Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Owlbread]

The "Egypt and the World and Libya" thread has been around for a few years now, so I thought maybe the time had come to update things a bit with a more inclusive thread. Interestingly, the focus hasn't really shifted far from where we looking at originally in 2011 - Egypt, Syria and Libya, though I predict that may expand a bit in the future. At least this way we might be able to talk more about the Iranian Presidential elections or the rumblings in Kurdistan and Palestine.

Sometimes thread creators set rules, that won't happen here. I'm just going to say - no rules here at all, talk about whatever you want as long as it's related to the Middle East/Central Asia and with at least a dash of politics in it. There's no subject that's going to be taboo here. I don't need to tell you not to be dicks to eachother, I'm not your parent, I just made a thread.

I think we should start off by considering the recent unrest in Egypt; at least 35-40 people have been killed in a "shooting incident" in Cairo. According to the Financial Times, the Muslim Brotherhood is now calling for an "Uprising" but I can't find a mirror of that elsewhere that wouldn't require you to log in or subscribe to them or such nonsense. Al Jazeera gives quite a comprehensive timeline of the events here. Apparently the Al Nour party, a Salafist party, has withdrawn from the political process citing the fact that the democracy they see before them is "false". That's quite important because they previously backed the coup against Morsi.

If anyone else has anything they'd like to add, please do.

I've got a map here stolen from Wikipedia, we're talking roughly about the green and the pink areas, a bit about the red:



Here is a list of countries this thread could conceivably cover.

Middle East:

Bahrain
Cyprus
Egypt
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Kuwait
Lebanon
Northern Cyprus
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Turkey
UAE
Yemen

Central Asia:

Afghanistan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Central Russia (parts of e.g. Bashkortostan)
North West/Western Pakistan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Western China (Xinjiang)

[RedKing]

In b4 Israel/Palestine flamewar engulfs the entire thread.


I kinda worry about the long-term repercussions of the coup in Egypt (and let's face it, that's what it was). Islamists now have a concrete example to point to and tell the undecided on the Arab streets, "Look! We told you that this Western "democracy" is merely a lie and a trick! We tried it "their" way, peacefully at the ballot box. And when we won, they had their kafir pawns in the army take power away from us illegally. The only true guarantee of power for the faithful is as it has always been, by the sword and the gun."

In the same way that leftist parties increasingly turned away from the political process and towards violent revolution in the 70s, after a couple of decades of instances where they won power peacefully in places like Chile, Greece, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Iraq and then got overthrown by US-supported coups.

[Owlbread]

I also predict the same thing will happen in Central Asia in places like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Back in the late 1990s and the early 2000s people in Uzbekistan were under a regime (that remains in power to this day) that boiled dissidents alive and were saying things like 'I'm not sure if I really like this "democracy", you know? It doesn't seem like everything it was cracked up to be, I miss the good old days". When Karimov, their president, is eventually out of power we could either see a glorious but unlikely shift to liberalism and democracy or an Islamist free for all.

I'll add "Central Asian politics" to the title too so we can expand the possibilities for discussion.

[RedKing]

I think the 'Stans are still another 5-10 years from that level of upheaval. They're lagging behind the Arab states a bit in terms of the demographic bulge. For instance, over 1/3 of the population of Uzbekistan is under 14. As that population bulge hits working age, if the economy doesn't have jobs to provide them, that's where the unrest will come from. You want civil unrest? Give large numbers of 18-25 year-olds lots of time on their hands and nothing to lose. (Unless you're America, in which case they'll just play CoD: Black Ops all day.)

I think there's still plenty of room for ethnic conflicts in the Central Asian Republics before religious ones start kicking in. You'll get more traction out of a Uzbek-Tajik war than would a Sunni-Shi'ite one (not very many Shi'a in the region at all) or a Muslim-Orthodox one or even a fundamentalist-reformer/atheist/secular one. That whole region tends to be very, very pragmatic. Afghanistan is something of an anomaly as regards the Taliban (who, it needs to be remembered, were not entirely a homegrown phenomenon -- they were Pashtun refugees who got radicalized in Pakistani madrassas that were built and financed by Saudi Wahhabis).

[LordSlowpoke]

soooooo how about armenia

what's even happening in there

[Owlbread]

Should I change this to Middle Eastern/Central Asian/Caucasian politics megathread? Things might get a bit cluttered, same thing with bringing Turkey into it.

I think there's still plenty of room for ethnic conflicts in the Central Asian Republics before religious ones start kicking in. You'll get more traction out of a Uzbek-Tajik war than would a Sunni-Shi'ite one (not very many Shi'a in the region at all) or a Muslim-Orthodox one or even a fundamentalist-reformer/atheist/secular one. That whole region tends to be very, very pragmatic. Afghanistan is something of an anomaly as regards the Taliban (who, it needs to be remembered, were not entirely a homegrown phenomenon -- they were Pashtun refugees who got radicalized in Pakistani madrassas that were built and financed by Saudi Wahhabis).

I do wonder though if ethnic conflict would spark in Uzbekistan after the fall of Karimov, because the very nature of "Uzbekistan" is a big dubious, itself being largely the creation of Stalin. You've got all sorts of ethnic minorities from Kipchaks to Karakalpaks. I predict any kind of uprising in Uzbekistan will have some of its strongest roots in Karakalpakstan.

[LordSlowpoke]

I thought the Caucasus was a part of Central Asia by virtue of not being the Middle East and not Europe either. Am I wrong?

[Owlbread]

I thought the Caucasus was a part of Central Asia by virtue of not being the Middle East and not Europe either. Am I wrong?

It is actually more "Western Asia" in the same vein as Iraq. Central Asia would refer to the territory on the other side of the Caspian Sea.

[PanH]

I kinda worry about the long-term repercussions of the coup in Egypt (and let's face it, that's what it was). Islamists now have a concrete example to point to and tell the undecided on the Arab streets, "Look! We told you that this Western "democracy" is merely a lie and a trick! We tried it "their" way, peacefully at the ballot box. And when we won, they had their kafir pawns in the army take power away from us illegally. The only true guarantee of power for the faithful is as it has always been, by the sword and the gun."

We can only hope it won't go as far as it did in Algeria.

[palsch]

I thought the Caucasus was a part of Central Asia by virtue of not being the Middle East and not Europe either. Am I wrong?

It is actually more "Western Asia" in the same vein as Iraq. Central Asia would refer to the territory on the other side of the Caspian Sea.

If we are doing the political threads like this maybe each one should have a map of the covered areas in the first post?

[Owlbread]

If we are doing the political threads like this maybe each one should have a map of the covered areas in the first post?

Yes we should. In fact, sod it. The UN says the Caucasus are a part of "Western Asia", commonly known as the Middle East, so why not. I've got a map I can use in the OP.

[RedKing]

Hmm....wonder if I should change my first post to "In b4 Armenian genocide flamewar engulfs thread" then...

[Owlbread]

Hmm....wonder if I should change my first post to "In b4 Armenian genocide flamewar engulfs thread" then...

Interesting story about that. When I went to a war museum in Istanbul a few weeks ago I went to their exhibit on the "Armenian Issue" where I learned all about the terrible problems the Turkish people had with those dreadful "Armenian gangs" of terrorists. One particular information piece informed me that the entire thing had been cooked up by the West to weaken the power of Turkey. I took pictures of it if people don't believe me. That reminds me, I need to post those images I took from the protest areas in the Turkish thread. Of course, that's a matter for the Turkish thread.

[RedKing]

Could be very interesting to see how the onset of Ramadan affects things in Egypt/Syria/Turkey right now. Especially a Ramadan in middle of the summer -- people get downright cranky when they've gone without food or water all day and it's 45C outside.

[Owlbread]

Could be very interesting to see how the onset of Ramadan affects things in Egypt/Syria/Turkey right now. Especially a Ramadan in middle of the summer -- people get downright cranky when they've gone without food or water all day and it's 45C outside.

Interesting perspective. I suppose the coup couldn't have come at a worse time then.