Nathan Field (of FPA’s Egypt blog) and Ahmed Hamem have a piece in this month’s Arab Reform Bulletin arguing that while there is no guarantee that inviting Islamist parties into politics will make them moderate, the inverse appears to be true. That is, excluding Islamist parties from politics, at least in Egypt, seems to have engendered a more radical strain of political Islam. Of course, those who advocating excluding the Muslim Brotherhood from politics may do so on the grounds that all political Islam presents the potential of radicalization, or is already radical, in which case the evidence that Field and Hamem offer might not be so convincing.

… the LA Times profiles a teenage girl in Tyre, Lebanon, named Hiba Qassir, who is studying at a high school backed by Hezbollah. She comments on her various ambitions, including becoming a film director, and calls martyrdom “the shortest way to heaven”. The summary bit below the headline (I am not sure what the journalistic term is for it - help?) reads as follows:

 Aspiring filmmaker Hiba Qassir is about to graduate from a Hezbollah-backed high school. She loves movies, but would give up her career dream if offered the chance to be a suicide bomber.

One has to wonder whether these Lebanese teens have gotten wise to the fact that saying you’d be willing to become a suicide bomber is the quickest way to a two-page feature on you in a major foreign paper. I don't mean to suggest that I think that necessarily happened in this case, but I wonder what the discourse on those sorts of issues is in Lebanon.

Martin Indyk, of the Brookings Institute and numerous other institutions of repute, and the equally credentialed Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations co-directed a research initiative called Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. You can read summaries of their work from Brookings here and from CFR here, or purchase it from Brookings here. From what my cursory reading of the summaries tells me, they focused on the big-ticket items: reconciliation and rebuilding in Iraq, defrosting diplomatic relations and stifling nuclear ambitions in Iran, resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and combating Islamic terrorism. Numerous scholars from both institutes (and possibly outside) contributed, so I am not sure whether they advanced a philosophical strategy for the region or simply stuck to policy recommendations for the individual challenges. I’m wondering whether it would be better NOT to advance a broad doctrine with respect to the Middle East … should each of these issues be treated individually? My thought is no, they are all related and need to be understood as such. School responsibilities are between me and perusing the reports, but my thoughts will be up here when I do.

Robert Worth of the NYT looks at the ways Hezbollah reaches out to Lebanese mothers, children and young men. Could we call this “a battle for hearts and minds”?

More evidence of the intimate connections between violent Islamic groups and other criminal organizations.

Of course, whether Hezbollah can be accurately characterized as a terrorist group is subject to debate. The United States government says it is, while the Lebanese Parliament - and the group itself - consider it a political party with a military wing. So, the “terrorist group” paradigm may not apply to it.

Khalil al Anani, visiting scholar at Brookings’ Saban Center, published this op-ed in al Ahram Weekly last week. The piece asserts that it's educational to look at the internal dynamics of Islamist parties when assessing the degree to which they have internalized democratic ideals. Some Islamist parties, like the Justice and Development party in Morocco or the al Wefaq Islamic Society in Bahrain, can count transparency and accountablity as normal characteristics of their operation. Others, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in Jordan and the Movement of the Society of Peace in Algeria, include those terms and ideas in their political platforms but fail to truly implement them within their organizations.

Al-Anani's bio at Brookings says that he will be researching nonviolent Islamist movements during his time as a visiting scholar, so presumably this piece comes from some of that research.
It is interesting reading, especially because it demonstrates clearly that not all Islamist groups are created equal, and lumping them together under the heading of ‘political Islam’ can obscure some important differences.

An Oliver Guitta article in the Middle East Times from yesterday analyzes the ascent of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, particularly Algeria (Here is an earlier post about the Dec 11th Algiers bombings).   Basically, the thrust of the article is that al-Qaeda is consolidating its influence in the region, and that “One of its primary goals is to federate the main terror organizations in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya in order to attain full regional reach.”   I personally doubt that this will ever really be the case, as one of the toughest things to do in the world is to get a bunch of disjointed revolutionaries to fall under one flag, even if it is that of bin Laden.  I’ll get into that more in a later post.

 But one of the more interesting passages in the article is this, which I will quote at some length.

And the Dec. 11 spectacular double suicide bombings in Algiers against the United Nations and Algeria's constitutional court are the latest proof of AQIM's potential to create chaos in North Africa.

The symbolical aspect of these attacks is very important. First, Dec. 11, 1960 is a crucial date in Algeria's history of independence from France. The constitutional court happens to be located on the December 11 Boulevard.

And most importantly the “11th” factor is one of al-Qaida's hallmarks: not only for 9/11 in the United States, but also for 3/11 in Madrid and AQIM's suicide attacks on 3/11 in Casablanca, 4/11 in Algiers, 7/11 in Lakhdaria in Algeria and now 12/11.

AQIM has succeeded in creating an “11″ psychosis; some in Algeria even describe the 11th as “the date of the devil.”

Now, this is interesting.  When the 3/11 Madrid attacks hit, there was a lot of conspiratorial kerfluffle and internet numerological time-wastery, and it was easily dismissed.   That stuff is fun to an extent, but meaningless (Oh! Here's one! Allende was overthrown in Chile on 9/11 in 1973- that is the date of CIA underground ops, obviously).  People are conditioned to look for patterns, as they provide a level of comfort in times of chaos.  Even if we don't like the order, the idea that human events are controlled by grand plans is a strangely reassuring one. 

But all the “11's” in ALgeria might actually conform to something.  I would imagine it was a coincidence at first, but terrorists are often not dummies.  When there are random explosions, people are scared but it isn't always at the forefront of the mind.  But if there is a specific day every month, the lead-up can become unbearable.   And that, after all, is one of terrorism's main goals.

Secondarily, forcing a pattern onto the chaos can help if the goal of AQIM is really to consolidate power in the Maghreb.   It makes them seem more powerful and competent.   It can help bring splinter groups under their umbrella.

 Again, though, this is just light Christmas speculation. 

 Brig. Gen. François al-Hajj, who was on the track to succeed Michel Suleiman as Army chief of staff whenever he becomes president, was killed in a car bomb in Beirut today.   Al-Hajj also led the battle against the Fatah al-Islam militant group in ferocious fighting last summer.   Whether this was a revenge killing or somehow tied to the frustrating and increasingly dangerous political void (or both) is unsure as of now.  Al-Jazeera postulates that this is a “significant unfolding of events because the army was the only military institution that is seen as neutral, and not taking sides in the political crisis in Lebanon.”  Of course, if Suleiman does become President, the line between civilian and military status in Lebanon will become increasingly blurred.

At least 60 people have been killed as a result of two bombings in Algiers today- one near a government bulding and the other near United Nations offices.    The government is sure that the GSPC is responsible (The GSPC, a splinter of the GIA group which waged the civil war in the 1990s,  was known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and now call themselves al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).   However, recently, there has been chatter of another geographically-named Islamist group in Algeria,  the Organization of al-Qaeda in the Land of the Berbers.   The GSPC has been suffering defections and low morale, and this could be an operation to staunch a decline, or it could be the first blow of an upstart group.  These bombings fit the goals of the GSPC, which is to topple the secular Algerian government and attack Western targets, but these goals are not exclusive to them.  And  while it seems unlikely that a new group could pull off such a devastating attack, it is important to remember that this is battle-hardened Algeria, where even new-comers have long experience with war.   Paying attention to who is ultimately resposible for this attack will help illuminate whether Algeria is dealing with a single, focused group or a number of splintered factions, eager to prove their mettle.