The Region in Brief: 2006

As Morocco celebrated the 50th anniversary of independence from colonial rule this summer, King Mohammed VI and his wife Princess Lalla Salma announced a royal pregnancy. No due dates were given, simply that the child will be born this coming spring.

By most counts, Morocco is also enjoying an economic boom. Official figures show growth skyrocketed to 7.3 percent this past year, up from 1.8 percent in 2005. While few if any economists deny the rise in growth some are accusing, the government of padding the figures with their eyes on next year’s general election.

Like nearly every MENA country, Morocco has dealt with its share of problems with militant Islamists: 2006 saw hundreds of arrests of suspected terrorists and members of outlawed Islamist political parties.

Fearing that they were not only training but also possibly arming anti-government forces, the government announced this year that military service will no longer be compulsory. The new all-volunteer Moroccan Army may soon see its first deployment as the King has offered to send troops to Southern Lebanon as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeeping operations.

Nasser Nasser Hossam Hassan (center) tries to calm down Ahmed ‘Mido’ Hossam (left) who was protesting being substituted by his team’s coach Hassan Shehata (right) during the Africa Nations Cup semifinal match between Egypt and Senegal

Although Algeria’s civil war, in which more than 160,000 people were killed, has officially been over for more than four years, continuing violence claims dozens of lives each month. A bloody 2006 ended with a bomb attack targeting foreign oil workers in Algiers that left one person dead and nine injured.

Nearly 40,000 people applied for either amnesty or compensation under a national reconciliation program launched in February. The amnesty brought on a wave of protest from victims groups, who have denounced the government’s handling of the problem. The Algerian civil war was marked largely by the unprovoked massacres of civilians by both sides in the conflict; critics claim that under the government’s plan, even the worst of the perpetrators are not prosecuted.

Rights groups assert that not only are murderers allowed to walk the streets, but that it is now illegal to publicly refer to either those responsible or the dead as anything but “victims of the national tragedy.”

Tunisia also marked 50 years of independence this past year and saw the already strong Tunisian economy growing markedly. President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s government aggressively pursued a privatization campaign this year that raised roughly $2 billion, the vast majority of which was from foreign investors. Not counted in the overall figures was the additional sale of a 35 percent share in the national telecommunications authority to a Dubai-based holding company for $2.25 billion.

In June, authorities closed the last chapter in the book that began with the suicide bombing of a synagogue on the island of Djerba in 2002. A court sentenced Belgacem Nawar, the uncle of Nizar Nawar, who died during the attack, to 20 years in prison.

Unfortunately for the Tunisians, 2006 was a year of almosts, including a controversial loss by Tunisian side CS Sfaxien to Egypt’s Al-Ahly in the final of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League tournament.

Libya focused most of 2006 on its efforts to rejoin the international community. In October, it sent approximately 20 kilograms of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to a facility in Russia as part of a pledge to dismantle its unconventional weapons programs.

Associated Press Coptic mourners gather at Alexandria’s Saints Church ahead of the April funeral of 78-year-old Nushi Atta Girgis, who was slain there the day before

In a turn of events that until recently would have been unthinkable, the United States and Libya re-opened official diplomatic ties, and two Italian tourists kidnapped in Niger were freed through active intervention by the Libyan government.

Libya suffered its setbacks this year as well. At least 11 people were killed during riots over the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Sudan remained defined by conflict in 2006. Violence in the country’s western Darfur region has continued despite the deployment of African Union peacekeepers. The conflict is increasingly being described as genocide by international observers and has spilled over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. At least 250,000 people have been killed and over a million and a half displaced in the conflict, which has been marked by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and the use of rape as a tool of war.

In 2005, the Khartoum Government signed a peace agreement with the rebel movements in South Sudan ending a 21-year civil war. A few short months after signing the agreement, John Garang, the leader of the largest rebel group, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement died in a mysterious helicopter crash and the peace agreement began a downhill slide which finally saw the commencement of open fighting this year.

Jalil Bounhar Morocco’s King Mohammed VI

As one of only two countries in the Middle East having formal ties with Israel, Jordan has begun taking a more active role as a regional mediator. Israeli representatives have met with both Saudi and Syrian officials in Jordan over the past year, according to reports. Although little (if any) substantive progress has come from the talks, the meetings themselves were a step forward.

The most notorious son of the Hashemite Kingdom died in June, when Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq by an American airstrike. Al-Zarqawi had been condemned to death in absentia in Jordan for a 2005 series of hotel bombings in Amman, which killed 57 people.

Jordan’s tourism industry took another blow in September when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of tourists in downtown Amman, killing one and wounding six others.

After announcing that he was stepping down and that an open election would be held, President Ali Abdullah Saleh changed his mind in June in response to what he termed, “overwhelming public outcry.”

The European Union Election Observation Mission, which monitored the elections, said that despite some “important shortcomings,” it was indeed an “open and genuine contest.” Among the shortcomings were the deaths of opposition candidates’ family members and in one case the death of an actual candidate. President Saleh won with 77 percent of the vote, a dramatic decrease from the more than 96 percent he won in 1999.

Most of Dubai’s neighbors have one thing in common: They have all declared that they will be the Next Dubai. Oman signed a free-trade agreement with the United States in September as part of a bid to globalize its economy. The country is also experiencing a boom of new resorts and hotels to draw some of the international businesses away from Dubai. Oman is hoping to capitalize on “Brand Oman,” focusing on the nation’s history and well-known historical figures such as Sinbad the Sailor and the Queen of Sheba.

The Gulf Times proclaimed “Qatar set for boom decade.” The boom, as with the case in Oman, is a bid for a share in the roughly $500 billion-per-year global travel market. Hoping to reach 1.5 million visitors a year by 2008, Qatar has expanded its national airline, Qatar Airways, and begun building billions of dollars worth of museums, parks and high-end hotels.

Unlike Oman, Qatar isn’t capitalizing on their past as much as trying to overcome it. As the Lonely Planet Guidebooks s “Doha is the most boring place on Earth.”

It was probably that way throughout this past month’s Asian Games, too.

As its neighbors struggle to imitate it, Dubai is struggling to come to terms with being Dubai. Its success in attracting foreign investors and businesses has become the cause of a national identity crisis. Out of a population of nearly 1.5 million, only a quarter of a million are native to the country.

Ben Curtis Protestors demonstrate outside the Press Syndicate against alleged sexual attacks on women during the November Eid vacation in the Downtown area.

In 2006, clashes over cultural issues such as dress code, particularly during Ramadan, fueled an at times heated if informal national debate. While the foreign population has brought with it either money to invest or cheap labor, Dubai has recently discovered that they’ve brought problems the emirate has never dealt with before, such as illegal drugs.

The building boom has relied on hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly from the Asian subcontinent. What the NGO Human Rights Watch described as wanton abuses of the labor force came to a head early in 2006 when rioting laborers destroyed millions of dollars in property. The Labor Ministry has pledged a series of reforms, which would allow the guest workers to unionize, but the promised reforms have yet to materialize.

The United Arab Emirates and its state-owned DP World also found themselves in the headlines early in 2006 when security fears among members of the United States Congress led the company to give up on plans to acquire several port terminals there.

Despite leaked reports that elements of the ruling Sunni minority in Bahrain had plans to rig the elections this past year, the Shi’a majority did very well, winning 16 out of the 17 parliamentary seats they contested. The level of actual power the parliament will have remains unclear. The lead up to the elections was marked by often violent protests, but the elections themselves were very transparent.

Mohamed Al-Sehety A copy of Bahá’í Labib Iskandar’s ID card. Bahá’í s were denied the right to have their religion stated on official identification papers last December, as the law only recognizes Islam, Christianity and Judaism as being the official faiths.

2006 also marked a major step forward for women in the Gulf region, when the first Bahraini woman to serve her country as a diplomat, Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa, was elected president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Kuwait’s parliament began the year by unanimously voting to depose the ailing Emir Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah. Sheikh Sabah Ahmad Al-Sabah, the former Prime Minister, took over the country’s top office immediately afterwards.

The 2006 parliamentary elections were the first in which Kuwaiti women were allowed to vote and even run for office: 27 women ran for parliamentary seats, though none received enough votes for a win. Thirty-six of 50 seats went to opposition parties ranging from liberals to Islamists.

At the beginning of 2006, the idea of an independent Palestinian state seemed almost within reach. Israel appeared to be on the verge of unilaterally withdrawing from most of the West Bank, the same way they did from Gaza. Billions of dollars worth of aid and investment was being pledged from around the world. But as the year comes to a close, things are as bad as they’ve ever been for the Palestinian people.

Following Hamas’ win in the January elections, Israel instituted a series of measures to undermine the Hamas-led government. Tensions escalated until June when Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier on a cross-border raid into southern Israel; the Israeli military retaliated with a reoccupation of Gaza which continues today.

Although the violence is mainly confined to Gaza, the removal of settlements in the West Bank has ceased, and it now seems that any type of disengagement by the Israelis is highly unlikely.

The power struggle between Fatah and Hamas exploded into violence several times over the past year, with running gun battles throughout the streets of Palestinian cities. At press time, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had called for elections —a call that was followed hours later by gun battles between his Fatah loyalists and Hamas fighters.

Israel invaded. Again. Politicians are being assassinated. Again. The Cedar Revolution is over, and the country seems poised on the brink of civil war. Need we say more?

The Syrian Parliament’s first act of 2006 was to indict former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam on charges of treason and corruption. Khaddam had publicly accused top Syrian officials, even hinting at President Bashar Al-Assad, of playing a role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the previous year.

Syria had been accused of impeding the investigation, but when Serge Brammertz took over the United Nations tribunal, he publicly praised the full cooperation of Syrian authorities. Even Al-Assad agreed to be interviewed.

Damascus has also found itself dealing with a huge influx of refugees over the past year. During the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, at least 1 million Lebanese civilians were displaced, many of them fleeing over the border. The continuing chaos and sectarian violence in Iraq has also pushed hundreds of thousands into Syria. By some estimates there are more Iraqi Christians now living in Syria than there are remaining in Iraq.

Courtesy Qatar Tourism Authority Qatar wants to overcome its dreary destination reputation.

The specific point at which Iraq moved from mere sectarian violence into a sectarian civil war will probably go down in the history books as the February attack on the Shi’a shrine in Samarra.

Both the fledgling Iraqi government and the US-led coalition forces have proved to be incapable of stopping the spiraling violence. Most Iraqi ministries are now affiliated along religious lines and some even have their own militias, which have been accused of carrying out some of the worst atrocities.

Despite government attempts to disarm sectarian militias and quell the violence, the numbers of civilians killed continues to rise. According to a United Nations report, more than 3,700 civilians were confirmed killed in October alone. The report stated that the actual figure is certainly higher.

The news coming from Iran for 2006 was dominated by a single theme: nuclear power. Thus far, a long series of negotiations, incentives and threats have had little or no effect on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran has insisted that its nuclear program would be for peaceful energy production but many fear that the end goal is nuclear weapons. Fueling the fears of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, several Arab nations declared their intentions to begin a nuclear program this year including Egypt and the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Iran’s increasingly bellicose stance towards Israel, the only country in the Middle East with known nuclear weapons, is also raising the possibility of the world’s first nuclear war. et