Two suicide bombings rock Damascus as Arab League league monitors arrive

Two suicide bombings rock Damascus as Arab League league monitors arrive

Notice: The mideast daily brief will be on break after today until January 2nd. In the meantime, we wish you a happy holiday season and New Year. 

Two suicide bombs outside of government security locations in Damascus killed 40 civilians and soldiers and wounded 100 according to Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad as reported by the government’s Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). The attacks have come after one of the most violent weeks since the beginning of the Syrian regime’s crackdown on uprisings nearly ten months ago, and was the first such assault seen in the capital of Damascus. Opposition activists claim the government staged the attacks as part of a scheme to convince the Arab League delegation that arrived in Damascus on Thursday that there is no government crackdown, but that violence in the country has been the work of “armed terrorist gangs.” Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin reported that: “The capital has been relatively quiet. If the government is trying to say this is the work of protesters or even al Qaeda sympathizers, the attack is in the heart of the capital and that makes the government look very vulnerable.” Meanwhile, the British-based advocacy group, Avaaz, reported it has evidence that the death toll since the beginning of the government crackdown has reached 6,237 civilians and soldiers, which includes 917 government forces, 400 children, and 617 people whose deaths were a result of torture. 

Headlines  

• Hundreds of Egyptians calling for the end of military rule have begun to turn out for the “Friday of Reclaiming Honor” rally against the security forces’ treatment of protesters over the past week.
• Iraqi political leaders canceled crisis talks scheduled for today and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki threatened to end power sharing in the government after Baghdad saw a series of violent blasts.
• Turkey recalled its envoy to France as relations continue to decline after the passing of a draft Armenian genocide bill.
• Abdul-Raman al-Wuhaysi, brother of the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was reportedly killed on Wednesday after days of clashes in the south of Yemen.

Deputy Arab League Secretary General Samir Seif al-Yazal (C) inspects with a group of Arab observers the site of a suicide attack, which targeted the Syrian General Intelligence headquarters, in Damascus on December 23, 2011. Suicide bombers hit two security service bases in Damascus killing more than 30 people and casting a pall over the first day of work of an Arab observer mission intended to oversee an end to nine months of bloodshed (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images).

Arguments & Analysis

‘Iraq is a mess. But leaving was the right call.’ (Douglas Olivant, The New Republic)
“At this point, Iraq is exactly where we should expect a country to be when coming out of forced regime change, with the almost inevitable civil strife and violence that follows. This is what success looks like. No, it’s not very pretty. The hard-won fragile stability of Iraq should serve as a cautionary tale to those across the political spectrum who promote regime change as a policy, whether for reasons of national interest or on humanitarian grounds. Removing a functioning regime, however distasteful it may be, puts the population into something approaching a state of nature, and condemns the innocent population to a great deal of suffering as normal societal systems and institutions break down and are then re-established only gradually over time.”

‘How Egypt’s revolution has dialed back women’s rights’ (Vickie Langohr, Foreign Affairs)
“Despite their responsibility for violence against women, military officials regularly invoke their concern for the safety of female activists as a reason to exclude them from government and to maintain emergency law. After the Minister of Local Development said that he would consider appointing women to head some of Egypt’s 26 governorates for the first time in Egyptian history, the government announced that women could not hold these positions because the lack of security made it too dangerous for them to go into the streets to monitor citizens’ problems. In early October, SCAF head Hussein Tantawi argued that emergency law, the removal of which was a key demand of the revolution, had to be maintained because of the current lawless conditions, saying that “no one would believe that a man should see his wife kidnapped in front of him and raped.”

‘Egypt on the edge’ (Yasmine El Rashidi, New York Review of Books)
“In months to come, Egypt’s first freely elected parliament will probably be as fragmented as the political landscape that preceded it. During what will be a period of immense pressure, the Muslim Brotherhood will most likely emerge as a mediator and perhaps the ally of the parliament’s liberal coalition. The military, for its part, will undoubtedly continue to have a hand in the country’s affairs, whether overtly through a provision of the constitution, or through tactical pacts with factions in parliament. Having waited since 1928 for this moment, the Brotherhood can be expected to wait another few years before attempting to make any drastic or fundamental changes in the social and cultural life of the Egyptian state.”

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