy.” Instead of going the way of the Germans, embracing collective ownership, Britain took the "easy option" of relying purely on shop floor power. It was this error, O’Grady believes, that led eventually to the “breakdown of the social contract, the subsequent Winter of Discontent and the Thatcherite counter-revolution.” Hers is a 'better late than never' proposal: economic strength in Britain built on economic democracy. Let’s grasp now what we squandered then. She wants a "recalibration of the relationship between capital and labour", supported by new models of corporate governance and new institutions to facilitate collective bargaining. 

Wait a minute. Isn’t this simply the Labour line? Her words on "a new set of socialist relationships in the workplace” could well have been spoken by Miliband adviser Jon Cruddas, who delivered last year’s Atlee lecture. The difference is that O’Grady could be in a position to deliver – both in shaking up the unions and bringing the public with her. She sees her role as transforming the intellectual heavy lifting begun in Labour circles around responsible capitalism into a populist agenda. Talking about pre-distribution, a favourite Milibandism, she slips in an aside – "otherwise known as collective bargaining" – with a cheeky grin that draws titters from the audience. Milibot and the straight-talking lady. She clearly believes they’ll make a good pair. 

Perhaps she’s right. O’Grady’s commitment to economic democracy is welcome, as is her ability to act as a figurehead for women and the struggle against a feminized recession. In slamming her forebears’ refusal to abandon their adversarial stance, she has distanced herself from the still live memory of a male-dominated trade union culture of pride, power and (some might argue) perversity. 

Yet O’Grady has not yet acknowledged the influence and importance of her potential allies. She said on her appointment that she wants to build "a mass movement, a social movement as well as a trade union movement and, particularly for young people, I think we have to offer a home". Yet when I asked for her perspective on pop-up unions, she appeared not to have heard of them. Faced with a bemused smile, I explained. I gave Sussex University as an example, where the struggle against outsourcing has led students and workers to establish a single-issue union to represent their demands. The Sussex Against Privatisation Campaign originally sought support from the existing union branches on campus – Unite, Unison and UCU – but were rebuffed by what they see as a conservative leadership presiding over an ossified system. In its short life, the pop-up union, which is certified and can take legal industrial action, has recruited a membership exceeding that of all three official unions. 

Hopes that pop-up unions could help deliver a responsive, flexible, 21st century union movement are premature. What the development is doing is getting activists and young people previously switched off from member-led politics engaged with unionisation. That O’Grady hadn’t heard of them speaks volumes. Her speech on Friday began with a challenge, "if we are to build a future that works for all, then both sides of the labour movement need to change." But the struggle for rights, equality and democracy for working people, everyday citizens of Britain, is no longer held in the balance of that well-worn coin – with Unions on one side and Labour on the other.

This point was put by the youngest audience member to speak from the floor. She touched on activists, students, the wider anti-austerity movement, the desire for co-ordinated strikes, direct action. It was incoherent, rambling, like a fart in a church in that rarified air dedicated to Labour’s sainted PM. It was a statement, not a question: “You need to do more”. O’Grady should take heed. She has grasped that the role of the unions must expand beyond securing better terms and conditions for workers – the long-term survival of the movement demands it. To help reshape the banking system, break shareholder supremacy and place workers at the heart of decision-making, requires a commensurate broadening of alliances. The lion’s share of this work has not begun. O’Grady may have charisma, she may have a few policies up her sleeve (the commitment to union membership for the unemployed is promising) but an attitude shift is needed if the unions are to draw in the energy of the disparate anti-austerity movement. Since the lecture, has O’Grady done her research on pop-up unions? Let me believe that she has. It’s still early days, and time for hope. 

Country or region:  UK Topics:  Democracy and government Economics Equality

Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week, Attack on the French Embassy in Tripoli: what now for Libya?

Attack on the French Embassy in Tripoli: what now for Libya?

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Attack on the French Embassy in Tripoli: what now for Libya?

By Rhiannon Smith

On April 23, a car bomb exploded at 7am outside the French Embassy in Tripoli. The powerful explosion ripped through the outer walls of the embassy, as well as neighbouring houses, causing part of the building to collapse. Two French security guards were present when the bomb went off and one was seriously injured. Fortunately however most embassy staff were yet to arrive at the time of the blast so casualties were minimal. This was little consolation however for Tripoli's residents.

This was the first direct attack on a foreign embassy in Tripoli since Gaddafi was ousted from power and it has sent shockwaves through the capital. Although the overall security situation in Libya is far from stable especially in the eastern and southern parts of the country, life in Tripoli is relatively calm and peaceful.  Attacks on the American Consulate in Benghazi back in September 2012 shocked and saddened the nation but few thought that such an attack could take place in Libya's capital, the seat of central government. The state has already been coming under fire in recent weeks for its perceived weakness and lack of control over powerful militias and unfortunately this bombing is likely to compound concerns that the Libyan government is failing in its attempts to maintain peace and stability.

At the date of writing, no one has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack but there is speculation that it could have been orchestrated by AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) in retaliation for French involvement in Mali. Another theory is that Gaddafi loyalists were behind the attack as it was France that spearheaded the NATO intervention which ultimately helped remove the old regime from power. A joint commission between Libya and France has been set up to investigate the attack, and Libya has announced that it will do everything in its power to bring the culprits to justice. However, various sources have claimed that Libyan security forces took up to 2 hours to arrive on the scene after the explosion, once more throwing doubt on the capacity of the Libyan authorities to actively manage law and order.

The mood in Tripoli after the attack was one of shock, depression and frustration. The French are popular across Libya for the role they played in supporting the rebels during the revolution. Libyans posting on social media were quick to condemn the attacks, expressing their condolences to those who were injured and question why Libyans would attack a nation whose support was vital to the success of the February 17 revolution. Others expressed their anger at the Libyan authorities for their apparent incapacity to rein in militias and Islamist groups.

Many feel that this attack was a taunt to the Libyan authorities as well as perhaps a warning to the French. The bomb was set off at 7am when few people would be around, yet the implication is that had they wanted to, the attackers could have set the bomb off in the middle of the day and caused a great deal more destruction and devastation. Many are pessimistic about the chances of catching those responsible. There have been demands for the Chief of Staff Yousef Mangoush to stand down given the inefficiency of the police and army, but so far these calls appear not to have been heeded.

For their part, the French seem determined not to let these attacks disrupt their work in Libya and both embassy staff and French companies currently operating in Libya have no plans to leave. The same applies to other foreigners living in Tripoli. Although the bombing was a shock, it is seen more as a regrettable incident rather than a sign that the overall security situation in Tripoli is deteriorating. Other embassies are upping their security but have no plans to suspend operations.

However, this attack will undoubtedly have a negative effect on Libya's economic and political progress. Foreign companies and investors already unsure about returning to Libya will be further dissuaded by this targeting of a foreign embassy in the heart of Tripoli. Companies in Libya will probably increase their security, limiting operations and increasing the perception that Libya is a country on the edge of anarchy.

Libyan authorities need to turn this attack to their advantage. If they can show the Libyan public and the international community that they are actively and efficiently pursuing the perpetrators and strengthening security around the city then this could be a turning point for the better for Libya. However if the government and security forces continue to display the lacklustre, ineffective approach that they have done in recent weeks and months then Libya's short term future will look a lot less secure.   

Final draft of Tunisia’s new constitution released

By Sana Ajmi

After long heated debates, a final draft of Tunisia’s new constitution was released last week by the National Constituent Assembly (NCA). The draft is to be submitted to the speaker of the NCA, the Prime Minister and the President. An absolute majority 109 out of 217 assembly members must vote in favour of the constitution, article by article, before the final draft becomes law.

The NCA have been charged since the October 23 elections with drafting Tunisia’s new constitution. Even though the governing Islamist party Ennahdha, which won 89 out of 217 seats in Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly rejected the conservatives’ demand that Sharia law should provide the main source of legislation in the new constitution, they chose instead to retain the first article of the 1959 constitution, which states that, “Tunisia is a free, sovereign and independent state, whose religion is Islam and language is Arabic.” Ennahdha has been criticized on many occasions for proposing articles that could limit freedoms especially those of women.   

Women’s rights have proved a pivotal issue in the first draft of the constitution released last August. The draft included the controversial article 28, which describes women as men’s “partners” and asserts that “their roles complement one another within the family”. Many secularists and feminists have argued that the article contradicts Tunisia’s personal status code, a landmark piece of legislation enacted in 1956 that continues to set Tunisia apart as the most progressive Arab country regarding women’s rights. The Personal Status Code banned polygamy and gave women the right to file for divorce. Civil society activists objected to the proposed article and put pressure on the NCA which led to the article being removed.

 Another proposed article in August called for the criminalization of religious offenses, stating that “The state guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice and criminalizes all attacks on that which is sacred.” Many criticized the blasphemy article and said that it may be used as a convenient vehicle for political and social repression. Such an article was not proposed in the final draft, which only stated that, “the state preserves religion and ensures the freedom of religious belief and practice”.

There has been debate in Tunisia over the structure of the emergent political system, and whether it should a presidential, parliamentary or mixed system. While the Ennahdha party has called for a parliamentary system, many other opposition parties call for a presidential one. However, no consensus has yet been reached.  

Unlike the constitution draft that was released on August, this final draft does not seem to hold many surprises. However, opposition politicians have accused the parliamentary committee charged with drafting the constitution of modifying articles relating to the right to strike and freedom of expression without having the authority to do so.

Middle East football scores own goal

By Sarah El-Richani

Amidst the tragic devastation in Syria and the general turbulence engulfing the region, the recent football turmoil in the Middle East may seem trivial. Yet the intermingling of sports, politics and identity in the region makes it too important to be overlooked.

As ‘the football war’ amongst the Egyptian football clubs al-Ahly, al-Masry and the police continues to simmer following another round of riots last month upon the confirmation of verdicts over the 2012 fatal stadium riot, a match-fixing scandal has emerged in Lebanon.  

In a country where sports - at least on the national level - has temporarily united a deeply divided nation, the treachery committed by some football officials alongside those who bribed them must not go unnoticed. The anguished statements made by Lebanon’s football national coach Theo Bucker after the team literally gifted their chance to advance to the 2014 World Cup in exchange for cash gifts resonated widely. “I am really destroyed”, he said in an interview, “not only [did they] sell the game, [they sold] a country”, he added.

FIFA last week issued an international ban against 24 players and officials in line with the sanctions imposed by the Lebanese Football Association. The key culprits, striker Mahmoud al-Ali and defender Ramez Dayoub, were handed life bans and fines. Dayoub had deliberately made several backpasses last year in a World Cup qualifier against Qatar, which gave the Gulf state a victory and spoilt Lebanon’s chances of qualifying for the first time.

Yet while the players and one official have been penalised, those behind the match-fixing operation remain unnamed and unpunished.

In another blow to Lebanese football, three referees are facing trial in the city-state of Singapore for allegedly accepting sexual bribes in exchange for influencing an Asian Cup game. The officials will face trial early June and have been refused bail.

Meanwhile Qatar, which acquired French football club Paris Saint-Germain last year, has also faced allegations of corruption regarding its successful World Cup bid. Its former Asian Football Confederation president, FIFA Executive Committee member and presidential candidate Mohammed Ben Hammam has been banned for life for breaching the FIFA code of ethics pertaining to conflict of interest.

In addition to the potential of moving the competition to winter, the most recent controversy surrounding the 2022 competition relates to Qatar’s treatment of its workforce.  The International Trade Union Confederation last week demanded that  FIFA revoke the World Cup hosting rights due to Qatar’s infamous Kafala system, the low wages and cramped living conditions it offers foreign labourers who are erecting its stadiums and infrastructure. In what seems a response to these criticisms, Qatar Foundation and the 2022 organising committee released the worker’s charter which aims to ameliorate living conditions and curb exploitation. The proof, however, is in the pudding.

While violence, racism and corruption in sports is a rampant phenomenon as the recent Europol investigation in Europe  and the racist chants by some Beitar Jerusalem fans reveal, the state of sports in the region, its governance bodies as well as the labourers behind the scenes, should be seriously addressed. While rooting out the cheaters, racists and exploiters is a tall order, naming and shaming them, at the very least, is a necessary first step.

No-go areas and arms deals

By Rori Donaghy

The President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, is due to arrive in the UK on Monday for a two day state visit when he will meet with the Queen at Windsor Castle and David Cameron at No. 10. With a traditional carriage procession planned for his visit to Windsor, Sheikh Khalifa will be shown the red carpet treatment; when the President meets with David Cameron a long-mooted arms deal worth several billion pounds will be central to discussions. Yet, with a worsening human rights record that includes the alleged torture of both British and Emirati citizens, shouldn’t this visit also be a chance to raise issues of concern?

Londoners Grant Cameron, Karl Williams and Suneet Jeerh have been in a Dubai prison since July 2012. They were arrested on suspicion of possessing a synthetic form of cannabis known as ‘spice’ and have accused Emirati authorities of torturing them. The three men have told lawyers at Reprieve, a UK-based human rights group, that they have been subjected to regular beatings, had guns held to their head and suffered electric shocks to their testicles. A report by torture expert Dr. Frank Arnold has stated that, based on the available evidence, their injuries are consistent with acts of torture.

Authorities have also been accused of torturing defendants in the ongoing trial of 94 Emirati citizens who have been charged with setting up an organization aimed at ‘overthrowing the government’. Although foreign media and international observers have been banned from trial sessions, family members have reported that defendants have accused authorities of forced confessions, beatings and harrowing acts of torture.

The trial of the 94 has been a landmark case in the reaction from authorities to increased calls for meaningful political form in the autocratic state. The defendants, which include high-profile human rights lawyers, judges, academics and student leaders, say that they are being persecuted due to their calls for reform that began with petitioning the President for a wholly elected parliament in March 2011. Many of those held are members of the Reform and Social Guidance Association, which is a peaceful Islamic civil society group that has been active in the education and charity sectors since its legal establishment in 1974. Leading human rights expert Geoffrey Robertson QC, who attempted to observe trial proceedings as part of an international delegation, has called on UAE authorities to ‘open this trial up to international observation so justice can be seen to be done’ in a report that describes the violations of fair trial standards thus far.

When David Cameron sits down with Sheikh Khalifa he should be wary about the lure of lucrative arms deals for two reasons. The first is that Cameron should be cautious about further arming a country with a worsening human rights record and whose Crown Prince was exposed as having set up a private mercenary army made up of Columbian mercenaries to, among other reasons, take charge of ‘civil uprisings’. The second is that the UAE appear to be using the attraction of multi-billion pound arms deals to shield themselves from criticism: they have been in discussions with the UK, France and the USA for several years, all involving similar deals yet to materialize.

With credible and uninvestigated claims of torture against both British and Emirati citizens David Cameron should break his silence on UAE abuses. When he visited the Emirates in November 2012 Cameron said that on human rights there are ‘no no-go areas in this relationship’. During this state visit the grave concerns of torture in the UAE must be one area that is explored in detail.

Qatar and the US have a working relationship

By Michael Stephens

Qatar and the United States seem to have reaffirmed their friendship in a very chummy session held between Qatar’s Emir and President Obama in which the conversation was wide-ranging but ofcourse focused heavily on Syria.

Certainly in front of the cameras all appeared well, and both the President and the Emir spoke with surprising frankness about the region’s problems. The Emir made his stance clear; Qatar sought the removal of Bashar from Syria and supported the ‘peace process’ between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The former a clear statement of intent, the latter more paying lip service to a moribund and discredited endeavour, no doubt done to keep the administration happy and paint Qatar in a positive light for a questioning American public.

The relationship is multi-faceted, and currently the US possesses the widest footprint of any nation in Qatar in business and defence relationships; but it was not always so. The work of the Americans to try and bring Qatar into their orbit has been sustained and well planned. The previous US Ambassador to Doha James Le Baron was a tour de force of diplomatic endeavour and did much to cement a growing relationship between the two nations over the past five years.

But relationships are more deeply intertwined than that, and Qatar has moved from being seen in US eyes as a recalcitrant pest to being a crucial player in the region. The Al Jazeera network and Qatar’s close ties to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal have always presented a headache for the US, whose policy towards Hamas was largely governed by its need to align close-to-Israeli thinking on the subject. Famously former Senator, now Secretary of State John Kerry claimed in 2009 “Qatar can’t continue to be an American ally on Monday that sends money to Hamas on Tuesday.” Qatar went ahead and sent the money, and the Americans remained allies.

Strategically, the Al Udeid military base (the headquarters of US CENTCOM) and the increasing importance of Qatar as a regional actor and financial investor in just about everything, have made the relationship closer in recent years. Thus the differences concerning Israel, the occasionally troublesome Al Jazeera network, and Qatar’s hosting and funding of hard-line Islamists have been papered over in favour of larger strategic visions which ensure the interests of both parties.

On the issue of regional security the relationship is more important for the Qataris than it is the Americans. Whilst Qatar requires external protection in order to survive in a world surrounded by much larger states, the US could likely find another partner to help host their regional bases and establish a forward post to deter Iran. However Qatar has acted in a manner since 2011 that has made it a key player in the conversation on regional security.

Three of the region’s most unstable countries Egypt, Libya and Syria have all seen heavy Qatari interference, be it in the form of funding militant groups, direct deployment of forces or huge injections of liquidity. Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al Thani recently claimed that in all three cases Qatar did not seek leadership, but sought to work within a multilateral framework. This is only partly true. Yes - Qatar was hesitant to take the lead in Libya, but has been more than happy to drag unwilling Arab states forward to action in Syria and has taken a strategic choice to prop up Egypt’s failing Muslim Brotherhood led government almost single-handed. Furthermore on the Palestine question, Qatar inserted itself into the conversation with the tool it uses best, money, $450m of it, becoming part of the Israeli Palestinian discussion, much to the chagrin of the US, Israel or the PA.

The concomitant of Qatar taking these positions is that it has become a regional partner for the United States, whether the US wants it to or not. There is little the Americans can do in terms of telling Qatar how it should behave, but the conversation is frank and robust. Qatar’s shoddy handling and control of arms transfers to the rebels in Syria met with American ire and the Qataris understood and took note of the fact that they were causing as much harm as they were good.

Regarding US suspicion concerning Qatar’s sponsorship of Islamists - most informed Americans I have spoken to understand that Qatar, through a mixture of naivety and poor conflict management, got itself stuck in situations that made its actions look very suspicious indeed, particularly in Syria and Libya. There is however much still to be explained regarding its support for some Islamist groups that the US is firmly against, and sees as counter to its interests. I suspect that there will never be a full rapprochement between the US and Qatar on this particular issue, and both will simply have to agree to disagree.

The key in this relationship moving forward is for both countries to remain close, but not too close. An openly tight alliance serves the interests of neither, certainly not if regional perceptions are anything to go by. Qatar appearing an American stooge discredits its ability to work with regional actors, especially Islamists, and for the USA being too close to Qatar upsets those on the right who see Qatar’s interests as counter to democracy and threatening to the State of Israel. A quiet working relationship in which both sides have to look the other way when they annoy each other is the key.

Syrians deserting the FSA: Faust wants his soul back

By Rita from Syria

In 1915 under Ottoman occupation, villages and towns across Syria suffered from one of the harshest famines in its history. Death and grief overwhelmed the country. The precarious political situation in the region: the First World War, locust invasion and drought all came together at this juncture in space and time – and it seemed things must continue to go from bad to worse.

According to my grandmother, in one of the villages to the east of Hama city by the encroaching desert, little grew in this barren land save a poisonous plant called "loof" – a local variety of wild arum. On the brink of starvation, loof was the remaining glimmer of hope for the embattled villagers. Boiling loof for ten hours removes the toxins, and the people of that village survived to tell the story. Nowadays, loof cooked with hummus and sumac is considered a popular dish in this part of Syria, where it is prepared by households as part of a collective rite – a remembrance of how previous generations survived death and famine.

Today, Syria is experiencing a much harsher situation than that of a century ago. Today, in Syria, the causes of death are numerous and difficult to predict.

Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, "the black stone" neighbourhood to the south of Damascus, has been under siege for more than five months. No food or medication is allowed to enter. FSA fighters have been able to find ways to bring in supplies, but getting aid into al-Hajar al-Aswad still remains an arduous and dangerous task – taking weeks to reach the besieged. Under these difficult conditions, a group of journalists and reporters were trapped in a building in the reach of the regime’s mortars. After three days with not a morsel to put in  their mouths, it was the loof plant growing weed-like at the entrance to the building which saved them from starving, as it did so many years ago in Hama.

An addiction to war and fear of life

Matar was once a promising poet, but now he is a media spokesperson for the Ahfad al-Rasoul brigade in al-Hajar al-Aswad. Although he was seriously injured by mortar fragments in the midst of this siege, he refused to leave his place with the fighters for treatment:

"I don't want to hear the pulse of normal life while we are getting killed; I don't want to feel grief for seeing markets full of all kinds of food while we eat poisonous herbs to keep alive. I don't want to get back to ‘a normal’ life, because this will just weaken [my resolve] and make me take a cowardly decision not to go back to the front line once more. It is very difficult for those of us who have lived the harsh and difficult life of an FSA soldier to make this choice – it’s not a real choice ".

Matar is no exception. Lots of FSA members suffer from this same deep sorrow. The majority of them have lost their jobs, families and way of life, until nothing is left but a gun and a bloody battle which has no end in sight. At this point, the reader might say that this was the fighter's choice and this is the nature of wars and armed conflicts. However, I would like to highlight here the tense and delicate moment in which a fighter may decide to desert from their post with the FSA and abandon the war to come back to life.

A prolonged conflict

Most Syrians never expected that the conflict would last this long. Those opposing the regime have been taken aback by the regime's steadfastness and this has frustrated them – particularly the continuous support from Iran and Russia. The media-war continues to be stoked by announcements of victorious battles and the liberation of towns by both sides of the conflict.

However, the reality is that opposition militias and the official army have reached a military stalemate – one step forward and one step back as progress on one front is checked by loss and retreat on another. While the FSA celebrated taking control of Raqqa in the North, the regime was consolidating its hold over Damascus and Homs. This tug of war reflects the battle on the international stage where America, Europe, Russia and regional players are jostling for influence in Syria, with no-one willing to find a solution to the crisis.

A fighter's story

Adam volunteered to fight for the FSA with the Mujahidi Harasta battalion in the east of the capital a year ago. After being seriously hit in the leg, he came to Damascus city carrying fake ID to get treatment and recover. My concern when I visited him was not his physical injury, but the extent to which he was clearly suffering from a severe depression – having spent a year in an environment wholly foreign to him:

"I was killing people and watching others die. I couldn't make friendships and this was driving me crazy. I wasn't even able to talk about my sexual desires and I even had to pretend to pray in front of the other fighters - I’m not religious - because I didn't want to be an outsider", he told me.

As a fighter in an Islamist brigade it is difficult – almost impossible – for young men to do what young men like doing most: thinking about girls. Propriety around gender relations means that voicing such thoughts is viewed as unbecoming for a fighter ‘in the way of the faith’.

Adam stayed in Damascus to recuperate and decided not to go back to his battalion. He wanted to start his life once again, but picking up from where one has left off is never as simple as that. A fear of being followed, being arrested and tortured has marked his every living moment to the extent that he can’t help but look nervously around him while walking or talking in public – even when conversations are of the mundane variety.

This feeling of dread wasn't only fear of the regime's security forces, but more of the battalion members themselves! Each battalion has an intelligence section entrusted with the mission of watching fighters and ensuring that they are not spies or collaborating with the regime. Adam told me anecdotal stories concerning incidents of some FSA members being executed because they wanted to quit. The reason cited by the militia hierarchy was that they represented a ‘security risk’ and could divulge sensitive information.

The FSA is largely made up of civilian combatants with no military experience and a smaller number of soldiers who defected from the official army. Few of them have sufficient training to deal with being in the type of guerrilla war being waged by battalions up and down Syria, thus their complicated psychological status has pushed some of them to thinking about leaving their positions and abandoning the FSA for a new life or an attempt at piecing together what remains of their old life.

Nour al-Din is a field commander in the Ali Bin Abi Talib battalion fighting in the southern districts of Damascus. I asked him about the phenomenon of fighters deserting the FSA:

"a real fighter, a true believer in the revolution and Islam never leaves the battle ground. Only opportunists and chancers who joined the FSA to steal and get benefits may do this. Whoever volunteered in the FSA for the sake of a free Syria and any real Muslim will stay steadfast until the end – for the Syria he dreams of".

In the midst of this harsh war, Syrians have found themselves at a crossroads: obliged to choose between either their personal interest and life or the country's freedom. A question occurs to me here – Is it possible for fighters who quit the FSA to go back to their old lives? It seems highly improbable, given that Syria has been ripped into so many different pieces with different authorities holding sway over particular areas – here the regime, there such and such battalion.

The country is now a hotch-potch of hot and cool areas. Families have been displaced across the country in their millions. Most fighters are wanted by intelligence forces and they can't go back to their original villages and towns, nor can they meet their families who were forced to flee. This is how our lives – and not just that of FSA fighters – have been trapped, in the eye of a tornado that is hurtling at breakneck speed. Where and how we get off is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure – it won’t be an emerald city.

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Foreign companies and investors already unsure about returning to Libya will be further dissuaded by this targeting of a foreign embassy in the heart of Tripoli.

On April 23, a car bomb exploded at 7am outside the French Embassy in Tripoli. The powerful explosion ripped through the outer walls of the embassy, as well as neighbouring houses, causing part of the building to collapse. Two French security guards were present when the bomb went off and one was seriously injured. Fortunately however most embassy staff were yet to arrive at the time of the blast so casualties were minimal. This was little consolation however for Tripoli's residents.

This was the first direct attack on a foreign embassy in Tripoli since Gaddafi was ousted from power and it has sent shockwaves through the capital. Although the overall security situation in Libya is far from stable especially in the eastern and southern parts of the country, life in Tripoli is relatively calm and peaceful.  Attacks on the American Consulate in Benghazi back in September 2012 shocked and saddened the nation but few thought that such an attack could take place in Libya's capital, the seat of central government. The state has already been coming under fire in recent weeks for its perceived weakness and lack of control over powerful militias and unfortunately this bombing is likely to compound concerns that the Libyan government is failing in its attempts to maintain peace and stability.

At the date of writing, no one has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack but there is speculation that it could have been orchestrated by AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) in retaliation for French involvement in Mali. Another theory is that Gaddafi loyalists were behind the attack as it was France that spearheaded the NATO intervention which ultimately helped remove the old regime from power. A joint commission between Libya and France has been set up to investigate the attack, and Libya has announced that it will do everything in its power to bring the culprits to justice. However, various sources have claimed that Libyan security forces took up to 2 hours to arrive on the scene after the explosion, once more throwing doubt on the capacity of the Libyan authorities to actively manage law and order.

The mood in Tripoli after the attack was one of shock, depression and frustration. The French are popular across Libya for the role they played in supporting the rebels during the revolution. Libyans posting on social media were quick to condemn the attacks, expressing their condolences to those who were injured and question why Libyans would attack a nation whose support was vital to the success of the February 17 revolution. Others expressed their anger at the Libyan authorities for their apparent incapacity to rein in militias and Islamist groups.

Many feel that this attack was a taunt to the Libyan authorities as well as perhaps a warning to the French. The bomb was set off at 7am when few people would be around, yet the implication is that had they wanted to, the attackers could have set the bomb off in the middle of the day and caused a great deal more destruction and devastation. Many are pessimistic about the chances of catching those responsible. There have been demands for the Chief of Staff Yousef Mangoush to stand down given the inefficiency of the police and army, but so far these calls appear not to have been heeded.

For their part, the French seem determined not to let these attacks disrupt their work in Libya and both embassy staff and French companies currently operating in Libya have no plans to leave. The same applies to other foreigners living in Tripoli. Although the bombing was a shock, it is seen more as a regrettable incident rather than a sign that the overall security situation in Tripoli is deteriorating. Other embassies are upping their security but have no plans to suspend operations.

However, this attack will undoubtedly have a negative effect on Libya's economic and political progress. Foreign companies and investors already unsure about returning to Libya will be further dissuaded by this targeting of a foreign embassy in the heart of Tripoli. Companies in Libya will probably increase their security, limiting operations and increasing the perception that Libya is a country on the edge of anarchy.

Libyan authorities need to turn this attack to their advantage. If they can show the Libyan public and the international community that they are actively and efficiently pursuing the perpetrators and strengthening security around the city then this could be a turning point for the better for Libya. However if the government and security forces continue to display the lacklustre, ineffective approach that they have done in recent weeks and months then Libya's short term future will look a lot less secure.   

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