Author Archives: Arab America

Jordan’s public opinion, political leadership and regional and international dynamics today offer very useful insights into the current condition of the entire Arab world, and they should be studied carefully by anyone interested in how things operate in this region and where it may be heading.

The immediate emotional reaction — including mass anger — among Jordanians to the brutal killing of air force pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh by the Islamic State is totally understandable and justified; but behind the current wave of enraged sentiments and demands for revenge is a complex matrix of emotions, ideologies and state-building realities that reveal the deeper challenges that King Abdullah faces.

Three particular elements shape this analysis of Jordan, which also apply to most other Arab countries:

1. The nature of national political and strategic decision-making

2. The role of public opinion and limited involvement in governance

3. The socio-economic condition of the country and its reliance on foreign support

All three of these dimensions are active this week as Jordanians come to terms with the massive hurt they feel at the gruesome and cruel Kaseasbeh killing — and ponder how to respond. Public opinion has swung strongly behind King Abdullah, reflecting the understandable desire to hit back at ISIS and cause as much death and damage in the group’s ranks as possible. This is a sharp reversal from the situation weeks ago, when Jordan enjoyed a lively debate about the wisdom of the country joining the American-led coalition to fight and defeat ISIS. Vocal critics of the Jordanian armed forces’ involvement in the actual attacks, as well as in other aspects of the anti-ISIS campaign, included personal criticisms of the king’s role in such decisions.

Expanding the military dimensions of the drive to destroy ISIS not only risks increasing the chaos in the region that creates more openings for such groups to take hold; it also can result in further tragedies like the alleged death of an American ISIS hostage who ISIS claims died in a Jordanian airstrike Friday.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Click to read the latest issue of WRMEA for FREE! See Arab America’s Launch,  on page 56!

Source: test.arabamerica.com

IT was not the imam’s first time at the rodeo. Scheduled to deliver an invocation at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo last week, Moujahed Bakhach of the local Islamic Association of Tarrant County canceled his appearancebecause of the backlash brought on by a prayer he had offered a few days before. The imam … Continued

French police sealed off a housing estate in Marseille on Monday after hooded gunmen opened fire on a police car with Kalashnikov rifles in what a senior local official suggested was an incident related to drug crime.

France has been on high alert following Islamist attacks in Paris last month that killed 17 people. Last week, two soldiers protecting a Jewish organization and radio station were wounded in a knife attack in the city of Nice.

The shooting in Marseille happened just as Prime Minister Manuel Valls arrived for a scheduled visit to hail statistics showing a fall in crime in France’s second largest city. There was no immediate information on whether there had been victims.

Elite police deployed following the incident on the north side of the city and residents of La Castellane neighborhood, home to some 7,000, were ordered to stay indoors. A crèche was evacuated as troops from the GIPN special forces unit were sent into the sealed-off estate, a police source said by telephone.

“This battle against drug trafficking is a long-term battle,” said Caroline Pozmentier, deputy mayor of Marseille.

Samia Ghali, a senator from the Mediterranean port city, agreed the incident looked like a symptom of broader troubles in poor, crime-ridden areas such as La Castellane.

“It’s got everything – prostitution, drugs trafficking, violence. It’s a dangerous cocktail and we saw evidence of that today,” Ghali told BFMTV.

Source: www.reuters.com

Sen. Lindsey Graham wants Congress to give President Barack Obama unequivocal authority to fight Islamic State militants. Yet Sen. Ted Cruz says lawmakers should be wary of handing the commander in chief a “blanket authorization” to wage war.

Sen. Marco Rubio is open to sending ground troops into the region if that’s what it takes to win. But Sen. Rand Paul says he’s “not eager” to send troops back to the Middle East, and he’s demanding that Congress set a one-year timeline for a war authorization to expire.

As Congress prepares to dive into its most politically charged debate in years over war and peace, the four Republican senators considering 2016 presidential bids are staking out diverging positions on how much power to give Obama — a fight that is bound to drive the argument on which candidate would best defend the U.S. from threats abroad. The GOP presidential field consists of roughly two dozen potential candidates, but these are the only four who can help shape the proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force and will have to vote on it.

Source: www.politico.com

Ordinations held Friday in Iraq for Emanuel Shaleta and Basel Yaldo

Source: www.detroitnews.com

Pope Francis is elevating to bishops two Chaldean priests with years of service in Metro Detroit.

Ordinations for Chorbishop Emanuel Shaleta and the Rev. Basel Yaldo, both active with the Southfield-based Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle, were held Friday in Iraq, church officials said.

Shaleta has been named the new bishop of the Eparchy of Mar Addai of Toronto. Yaldo was elected an auxiliary bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate in Baghdad.

In the Arab World, elites are acutely aware of their condition of inferiority in the eyes of the west, and at the same time feel a sense of contempt for themselves, their culture and their own countrymen.

Source: www.opendemocracy.net

The Lebanese Army accepted $25 million worth of weapons support from the U.S. on Sunday during a turn-over ceremony. The U.S. Embassy has pledged support.

Source: www.viralglobalnews.com

Washington (CNN)The United States needs to provide weapons directly to the Kurdish army that is fighting ISIS in Iraq, two senators said Sunday.

Both Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told on CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that even after a Jordanian pilot was burned alive by the terror organization, they don’t want to see the United States send ground troops into the region in addition to its air strikes.

READ: Cruz hits GOP, Dems on homeland security funding plan

But the United States should provide more military aid to the Arab armies already fighting ISIS on the ground — especially the Kurds’ Peshmerga — they said.

“What makes no sense whatsoever is the Obama administration is refusing to directly arm the Kurds,” Cruz said. “We need to arm the Kurds now, because they are our boots on the ground.”

But Cruz stopped short of calling for U.S. ground troops, saying there are other options that must be tried first.

“In my view, American boots on the ground should always be the last step, and we need to exercise other steps before that,” he said. “We have the availability of overwhelming air power, and we have boots on the ground that are ready and eager to fight — the Peshmerga — and they lack sufficient tools and equipment to do so.”

Kaine said the United States can’t do the work that Arab armies and police forces need to do.

“We cannot police a region that won’t police itself, and so the ground troops need to be from the region, but the United States’s strong support, via the air campaign, via training and equipping, helping guide the air campaign to make it effective — that’s what we should do,” he said. “That’s what we are doing, and we can do more of it.”

Also on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, an Iraq War veteran, called for a broader strategy addressing ideological and political problems.

“There’s one common element here, and it is this radical Islamic ideology — and in order to defeat it, we have to do so militarily, but also simultaneously, it has to be an ideological defeat as well as a political solution that’s offered,” she said.

Source: edition.cnn.com